ArtMonitor Working Papers
ArtMonitor is the imprint of the Artistic Faculty with the primary purpose of publishing the Faculty’s Licentiate and Doctoral dissertations. Additionally, it has two ancillary purposes: (i) to publish books emerging from the Faculty’s research activities; and (ii) to publish working papers that emerge from the education and research activities of the Faculty’s academic community.
The working papers series is a pilot initiative for the Academic cycle 2023-2024. Working papers emerge from the education and research activities of the Artistic Faculty’s academic community. A working paper functions as a preliminary articulation of ideas and may be considered as a speculative exercise in outlining a possible direction for future work or an emerging response to wider debates. The ideas rehearsed in a working paper may be subsequently developed as formal publications through peer review journal or book chapter or book or other dissemination formats. It is a device to enable ideas to be discussed beforefinalized formal external publication. Working papers are typically available in both Swedish and English versions.
If you would like to contribute a working paper, please contact: Prof. Mick Wilson (HDK-Valand).
Working Papers
7. Preliminaries to a mapping and genealogy of “imaginary” and “political imaginary” as terms of art
Prof. Mick Wilson (2025)
Download working paper as a pdf.
This working paper seeks to contribute to the initial discussion on the agenda and parameters for a two-year research project (2025-2027) within the Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm).
6. The Weight of Architecture
Sara Torsson Szyber (2025)
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This is a report on the 16th Alvar Aalto Symposium “The Weight of Architecture” in Finland, August 2024.
5. On the question of Ideology
Prof. Dave Beech, UAL (2024)
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This paper surveys the changing fortunes of the theory of ideology in recent decades and proposes an original re-contextualisation and re-reading of theories of ideology. The analysis developed leads to the assertion that the first task of the intellectual is to critique ideology and ideological production.
4. The LTH Fountain and the anti-normal condition
Dr. Cathryn Klasto (2023)
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Remembering my first impression of the LTH Fountain as a kind of lonely cybernetic monster, I consider the ways in which it functions as monstrous structure-space through its capacity to produce the condition of the anti-normal. (Fourth in a series emerging from the research project “The fountain: An art-technological-social drama” 2021-2024.
3. Fail Your Rubblish Art!
Prof. Mick Wilson (2023)
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A short text providing a preliminary treatment of varieties of failure in the context of the debate on then perceived failures of a major public art work. (Third in a series emerging from the research project “The fountain: An art-technological-social drama” 2021-2024.
2. Thomasson on campus?
Prof. Lars-Henrik Ståhl, Lund University (2023)
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In this text, some issues are discussed regarding the LTH Fountain and Hyperart Thomasson, which also form the starting points for an upcoming video, with the working title Thomasson on campus? (Second in a series emerging from the research project “The fountain: An art-technological-social drama” 2021-2024.
1. The monstrous Fontana di Träti
Dr. Maddie Leach (2023)
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Commissioned in 1967 for the campus of Lund University’s Faculty of Engineering, the LTH Fountain has a more than 50-year history of technical failure, furious social debate, and abandonment. This text reflects on two photographs, taken a decade apart, for the purpose of briefly unfolding the story of the LTH Fountain as an object of love and loathing. (First in a series emerging from the research project “The fountain: An art-technological-social drama” 2021-2024.