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.
