Art as Forum

Art as Forum was dedicated to studying the relationships between art, communality and social communities at large.

The centre closed down in the end of December 2024.

Stine Marie Jacobsen, Law Shifters, 2017, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France, A World Not Ours curated by Katharine Gregoson
Stine Marie Jacobsen, Law Shifters, 2017, Kunsthalle Mulhouse, France, A World Not Ours curated by Katerina Gregos

Shifting focus from individual works of art to their social and infrastructural embeddedness, the centre's research agenda was informed by instances of relationality, dependency and collective labour in artistic practices. Its ambition was to provide a better understanding of the social modes of existence of art through revisiting different historical periods, different geo-political contexts and different art forms. 

 

 

Art as Forum encompassed an array of enquiries into the “forum” as a locus of analysis in the arts, including:

  • The institutions and relations that frame the production, circulation, and consumption of art
  • The co-producing ventures and processes that afford historical and contemporary art practices
  • The formation of publics pertaining to different art forms and their societal roles and functions
  • The uses of art in different historical, medial, and spatial contexts
  • The interplay between art practices and political processes and formations
  • The theoretical conceptions of togetherness, separability, sensibility, and interdependency that can inform aesthetic theory

By focusing on art and communality, Art as Forum provided an important supplement to traditional art studies. The centre forged new theoretical understandings of the societal modes of existence of art in relation and develop analytical practices that help us to conceptualise how artworks and social processes coalesce. By broadening the conceptual and interpretive approaches to art, Art as Forum attempted to give a more comprehensive description of the societal import of artworks and art practices.

The research centre accommodated Danish and international researchers at all levels, from doctoral students to senior researchers, and from a wide range of disciplines, including the traditional disciplines of art studies, cultural studies, media history, anthropology, sociology, economics, and philosophy. Research was conducted in close dialogue and collaboration with museums, theatres, art schools, libraries, and other organisations and stakeholders with an interest in the life of the arts amidst the life of society.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tanya Ravn Ag, postdoc

  • *#Ag, T.R., Berland, M. & Irrgang, D. ”AI Art/Aesthetics: Critical Practices”. Interface Critique 6, 2026. (accepted)
  • *Ag, T.R. ”Rethinking Algorithms in Art”. In ISEA2025 Seoul Conference Proceedings, 2025.
  • Ag, T.R. “Anticipation and Art After Automation”. Contemporary Aesthetics 11, 2025.  
  • Ag, T.R. “Algoritmer i kunsten: Et kultursitueret perspektiv på kunstens udvikling med digital teknologi igennem 30 år i Danmark”. Passepartout 3, 2025.
  • *Ag, T.R. “The Intratemporal Work of Art”. In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2025.
  • Ag, T.R. “Memories with Art and AI”. In Against All Odds: Historical Women and New Algorithms. The National Gallery of Denmark 2024.
  • *Ag, T.R. & Søndergaard, M. “Expanded Algorithms: On Algorithmic Consciousness as the Basis for Future Pioneers in Digital Art”. In RE:SOURCE, The 10th International Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology. Venice 2023.
  • *Ag, T.R. “Art’s Intratemporal Relations to the Future”. In ISEA2023 Paris Conference Proceedings, 2023.

Mick With Berland, scholarship recipient

  • *#Ag, T.R., Berland, M. & Irrgang, D. ”AI Art/Aesthetics: Critical Practices”. Interface Critique 6, 2026. (accepted)

Emma Sofie Brogaard, scholarship recipient

  • *Brogaard, E.S. "Practicing a Black Women’s International. Infrastructures of a Black, Left, Feminist Sensibility". In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2025.
  • #Brogaard, E. S., Overgaard, M. H. & Tygstrup, F. Fremtrædelsens æstetik og politik: Kunst og fællesskaber hos Hannah Arendt og Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Billedkunstskolernes forlag 2022.

Morten Chemnitz Gråbøl, PhD student

  • *Gråbøl, M. C. A we without us: Collective disoccupation in late 20th century French poetry. PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen 2023.

