Other Spaces

This exhibition is the result of a summer course, held at the department of fine arts. The course took Michel Foucault’s well-known lecture “Of Other Spaces” (1967) as its point of departure, a text that has had great influence on the art world. Here, Foucault introduces the concept of heterotopias, spaces where many spaces might cross and intersect, and it has been used to describe what art can mean in a society that turns away from not only what is “different”, but also away from the idea the society might benefit from multitude. Indeed, heterotopia could serve as an understanding of not only what art can bring, but also what art can be.

Consequently, the students have responded to the challenge in quite a few different ways. Many use the openness to test new ideas and thus take the opportunity to present parts of larger projects we might see realized in the exam exhibitions this coming year. Here, we find a variety of works in progress, from more sketch like mind maps to complete parts of larger works. Others find ways back to unfinished threads of earlier works, and yet other has carried out works that have been waiting for the right opportunity.

Some present their “other spaces” from a private, solitary perspective, focusing on the many different spaces that our mind might occupy. In one case, the mental domain becomes a haven to take refuge in, in another we are reminded of how normativity separates the “healthy” from the “sick”, by placing the others in crammed institutions. But we also find works that deal with more private “institutions”, gathering points where individuals share stories and confidences in intimate situations.

Other works try to grasp of what different spaces and stories that constitute the self. Here the “I” becomes an intersection, reminding us of the many versions of ourselves that we play for the others and how many sides we find wise not to reveal. Or what we know and pretend to know, as where the educational system becomes the focus point.

Identity is also at the core of the works that play on nationalism and regionalism, questioning the will to sameness by promoting alternative histories. But here, our attention is also drawn to the geographical places, and in what way they are heterotopias. Some works dig deeper into the soil and finds that not even geographical places are as stabile as they might seem. Entire cities are movable, if only the financial forces say so.

Yet other works take off from a more theoretical discussion about what a “place” is. A phenomenological approach asks questions about demarcation lines, where for instance, do we find the borders between one field and the other, between one thing and another? Questions that are reversed in other projects where the issue rather is what it means to place things from different context in the same environment. Do objects from different spaces construct a heterotopia by definition, or are there more complexities to account for?

The ten projects offer a multitude of perspectives and I have been very happy to be learning from them what “other spaces” might mean. I hope you will too. Enjoy.

Håkan Nilsson

Lecturer, Department of Fine Arts