Cultural Policy Gathering at MDT

We encourage all attendees to participate on both Friday and Saturday; the ticket is valid for both days. If you cannot attend both days, please e-mail tickets@mdtsthlm.se. The symposium is in English.

A two-day gathering with an international outlook on dance and cultural politics. Sweden is facing a shift in art and cultural politics, and we're not the only ones. As one travels internationally in Europe nowadays, almost everyone (with a few exceptions) is talking about the massive budget cuts and how artists and institutions are struggling. In some countries, this is also tied to democratic restrictions.

We’re inviting guests from Hungary and the UK to speak about what’s happening in their local contexts, as well as to examine Swedish cultural politics and engage in conversations about how we can move forward. How can we, in international solidarity, understand more about what is happening and share examples of counter-strategies to navigate through these challenges? How can one think strategically and not just react in a state of panic?

Credits

Curated by: Sara Bergsmark and Anna Efraimsson.

Supported by: This is a Performance Situation Room, a space for contextualizing within the EU-network Life Long Burning - Futures lost and found project (2023-2026) supported by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. It is hosted by MDT, Moderna Dansteatern, a partner in Life Long Burning since 2018.

Program

June 14th 13.00 - 18.00

Studio 1 och 2

Keynote speakers Brigitta Kovács and Malik Nashad Sharpe, followed by a conversation.

Malik Nashad Sharpe (UK) - 'On Honesty: Cultural Vandalism, Marginal Aesthetics, and Cultivating the Collective Defiance

This talk will assess the profundity of our cultural moment by highlighting the importance of generating nuanced, critical, and defiant, marginal aesthetics. Through the framework of 'honesty', this lecture will challenge the arts policy of tomorrow to get bold, to clapback, and to get real about the threats to socio-cultural life across the continent of Europe.

Brigitta Kovács (HU) - Cultural production and development strategies – (challenging) perspectives from Hungary 

Brigitta Kovács will give an overview of the current situation of the independent performing arts scene in Hungary regarding cultural politics, funding, and production opportunities. Through case studies from her own practice as a manager working with emerging artists and organizations supporting them, she will discuss the challenges arising from the current socio-political environment in Hungary, and what opportunities, and initiatives there are to create a safe environment for artistic work. She will speak about ongoing international projects that play a crucial role in developing the local scene.

About the participants

Brigitta Kovács – International development, Partner – Workshop Foundation/ Artist manager, cultural
producer. She dedicates her work to support emerging artists in developing their career, finding collaborators, funding, resentation opportunities locally and internationally.

She is working as a freelancer cultural producer, but in an official Partnership with Workshop Foundation since 2023, as they are mutually supporting each other in development, strategy and project implementations. Brigitta is responsible for the international development of the Foundation in collaboration with director Gergely Talló, and works as the project manager of Life Long Burning Creative Europe project from WSF’s side. She is running a management capacity incubation program, called Next Stage, under the umbrella of WSF. The initiative aims to support the artist management work of Brigitta and fellow international producers and provides enhanced capacity for WSF itself.

As an artist manager since 2018, she works with individual artists and art collectives, such as Beatrix Simkó (https://simkobeatrix.hu/), Ladder Art Company (www.ladderartcompany.com) and Imre Vass (https://www.imrevass.com/ ).

In 2021 she became a CEC ArtsLink fellow and was hosted by Movement Research (NYC) in 2022 for a 7-week residency. She has been developing and implementing several exchanges between the US and Hungary ever since. She is producer and co-curator of Hungary L!ve Festival, an interdisciplinary festival showcasing Hungarian contemporary artworks and artists in New York.

Malik Nashad Sharpe, also known as Marikiscrycrycry, is a successful choreographer and movement director known for his provocative and formally engaging performance works that address themes of violence, alienation, horror, melancholia, and the horizon.

He holds a BA in Experimental Dance with highest honors from Williams College and a certificate in Contemporary Dance from Trinity Laban Conservatoire for Music and Dance, where he won the Simone Michele Prize for Outstanding Choreography. He has received commissions and shown his work at venues and festivals across the U.K., Europe, and Canada, and is currently an Associate Artist at The Place and a studio resident of Somerset House Studios. He has held artistic residencies at Sadlers Wells, Barbican, Performance Situation Room, Dance4, Duckie, and Tate Modern. In 2019, he was named a Rising Star in Dance by Attitude Magazine and in 2022, he was featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his unique and pervasive choreographic achievements. He currently lives in London and is a guest professor in dance and performance at the Stockholm University of Arts in Sweden.

June 15th 13.00-16.00
Studio 1 och 2

We invite some people working in or close to the Stockholm dance field to share short reflections around where we’re now in Sweden, departing from the conversations during Friday afternoon. Nasim Aghili, Ofelia Jarl Ortega, Magnus Nordberg, Stina Nyberg and more will make responses.

Open Space conversation led by Anna Adeniji. The participants and the audience meet in conversations around where we are now and how we can build strategies for the future. 

About the participants

Anna Adeniji is a specialist in DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging). She earned her PhD in Gender Studies at Linköping University in December 2008. Since then, she has worked as a researcher and lecturer at Södertörn University and Linnaeus University, among other institutions.

Since 2018, she has run her own business and is the CEO of Adeniji Consulting & Education, as well as a co-owner and consultant at Inclusion Academy. She provides professional development, tailored workshops, supervision, and coaching for equality and anti-racism.

Anna has assignments in the cultural sector, universities, civil society, the public sector, and the business sector. She is currently a member of the advisory board of the National Museum, appointed by the Ministry of Culture.

Nasim Aghili (b. 1980) is a Swedish-Iranian artist, director and writer. Nasim works in the field of performing and visual arts and their participatory performances, theatre installations and art in the public space often deal with the experience of existing and living in different forms of exile, usually in the form of healing rituals. She works together with Björn Karlsson in the artist duo aghili/karlsson and as a member of the queer feminist art collective Ful.

Ofelia Jarl Ortega (b. 1990) is a Chilean-Swedish choreographer and performer based in Stockholm. Her work centers around vulnerability and femininity, often with a suggestive erotic aesthetic; where questions around power and group dynamics are at the core of her investigations. Her work has been presented both nationally and internationally since 2015, at venues such as ImPulsTanz, MDT, Arsenic - Contemporary Performing Arts Centre and Moving in November.

Magnus Nordberg is the CEO and founder of Nordberg Movement, an agency for the performing arts, with a focus on dance in Stockholm, Sweden. Undertakings include overseeing more than 40 original productions with various choreographers, a series of cross-genre international co-productions, and festival management. Recently, Nordberg Movement finalized an 18-month post-Covid recovery project entitled Music and Movement Management. Hus first visit to MDT was in the fall of 1993. 

Stina Nyberg is a choreographer and dancer based in Stockholm. Her artistic practice departs from the political and social history of the body, seen from a feminist perspective. She holds an interest in undervalued knowledge, magical practices and the languages of power. She is part of several collaborations, making her own work as well as commissions, and organizes symposiums, choreographs city walks and writes texts. Stina is continuously collaborating with Sofia Wiberg (researcher in Urban studies), is a member of the choreographic collective Samlingen and just started her engagement in Rose Choreographic School in London.