Eva la Cour, postdoc

  • *la Cour, E. ”Collaborating with Film and TV-Producer Jef Cornelis: Notes on Infrastructural Forms of the Image and Image Practices”. In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2024.
  • *la Cour, E. & Brode-Roger, D. ”Arctic Imaginaries and Their Entangled Relationship(s) with Artistic Production on Svalbard”. In Albert, M., Brode-Roger, D. & Iversen, L. (red.). Arctic Imaginaries: The Making of an Arctic Archipelago. Palgrave Macmillan 2023.
  • *la Cour, E. ”The figure of the guide: Arctic nature guiding as productive behaviour on Svalbard”. In Polar Record 59, 2023.
  • *la Cour, E. & Saville, S. ”Visuals and Voices Through Time: Imagining Svalbard with Naturrikdom och Kullgrubedrift på 78N (1962–1972)”. In Alberts, M., Brode-Roger, D. & Iversen, L. (red.). Svalbard Imaginaries: The Making of an Arctic Archipelago. Palgrave Macmillan 2023.

Solveig Daugaard, postdoc, assistant professor

  • *Daugaard, S. ”Printed Poetry”. In Poetry in the Digital Age: An Interdisciplinary Handbook. De Gruyter 2025.
  • *Daugaard, S. ”Representational Politics and Poetry.” In Poetry in the Digital Age: An Interdisciplinary Handbook. De Gruyter 2025.
  • *#Daugaard, S., Gaonkar, A. M., Schmidt, C. U. &. Tygstrup, F. ”Artistic Value for Whom? An Infrastructural Approach to Cultural Policy in Diversity-poor Times”. Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift 29, 2, 2025.
  • *Daugaard, S. "Poetry as Infrastructural Switch: Yahya Hassan and the Politics of the Danish Literary Circuit". In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2025.
  • *Daugaard, S. ”A Poetics of Interrogation: Collective Readership and Authorial Plenum in Muse & Drudge”. In Colby, G. & Mullen, H. (red.). Her Silver-Tongued Companion: Reading Poems by Harryette Mullen. Edinburgh University Press 2024.
  • *Daugaard, S. ”Heksekunster på Instagram: Eller hvad er en artfluencer”. K&K: kultur og klasse 138, 2024.
  • *Daugaard, S. ”Infrastructural poetics in Yahya Hassan and Shadi Angelina Bazeghi”. Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 32, 2023.
  • #Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Schultz, L. L. ”Introduction: A historical analogy and its derived effects”. Peripeti 20, 2023.
  • #Daugaard, S. & Schmidt, C. U. Vi skriver sammen: Adressering, adgang og afhængighed i litteraturen, Billedkunstskolernes forlag 2022.
  • #Daugaard, S., Holmboe, R., Overgaard, M. H. & Schmidt, C. U. ”Introduction - Aesthetic Relations”. The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 31, 2022.

Line Ellegaard, PhD student, postdoc

  • *Ellegaard, L. ”Kunstfaggruppens infrastrukturelle aktivisme: En feministisk læsning af kunstbibliotekarernes arbejde i 1970’erne”.  Passage 39, 2025.
  • *Ellegaard, L. “’Tag en Jorn med hjem’: Kunstbibliotekernes udlånssamlinger fra 1960’erne til 1990’erne”. Periskop – Forum for kunsthistorisk debat 34, 2025.
  • *Ellegaard, L. ”Curatorial Activism and Practices of Listening: Revisiting Kuratorisk Aktion’s Rethinking Nordic Colonialism (2006)”. Journal of Global Studies and Contemporary Art/ Revista de Estudios Global es y Arte Contemporáneo 10, 1, 2025.
  • *Ellegaard, L. ”Investigation, Inversion, Intervention: ’Women Artists – Past and Present’ by Hellen Lassen, Hanne Lise Thomsen and Else Kallesøe”. In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2024.
  • *Ellegaard, L. Organising, Exhibiting and Curating (in) Solidarity: ‘Kvindeudstillingen’, 1975, ‘Art contre/against Apartheid’ 1983-1984, and ‘Rethinking Nordic Colonialism’2006. PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen 2023.

Anna Meera Gaonkar, postdoc

  • *#Gaonkar, A.M. & Schmidt, C.U. “Separatist Communities of Racialized Artists and Cultural Workers in the Nordic Region”. In Greaves, C. & Vilslev, A. (eds.). Transformative Feminisms: Nordic Art in the Global Present. De Gruyter 2026.
  • *#Daugaard, S., Gaonkar, A. M., Schmidt, C. U. &. Tygstrup, F. ”Artistic Value for Whom? An Infrastructural Approach to Cultural Policy in Diversity-poor Times”. Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift 29, 2, 2025.
  • *Gaonkar, A.M. “Affective Evictions: A Cultural Analysis of Contemporary Danish Housing Politics”. Women, Gender & Science 2024.
  • *Gaonkar, A.M. “Brown Island Floating in a Sea of White: On Affective Infrastructures”. In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2024.
  • *#Gaonkar, A.M. & Schmidt, C.U. “Separatistiske fællesskaber af racialiserede kunst- og kulturarbejdere i Norden”. In Ogundipe, A. & Danielsen, A. (eds.). Fellesskap, konflikt og politikk. Fagbokforlaget 2024.

