Educational Modules

Vision Forum is a development of the organisation Curatorial Mutiny and its dialogue with KSM at Linköpings universitet that started in 2004. Since its inception in 2008, Vision Forum has grown to focus on international education, production and research in contemporary visual art and the integration of these on a regional, national and international scale.

1. Introduction and contexts

"We do not lack communication. On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation. We lack resistance to the present. The creation of concepts in itself calls for a future form, for a new earth and people that do not yet exist."
—Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, "What is Philosophy"


The collaboration between KSM and Vision Forum allows knowledge, experience and vision to meet with artistic and academic creativity to enrich the academic and cultural life of the region of Östergötland. The collaboration brings together students, researchers, producers and influential personalities from the arts, humanities and sciences to dialogue about central life issues. The participants of the project come from all over Europe, often with roots from other continents, and also host a broad age range and a balanced gender mix. The exchange safeguards academic and cultural diversity in the region and inspires students, researchers and staff to find, enrich and develop their creative and academic processes.

The collaboration operates on three levels:


I. Local: To bring knowledge, experience and inspiration and new ideas from all over Europe and further afield to dialogue with and to enrich the unique context of the cultural, institutional and academic world of Norrköping, Linköping and the region of Östergötland.



II. National: To bring knowledge, experience and inspiration and new ideas from all over Europe and further afield to dialogue with and to enrich the cultural and academic worlds in Sweden. To enforce a dialogue with the academic, institutional and cultural world in the rest of Sweden with Norrköping, Linköping and the region of Östergötland.



III. International: To create a platform for international expansion for the academic, institutional and artistic world of Norrköping, Linköping and the region of Östergötland and to use this expansion to enrich the professional processes for academics and cultural practitioners in the region.



To work on these three levels allow the students and researchers to develop their personal practice based on their individual needs, visions and ambitions. But it also allows them to create a platform where they can actively choose to work locally, nationally and internationally. The platform gives them the tools, the network and skills to expand and through that allow the cultural and academic life in the region to expand with them.





2. The nature of the collaboration its future goals.

“One of the primary blocks to such latent creativity is what Bohm refers to as ‘self-sustaining’ confusion in the mind, in contrast to ‘simple’ confusion. Simple confusion is that which we experience when for instance, we don’t understand directions we are given, or when we can’t find the solution to a puzzle. Self-sustaining confusion, on the other hand occurs ‘when the mind is trying to escape awareness of conflict… in which one’s deep intention is really to avoid perceiving the fact, rather than to sort it out and make it clear’ Bohm points out that this process creates an order of its own: a reflexive state of dullness in which the natural agility of the mind is replaced is replaced with a torpor on the one hand, mechanical and meaningless fantasies on the other. Unfortunately says Bohm, this has come to be considered a normal state of mind, and is therefore endemic to our culture.”
— Lee Nichols, Preface to the Routledge Classics Edition of David Bohm’s “On Creativity”, Routledge 1997.

The collaboration between KSM and Vision Forum is built on research about the role and nature of knowledge within in the academic and artistic fields. This foundation allows the students and researchers both to operate professionally in local, national and international art audiences and at the same time develop research that benefits the academic and artistic worlds.

The collaboration needs to be based on a clear understanding of the methodologies, goals and limitations of the respective fields: art, science and humanities. It is essential not only to demarcate the nature of knowledge in respective fields and the overlapping aims between them, but also to respect that there are profound philosophical differences between the genres. But both Vision Forum and KSM also both have far reaching experience of what can be achieved through a dialogue between different disciplines.

In each project carried out by students and researchers, great detail is given on the formulation of the problem as well as the context where the problem is addressed. The projects are created and carried out in such a way that they allow the audience to actively follow the outcome through traces of the process undergone. The project is set up with the goal of realizing the potential of each individual student and researcher and to stimulate a rich cultural and academic environment in Östergötland.


3. Thematic Fields



"The art of constructing a problem is very important: you invent a problem, a problem position, before finding a solution. None of this happens in an interview, a conversation, a discussion. Even reflection, whether it's alone, between two or more is not enough. Above all, not reflection. Objections are even worse. Every time someone puts an objection I want to say 'OK, OK, let's go on to something else'. Objections have never contributed anything. It is the same when I am asked a general question. The aim is not to answer the question, it's to get out, to get out of it."
—Gilles Deleuze


The collaboration between KSM and Vision Forum focuses on three main fields. These have been developed over the last years. Within each field the students and researchers work with meetings, research and production preferably in parallel. The three fields also open doors for work across the fields and students and researchers often work with projects that either is placed between these thematic fields and/or between accepted artistic genres.

