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Niclas Östlind

Professor

The Film, Photography and Literary Composition Unit
Mail
niclas.ostlind@akademinvaland.gu.se
Visiting address
Storgatan 43
Göteborg
Postal address
Box 131
40530 Göteborg

Assistant Head of Department

HDK-Valand - Academy of Art and Design
Mail
niclas.ostlind@akademinvaland.gu.se
Visiting address
Kristinelundsgatan 6-8
Göteborg
Postal address
Box 131
40530 Göteborg

Deputy Head of Department

HDK-Valand - Academy of Art and Design
Mail
niclas.ostlind@akademinvaland.gu.se
Visiting address
Kristinelundsgatan 6-8
Göteborg
Postal address
Box 131
40530 Göteborg

About Niclas Östlind

Niclas Östlind is a Ph. D in Photography, curator and writer. He specializes in photography, contemporary art and historiography. His research is curatorially driven. Among his current research projects is Thresholds: Interwar Lens Media Cultures. It is an interdisciplinary and transmedial study of the shared and particular histories of photography and film in the years 1919-1939. The starting point is the International Photo Exhibition in Gothenburg 1929, and the study moves between local, national and international perspectives and practitioners. The focus is on the heterogeneity and presence of lens-based media in a variety of contexts, as well as their artistic and societal significance at a time marked by technical, social and aesthetic experiments and tensions of modernity. The research project is a collaboration with Ph. D Louise Wolthers at the Hasselblad Foundation and Mats Jönsson, Professor of Film Studies at the University of Gothenburg, and the project will result in an exhibition at the Hasselblad Center and an international publication in the spring of 2021.

Niclas Östlind also participates in the research project Tidernas Göteborg, which examines the history-writing possibilities of photography and film based on curatorial, editorial and archival theories and methods. Questions about the relationship between metadata, materiality and visuality are an important aspect of the project, which is a collaboration between the Museum of Gothenburg, the University of Gothenburg, HDK-Valand, Academy of Art and Design and Göteborgs Posten.

Niclas Östlind's interest in distributed photography and networks is evident in the extensive research project Photography in Print & Circulation, which ended with the exhibition and book Published: Photobooks in Sweden (Koenig Books, London 2019). It was carried out in collaboration with the Hasselblad Foundation.

Among the ongoing research projects is also a study of dissertations in artistic research published at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg. The study concerns questions about how research formulates its problems, its application of method and theory, and how research results are formulated. The project outlines key aspects in the emergence of a new field of research. It will be presented in an anthology and will be conducted together with poet Fredrik Nyberg, who is a Ph. D and Senior Lecturer of Literary Composition at HDK-Valand, Academy of Art and Design.

In addition to researching, Niclas Östlind teaches in the master’s program in Photography at HDK-Valand, Academy of Art and Design. He is a member of the Faculty Board of the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts, University of Gothenburg and is a Board member at Konstfack, University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm. He has been a member of the Research Council of the Center for Collaborative Visual Research at University of Gothenburg since 2019. Niclas Östlind has been a scientific adviser to the Swedish Research Council since 2018. The position entails working with structural and strategic issues that are important for the development of artistic research on a national basis.