Rasmus Holmboe, postdoc

  • *Holmboe, R. “TOVES - THE SALE. Towards an Infrastructural Model for Hosting at the Art Museum”. In S. Daugaard, C. U. Schmidt & F. Tygstrup (Eds.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2024.
  • # Daugaard, S., Holmboe, R., Overgaard, M. H. & Schmidt, C. U. ”Introduction - Aesthetic Relations” The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 31, 2022.
  • *Holmboe, R.”The Institutional Situation of So-called Sound Art”. In Beloff. L. & Søndergaard, M. (red.). Silent Agencies – Artistic and Curatorial Practices in a State of Crisis. Seismograf/DMT, 2020.

Daniel Irrgang, postdoc

  • *#Ag, T.R., Berland, M. & Irrgang, D. ”AI Art/Aesthetics: Critical Practices”. Interface Critique 6, 2026. (accepted)
  • *Irrgang, D. ”Critical Zone(s) Observatories: Modelling infrastructures of climate science in the art museum”. In: Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2025.
  • *Irrgang, D. ”Critical Zones and Thought Exhibitions”. Spool – Landscape Metropolis vol. 11, 2025.
  • *Irrgang, D. ”Thought Exhibition: On critical zones, cosmograms, and the impossible outside”. ISEA 2023: Symbiosis: Proceedings, 28th Symposium on Electronic Arts 2023. École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs, 2024.
  • *Irrgang, D. ”Der Rückschlag der Apparate auf das Bewusstsein: Vilém Flusser, Don Ihde und eine erweiterte Hermeneutik”. In Bedorf, T. and Risthaus, P. (red.). Digitale Hermeneutik. Hagen University Press 2024.
  • *Irrgang, D, Korintenberg, B. & Guinard-Terrin, M. ”Critical Zones: Ein Forschungsseminar mit Bruno Latour”. Visual Past. A Journal for the Study of Past Visual Cultures 7, 2023.
  • Irrgang, D. ”Thought Exhibition”. In Feireiss, L. & Hadler, F. (red.). Weak Signals: New Narratives in Art and Technology. Spector Books 2023.
  • *Irrgang, D, “’Thought Exhibition’: Sur les zones critiques, les cosmogrammes et l’impossibilité d’un dehors”. Les cahiers du Musée national d’Art moderne 164, 2023.
  • Irrgang, D, ”Zona Crítica. o el exterior imposible/Critical zone, or: the impossible outside”. In Godoy Román, J. (red.). Trabajos de Campo/Fieldworks. Centro Cultural La Moneda, Santiago de Chile 2023.

Sidsel Nelund, postdoc

  • *Nelund, S. Things in Contemporary Curating. Really simple Syndication, 2023.

Mathias Overgaard, PhD student

  • *Overgaard, M. H. “Forms of Hospitality in Tolstoy’s ‘Hadji Murat’”. In Hosts, Hospitals, and Hospitalities. UCL Press London 2026 (in press).
  • *Overgaard, M. H. Ritual Aesthetics. Theorizing art as a societal infrastructure, PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen 2025.
  • *Overgaard, M. H. “Art as Reflective Infrastructure”. In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2025.
  • #Brogaard, E. S., Overgaard, M. H. & Tygstrup, F. Fremtrædelsens æstetik og politik: Kunst og fællesskaber hos Hannah Arendt og Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Billedkunstskolernes forlag 2022.
  • #Daugaard, S., Holmboe, R., Overgaard, M. H. & Schmidt, C. U. ”Introduction - Aesthetic Relations” The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 31, 2022.

Xenia Brown Pallesen, PhD student

  • *Brown Pallesen, X. "Infrastructural Orientations in the Exhibition". In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter, 2025.

Amanda Grimsbo Roswall, PhD student

  • *Roswall, A. G. Unforgetting the feminist French seventies. PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen 2025.
  • * Roswall, A. G. ”Collectivity and Feminist History: Situating Luce Irigaray”. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 49,4, 2024.

