Date: Wednesday 11 February
Time: 17:30 AM – 19:00 PM
Location: The auditorium

Secure your place by emailing: contact@capim.se

The conversation is held in English.

The Looking Glass Dialogues brings together Magnus Bärtås and Sam Hultin in a conversation about archives and microhistory within the framework of artistic research. Their practices meet in a common methodological approach characterized by careful close reading of material, attention to how narratives are constructed, and a consistent critical stance on the forms of history's mediation. Rather than seeking overarching explanatory models or definitive syntheses, both dwell on individual lives, situations, and fragments.

At the same time, their works move in different directions. Bärtås uses montage, essayistic approaches and moving images to examine geopolitical events and their narrative logics. Hultin's practice takes its starting point in embodied and long-term research, where archives are activated through collective processes, presence and participation.

With Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass like a sounding board, the conversation moves across a threshold of reflection: between image analysis and participant-based practice, between institutional archives and personal collections shaped through close relationships and care.

The Looking Glass Dialogues is based on practice-based reflection and assumes that artistic research is formulated by artists themselves, through their methodological choices, material processes and institutional contexts. The series aims to contribute to an in-depth discussion about how knowledge is produced, negotiated and politicized within contemporary art.

Magnus Bärtås is an artist, writer and filmmaker, and professor of fine arts at Konstfack in Stockholm. His work moves on the border between artistic practice and historical research, with a long-standing focus on moving images, narrative structures, textile practices and the politics of representation.

Bärtås is the author of several publications that combine artistic research, essay writing and case-based analysis. Among these are: You Told Me – Work Stories and Video Essays (2010) as well The Herald – Gabriele D'Annunzio and the Birth of Fascism, written together with Fredrik Ekman. In these works he follows micro-historical traces and individual cases, with a particular interest in life and work stories, forms of biography, necromancy and speculative historiography.

His artistic research often takes the form of installations, video essays and films that work with archival material, testimonies, historical events and what he himself calls amateur research. Through these formats, he examines how meaning is produced and circulated within audiovisual systems. In recent years, his film practice has developed in close collaboration with the Swedish-Iranian artist Behzad Khosravi-Noori.

In parallel with his artistic and academic work, Bärtås has played a central role in the development of artistic research and postgraduate education in Sweden, not least through his long-term assignment as vice-chancellor with responsibility for research at Konstfack.

Sam Hultin is an artist and writer based in Stockholm. Their artistic practice is based on queer stories and experiences, with a particular focus on questions of identity, community and the relationship between the personal and the broader social and political context. The work moves between performance, video and public, participatory formats such as city walks, sing-alongs and collective readings where queer stories are activated and given space in the public space.

Hultin holds a Master of Fine Arts from Konstfack (2012). Their works are included in the collections of Moderna Museet, the Swedish National Art Council, Gothenburg Art Museum, Gotland Art Museum and Malmö Art Museum.

Since 2019, Hultin has developed Eva-Lisa's monument, a long-term memory and archive project that takes its starting point in the life and archives left by the Swedish lesbian activist and trans pioneer Eva-Lisa Bengtson (1932–2018). The project has been realized through public walks, collective readings, archival work, texts and other public formats, and has also resulted in the book Eva-Lisa's Monument: The Story of a Transpioneer, published by Brombergs förlag 2025. The archival material that Hultin received from Bengtson is today managed by the Queer Movement Archives and Library (QRAB) in Gothenburg.

Year 2024 was awarded the Hultin Gannevik Scholarship by the Swedish Arts Council.

Center for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm)

CAPIm focuses on interdisciplinary practice and research at the intersection of contemporary art and the future of politics. Based at two art colleges – HDK-Valand and the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts – the Centre’s goal is to enable connections between research and education through a commitment to experimental approaches. It is Sweden’s first centre of excellence in artistic research. The Centre is jointly led by Professor Mick Wilson and Professor Natasha Marie Llorens, who together with Professor Jyoti Mistry and Doctor Axel Andersson form its steering group.