The three thematic fields are:


I. 
Performance: Vision Forum has focused on performance from the outset. The practical approach to academic research that has been a trademark of KSM from the start makes it very easy to collaborate in this field and the two organizations have been working together in this genre since 2004.
II. Art and Science
: The collaboration offers artistic production and research to meet scientific and humanist research.
III. Experimental film: Film is and has always been a strong point for KSM, but the creators have had a hard time reaching outside the local. Vision Forum offers the venues for presentation and expansion. This field also works for an expanded local production of experimental film.

Publications

Many of the meetings and public events are discussed and critically analysed in publications that are distributed in Europe, Asia and South America. More information here.

Below you find a selection of Vision Forum's publications.

• The Quantum Police, with texts by Anne Klontz; Johnny Ross and Willie Hansen (1969) and a short story by Wang Xiao Ping (in Chinese and English). Design by Erik Månsson, 96 pages in full coulour + 5 fold-out sheets. Published by Lambert Gallery and Vision Forum 2011, ISBN 978-91-978934-5-9.

• SWANewspaper, 2011, 16 pages, colour, edited by Anna Hess et al (Speech and What Archive). Published by A Constructed World.

• TRAVELS, 2011, edited by: Louise Nilsson and Lisa Boström, graphic design Karl dos Santos, Language English, contributions by: Hu Fang, Lillian Fellman, Marie Husson, Per Hüttner, Louise Höjer, Mako Ishizuka, Anna Kleberg, Björn Kusoffsky, Niklas Lundell, Isin Onol and Alessandra Sandrolini.

• (In)visible Dialogues, 2011, Edited by Per Hüttner and Elias Arnér, languages: English and Swedish, 240 pages, design by Åbäke. Published by Dent-de-Leone. ISBN 978-91-978934-3-5 and ISBN 978-0-9561885-5-7

• The Invisible Generation, 2011, 144 pages. Texts by Gerrie van Noord, Daniele Balit, Olav Westphalen and Per Hüttner. Language: English. Design by Marie. Published by Curatorial Mutiny and Vision Forum. ISBN 978-91-978934-2-8

• The Imminent Interviews, 2010, Edited by Hanna Hannerz, 90 pages, languages: English and Chinese, published by Fei Contemporary Art Center, Shanghai and Vision Forum 2010, ISBN 9789197893442

Performance practice

Vision looks at performance in a very open way and also investigates the porousness between exhibition and performance through projects like Ö- A Möbius Trip. Or by initiating meetings where boundaries between creator and audience is blurred. This is the case in Ouunpo meetings. Vision Forum is also looking for performative aspects in situations like lectures and sometimes creates workshop-like situations where new forms of meeting between researcher and audience is created.

This research has been developed in close collaboration with KSM and there search for alternative ways of documenting and presenting academic research. For more examples about these cross-over look at the information about meetings/seminars and exhibitions/performances.

Vision Forum Film

Vision Forum Film is Vision Forum's youngest research field. It has been started with the specific situation in Östergötland and Norrköping in mind and to develop its relationship to the capital region of Stockholm. Within KSM in Norrköping there is great talent fostered each year. But there is little support or possibility to grow in the region. We have therefore set up this research to stimulate film making in the region and to develop dialogue with the capital region and the international network in Vision Forum.

We are specifically interested in genre cross-overs, fostering production that allows film and visual art to meet. Vision Forum has previously been particularly successful in creating meetings between visual art and music, visual art and science and visual art and drama and builds on these experiences and contacts.

More info here.

Art and Science

Vision Forum has from the outset worked with researchers in the hard sciences to investigate how meetings between specialists in the two fields can inspire creativity on both sides. During one of the (In)visible Dialogue sessions organised by Vision Forum in 2011, Sandra Masur (Mount Sinai, New York) and Laurent Devèze (ISBA, Besançon) underlined how the scientific laboratory has gradually grown more into a communal working place for research and development over the last decade. The practice has shifted to larger research teams where the responsibilities are divided and tasks differentiated, but still retaining a common goal. On the other hand, the artist has retained his/her singular brand name and a more insular process. We have seen movements where artists form groups (Superflex, General Idea), but also artists like Olafur Eliasson and Tomàs Saraceno develop studios that emulate the working methods of architectural firms. But we our preparatory research suggests that by implicating methodologies from the sciences that this can develop further.