Frida Sandström, PhD student

  • *Sandström, F. ”Self-Image or Stock Image? Roxy Farhat’s Found Subjects in the Society of the Spectacle”. In Greaves, K. & Vilslev, B. Transformative Feminisms: Nordic Art in the Transcultural Present. De Gruyter 2026 (i.p.)
  • *Sandström, F. Dropout Subjects: Jill Johnston’s and Carla Lonzi’s Disintegration and Deculturalization of Art Criticism as Social Critique in 1969. PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen 2025.
  • *Sandström, F. ”A Crisis of Autonomy: Critique of Art and Sexuality in 1974”. In Daugaard, S., Ullerup Schmidt, C. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2024.
  • *Sandström, F. ”Carla Lonzi, Shulamith Firestone og dialektikkens krise i 1970”. In Krogh, M. L. & Mau, S. (red.). Feministisk Marxisme. Klim 2024.
  • *Sandström, F. ”Carla Lonzi och krisens kritik 1969-1970”. K&K - Kultur og Klasse 52, 2024.
  • *Sandström, F. ”The Movement and the University: Critique of Modern Irrationality”. The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics. 33, 2024.
  • *Sandström, F. ”The Disintegration of Autonomy: Jill Johnston’s Anti-criticism”. In Payne, C. A. & Morelock, J. (red.). Feminism and the Early Frankfurt School. Brill 2023.

Cecilie Ullerup Schmidt, tenure track assistant professor, deputy head of centre

  • *#Gaonkar, A.M. & Schmidt, C.U. “Separatist Communities of Racialized Artists and Cultural Workers in the Nordic Region”. In Greaves, C. & Vilslev, A. (eds.) Transformative Feminisms: Nordic Art in the Global Present. De Gruyter 2026.
  • *#Daugaard, S., Gaonkar, A. M., Schmidt, C. U. &. Tygstrup, F. ”Artistic Value for Whom? An Infrastructural Approach to Cultural Policy in Diversity-poor Times”. Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift 29, 2, 2025.
  • Graugaard, N. D., Paulsen, S. & Schmidt, C. U. Kalaallit Inuit Performance: A re-membering podcast series. 2025.
  • *Schmidt, C. U., Bork Petersen, F., Schnor, J. & Vedel, K. A. ”Dancing necessities: Infrastructures, interventions, and maintenance”. Peripeti. 39, 2024.
  • Schmidt, C. U. ”Danske aktørers perspektiver på kodeksets potentiale”. Fair Practice Kultur: En undersøgelse af et kodeks for kunst og kultur. Dansk Komponistforening 2024.
  • *#Gaonkar, A.M. & Schmidt, C.U. “Separatistiske fællesskaber af racialiserede kunst- og kulturarbejdere i Norden”. In Ogundipe, A. & Danielsen, A. (eds.). Fellesskap, konflikt og politikk. Fagbokforlaget 2024.
  • *Schmidt, C. U. ”Solo, T.ansparent, Responsible? Artists Collectives’ Inversion of Eurocentric Infrastructures at Documenta Fifteen”. In Daugaard, S., Ullerup Schmidt, C. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter, 2024.
  • #Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Schultz, L. L. ”Introduction: A historical analogy and its derived effects”. Peripeti 20, 2023.
  • Schmidt, C. U. ”Debilitation of artists in the 1930s and today: An afterword to Peter Brandt and Katrine Dirckinck-Holmfeld’s performance ’The rematerialisation of trauma: a dialogue on love’”. Peripeti. 20, 2023.
  • *Schmidt, C. U. ”Hilarious Imperialists: Baktruppen’s Bad Family Photos from the World Tour”. In Ørum, T., Schultz, L. L., Paldam, C. S. & Hjartarson, B. (red.). A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries Since 1975. Brill 2022.
  • #Daugaard, S., Holmboe, R., Overgaard, M. H. & Schmidt, C. U. ”Introduction - Aesthetic Relations” The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 31, 2022.
  • *Schmidt, C. U. ”No count! BIPoC artists counteracting ’fair’ representation and systemic racial loneliness in higher education in the arts”. Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 14, 1, 2022.
  • Schmidt, C. U. Produktionæstetik: En feministisk arbejdskritik mellem kunst og liv. Laboratoriet for Æstetik og Økologi 2022.
  • #Daugaard, S. & Schmidt, C. U. Vi skriver sammen: Adressering, adgang og afhængighed i litteraturen, Billedkunstskolernes forlag 2022.
  • *Schmidt, C. U. ”At slutte kreds: Forsøgsscenens kunstneriske praksis i 1930ernes selvorganiserede, politisk-kunstneriske miljø”. Peripeti 18, 2021.
  • *Schmidt, C. U. ”The Fall of Greatness: Toward an Aesthetics of Co-(re)production”. Critical Stages / Scènes critiques 23, 2021.

