On Friendship and the Political Imaginary course

This distance course (taught by english, at distance via zoom, free to EU nationals) introduces key themes and questions in respect of politics, affiliation and friendship with particular reference to contemporary art practices, theories and institutions. The course proposes to explore the figure of “the friend” by attending to the intersections of contemporary art with philosophy, cultural history, anthropology, and social and political theory. A combined intensive and extensive reading approach introduces key themes and questions on the political imaginary and the different ways in which figures of the friend, the comrade, the enemy and the neighbour are mobilised within the thinking of the political. We ask how to understand the cultural and political agency of relation in an era of political polarisation, isolation, authoritarianism, belligerence and rising fascism?

This course is an associated initative of the Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary.

Participants are expected to: actively engage in the online workshops, lectures and seminars; engage in extensive shared reading; and explore the implications of the course themes for their own practice and/or further studies. The key participant task for the course is to develop a substantial proposal for further practice or research beyond the duration of the course itself.

The 2025 teaching team includes: Kerry Guinan, Michele Masucci, and Mick Wilson. Guest presenters in previous years have included: Nick Aikens, Kathrin Böhm, Jason E. Bowman, Céline Condorelli, Gary Farrelly, Quinsey Gario, Martyn Hudson, Steven Henry Madoff (co-originator of original course idea) Walter Mignolo, Jota Mombaça, Jyoti Mistry, Ratna Mufida, Sarah Pierce, Bojana Piškur, Elizabeth A. Povinelli, Helena Reckitt, Grace Samboh, Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach, Shuddha Sengupta, Thiago de Paula Souza, and Claire Tancons. The guest speakers for 2025 will be announced shortly.

Online sessions and optional in-person meet ups
The online sessions will normally take place 4:30–7:30pm CET Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday evenings. Dates planned for autumn 2025 are: September 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 16, 18, 23, 25, 30; October 7, 9, 21, 23, 28, 30; November 4, 6, 18, 20, 25; December 2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 18; January 13, 14, 15

There are a series of optional ‘in person’ meet up sessions each year. In autumn 2025 these sessions will be in: Brussels and Antwerp, September 11–13, 2025;  Gothenburg October 15–18, 2025; and Ljubljana November 26–28, 2025.  Among other activities during the intensives, we will visit several exhibitions as part of the course programme including: The Geopolitics of Infrastructure at M KHA, Antwerp; the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art; and (Un)Equal Geographies, Ljubljana.

Application details
Application period: March 17–April 15, 2025. Please see the details on application here.

There are also possibilities, for a non-EU national who is pursuing doctoral studies, to audit this course without fees as a guest researcher attached to our doctoral programme: for inquiries contact doctoral-education [​at​] hdk-valand.gu.se with “guest research art and politics” in the message header. In travelling to meet-ups, participants are responsible for their own costs.