Vision Forum sees great potential developing parallel strategies to institutions like the Santa Fe Institute that look at large populations in major cities or the interactions in schools of fish. Here the extended specialization and at the same time demand for amassing and evaluating gigantic amounts of data has forced researchers to collaborate with researchers in the humanities and design. Vision Forum has developed both a practice and the theoretical and digital tools to create situations for true artistic research and production based on the above mentioned working methods.

Research in Contemporary Visual Art

It is getting increasingly difficult to define the boundaries of science, art or philosophy. Mostly, because each of these fields are expanding quickly and amassing a richness and variety of knowledge at high speed. Massive amounts of information is produced in each field every day.

But because of the increased complexity and specialization (along with the tightened demand on results), the dialogues between the disciplines have become increasingly important. Vision Forum's research indicates that when interdisciplinary meetings are staged in an inspiring way, they become priceless sources of creativity for the people involved. The importance of what we can contribute with does not lie in art, science or philosophy - but between the three.

One of the ground rules for the research carried out in Vision Forum lies in departing from the classical idea of communication where a single speaker utters a clearly defined idea that is transferred to an individual or group. We replace information transmission with mutual inspiration and that are inscribed into in numerous interconnected networks. We also need to break down knowledge into three separate subgroups: information, experience and vision. Information corresponds to traditional models of knowledge and communication. Experience refers to to how our life experiences become a form of knowledge and is often corporeal: an old fisherman can with great exactitude gauge the change of weather by looking at the sky. But move him across the globe and that experience will probably prove far less exact. Vision refers to conceptual thinking and explains how young people can come up with groundbreaking ideas even though they have less knowledge and experience than their older peers.

The methodology builds on Deleuzian ideas about reversing Platonism and has been developed in Vision Forum’s networks, particularly in the OuUnPo node. This idea of communication is based on ‘inspirationalism’ rather than knowledge distribution. It means that members with eclectic backgrounds who are successful in their respective practice, meet at regular intervals at different places. These meetings are meant for the members to inspire each other, provoke each others curiosity and to dialogue with the local artistic and scientific network. Most meetings involve production. But that is not a prerequisite for participation.

The Vision Forum inspirationalism is based on the age-old pedagogy that when a person discovers something out of his/her curiosity that experience is so much more valuable than a top-down distribution of information. The shared experience is also very important for creating a productive dynamic within the ‘group’. The word is written within quotation mark, since the formation of the group is not there to create a communal identity. It is rather a loosely held together group of individuals who benefit from mutual inspiration by sharing visions, experiences and information and where the boundaries of the group remain open.

Here we arrive at one of the fundamental distinctions of the research. It builds on the idea that art functions different from technology and science. It is individual and is built on the uniqueness of the experience that each visitor experience when he/she interacts with the artwork. This rational is very different from when we deal with medical drugs, plumbing or digital technology. With these, it is essential that all three to function identically each time. We want the toilet to flush, the computer to boot and the drug to kill the correct germs.

All of us know that art works differently. We have all been indifferent to great a master’s work that we have seen hundreds of times and then with a bang, we get a great metaphysical experience in front of an artwork. But with certain art work or certain artists, this profound effect will never materialise no matter how much one appreciates the work’s quality and how many times you experience it.

In Vision Forum we have seen the importance that each participant formulates their own definition how art, philosophy and science operates. The discussions around definitions of the disciplines remain some of the most exciting and also conflictual in all forms of cross-disciplinary exchanges.

Exhibitions and Performances

Vision Forum also has a long history of arranging exhibitions and performances. These have been hosted by institutions like Tate Britain in London, OCAT in Shenzhen and Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Many of the above mentioned meetings and public events are discussed and critically analysed in publications that are distributed in Europe, Asia and South America.


Selected Exhibitions, Performances and Projects

2012
• Time Capsules and Conditions of Now, Curated by Fatos Ustek, David Roberts Art Foundation, London, UK

2011
• Community without Propinquity (curated by Claire Louise Staunton), MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK
• Quantum Police, curated by Anne Klontz, The Old Police Station and Cartel, London, UK
• Speech and What archive, Medicine Show Rotterdam, Paola Pivi's GRRR JAMMING SQUEEK, Rotterdam, Holland
• (In)Visible Dialogues, curated by Lena Boëthius, Konstakademien, Stockholm, Sweden
• Speech and What archive, Speech Objects #3, Musée de l'objet, Blois, France
• Quantum Police, curated by Anne Klontz, Valerie Lambert Gallery, Brussels; DKTUS Stockholm and Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline, Manufactura’s Studio, Wuhan
• Speech and What archive, Medicine Show Avante Spectacle, La Ferme du Buisson, Paris, France