Elias Gissel Ståhl, scholarship recipient

  • *Madsen, S. & Ståhl, E. “Institutionel u/synlighed – Transkroppen på arbejde i kunstinstitutionen”. Periskop 37, 2026 (i.p.).
  • *Ståhl, E. “Ovartaci og andre DIY-kvinder”. In Laustsen, A. M. (red.). Ovartaci – Jeg begyndte som paradisfugl. Kunstmuseum Brandts og Kunsten Museum of Modern Art Aalborg 2025.

Frederik Tygstrup, professor, head of centre

  • *Tygstrup, F. ”Literary Commons. Toward an Aesthetics of Celebration”. On_Culture 20, 2026 (accepted).
  • *#Daugaard, S., Gaonkar, A. M., Schmidt, C. U. &. Tygstrup, F. ”Artistic Value for Whom? An Infrastructural Approach to Cultural Policy in Diversity-poor Times”. Nordisk Kulturpolitisk Tidskrift 29, 2, 2025.
  • Tygstrup, F. ”Kulturel infrastruktur som undersøgelsesområde”. In Petersen, S. P. & Nielsen, J. C. (red.). 10 samtaler om kunst i det offentlige rum. Bikubenfonden 2025.
  • *Tygstrup, F. ”Aesthetic Appearance: An Infrastructural Perspective”. In Daugaard, S., Schmidt, C. U. & Tygstrup, F. (red.). Infrastructure Aesthetics. De Gruyter 2024.
  • *Bogh, M. & Tygstrup, F. ”Kunst som et gæstfrit rum”. Tidsskriftet Økonomi & Politik 97, 3, 2024.
  • Tygstrup, F. ”Sentient Space”. In Poulsen, K. S. (red.). Feel Me: Mind, Body, Space. Kunstmuseet Trapholt 2024.
  • *Tygstrup, F. ”Art and Hospitality”. In Sigfusson, E. & Wulff, S. (red.). Should I/Should I Not?: An Anthology on Artistic Freedom. Ctrl+Alt+Delete Books 2023.
  • *Tygstrup, F. ”Kant's ’Aesthetic Idea’: Towards an Aesthetics of Non-Attention”. Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 32, 2023.
  • #Brogaard, E. S., Overgaard, M. H. & Tygstrup, F. Fremtrædelsens æstetik og politik: Kunst og fællesskaber hos Hannah Arendt og Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Billedkunstskolernes forlag 2022.
  • *Tygstrup, F. ”Literature and Democracy”. In Nünning, V. (red.). The Value of Literature: Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature. Günther Narr Verlag 2021.
  • Tygstrup, F. ”The Arts as a Forum: On the Role of Art in a Democratic Society”. In Sigfusson, E. (red.) Reflections: Art, Culture, Politics, Society. Nordisk Kulturfond 2021.
  • *Tygstrup, F. ”After Literature: The Geographies, Technologies, and Epistemologies of Reading and Writing in the Early 21st Century”. In Kugele, J., Bachmann-Medick, D. & Nünning, A. (red.). Futures of the Study of Culture. De Gruyter 2020.
  • *Tygstrup, F. ”Information and the Vicissitudes of Representation”. Diffractions 2, 2020.
  • *Tygstrup, F. ”Sensus Communis. On Art and Democracy”. In Klinger, M. (red.). Imagine: Aufzeichnungen der Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst. Christoph Merian Verlag 2020.

In addition, members of Art as Forum have edited and written introductions to the 18 volumes in the Art as Forum in Print (‘Kunsten som Forum på Tryk)’ series , which is now available in digital format (in Danish). 

*) Peer-reviewed

#) Co-authored and registered by two or more researchers from Art as Forum

 

 

 

Anthology: Infrastructure Aesthetics

Book series: Art as Forum in Print (in Danish)

Final report: Art as Forum (in Danish)

Funding

The centre was funded by the New Carlsberg Foundation.

Period: 1 October 2019 -  31 December 2024

Contact: Head of centre Frederik Tygstrup