2010
• 0K – in 5 Acts The Flat Time House, London, UK
• This Image Is No More, GOOD TV, Wu Dao Ying Hu Tong, Beijing, China[31].
• Dynasty, Pauline Curnier Jardin, Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and Palais de Tokyo, Paris.
• The Invisible Generation, Les Kurbas Center, Kiev, Ukraine.
• Simultaneity, Curated by Anne Klontz, Rumänska kulturinstitutet, Stockholm and Platform China, Beijing.
• The Invisible Generation, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (with Yan Jun)
• Imminent

2009
• The Invisible Generation, OCAT, Shenzhen, China
• News for Tomorrow, Yan Jun, Beijing, China (With Birdcage, Paris)
• The Invisible Generation, VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne
• Do not Go Gentle ERBA and Musée du temps, Besançon, France"
• Calabi-Yau Presents, Gerlesborgsskolan, Sweden; FACT, Liverpool and VCA Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (3 parallel exhibitions in 3 countries).
• INH-SZ Temporary Project Space, Shenzhen. Exhibitions, film programme, lecture series including Chu Yun, Guy Delisle, Christian Jankowski, Daniel Knorr, Liu Chuang, Map Office, Yang Yong. Directed by Claire Louise Staunton, Inheritance Projects.

2008
• (Anti)Realism, Norrköpings konsthall, Norrköping, Sweden, ERBA Besançon, France and Adele C, Rome, Italy
• Vision Forum, 1:1 Projects and Lift gallery, Rom, Italy
.
2007
• Privé och Publico, Galleri 54, Göteborg, Sweden (as Curatorial Mutiny)
• Private Parts, Museet för glömska, Norrköping, Sweden (as Curatorial Mutiny)

2006
• GYBE!, (Videofeed) Vacio 9, Madrid, Spain (as Curatorial Mutiny)
• Open Mike (Performance), Vacio 9, Madrid, Spain (as Curatorial Mutiny)
• Participate? Kraftstationen Drags, Norrköping, Sweden (as Curatorial Mutiny)

2005
• Participate? Basekamp, Philadelphia, USA (as Curatorial Mutiny)
• Participate? Chinese European Art Center, Xiamen, China (as Curatorial Mutiny)

Meetings

Vision Forum builds interface with its audience using various media. We organise international meetings in collaboration with Östsam and KSM at Linköpings universitet twice a year. These allow the region of Östergötland to take part of our research. These meetings are collaborations with regional institutions and individuals. We have worked with Norrköpings konstmuseum, Arbetets museum, Länsmuseet and Visualisation Center C.

Vision Forum also arranges international meetings in Europe, China and South America. These are predominantly organised within research groups such as Ouunpo, Speech & What Archive and La Durée and have been carried out in collaboration with art institutions like Tate Britain, in London; MACRO in Rome, Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing and academic institutions like Max Planck Institute in Germany and Holland and CCA in San Francisco.

Selected Workshops

2011

• Ouunpo Greece, Deste Foundation, Six Dogs and public venues, Athens Greece

• Community without Propinquity (curated by Claire Louise Staunton), MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, UK.

• Vision Forum Autumn Meeting 2011 Arbetets Museum, Norrköpings konstmuseum etc., Sweden

• (In)Visible Dialogues, curated by Lena Boëthius, Konstakademien, Stockholm, Sweden.

• Ouunpo: Urgency and Leisure, Tesla Museum, Museum of Serbian History etc. Belgrade, Serbia

• Ö a Moebius Trip, Stockholm archipelago, Sweden

• Vision Forum Spring Meeting 2011 Norrköpings konstmuseum and Verkstad för konst, Sweden



2010

• Ouunpo, Ponder Pause Process (a Situation), Tate Britain, London, UK

• Ouunpo MACRO, Rome, Italy

• In the Limbo of the Signifier: Workshop on Linear Logic, Ars Longa, Paris, France

2009

• New Creation Musée du temps, Besançon, France

• The Stockholm Syndrome, Kungliga Konsthögskolan, Stockholm, Sweden.



2008

• If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse, Press to Exit, Skopje, Macedonia

• If you don’t want God, you’d better have a multiverse, 1:1 Projects, Rome, Italy

• Vision Forum, White Space, Zürich, Switzerland

• Vision Forum, Amsterdam, Holland

• (Anti)Realism, The Academy of Fine Arts, Guangzhou, China

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