Emerging from artistic experiences of creative processes as acts of solidarity – embodying Dignity, Care and Resilience – Art as Agency aims to facilitate the exchange, evaluation, and further development of art-related methodologies within the framework of the Nordic Summer University.

Art as Agency promotes methodological exchange in artistic research work bridging between academic disciplines and “epistemologies of remoteness” (e g neurodivergent worlds of perception, queer strategies, Indigenous research methodologies). The project contributes to the collaborative research circle Studies in Remoteness (SiR) in its two upcoming symposia – Time Work​ (Saulkrasti, Latvia​, July 2026​) and Circumpolar Remoteness ​(Stockholm, Sweden, April 2027); both events framed within the Nordic-Baltic network for interdisciplinary research called the Nordic Summer University (NSU). Project partners work across theatre, sound, visual arts, and community-based practices, engaging with histories of displacement, neglect, and unresolved inheritances. Through site-responsive workshops, performative experiments and facilitated exchanges with humanities and social sciences scholars, Art as Agency will map out strengths, challenges and potentials of artistic approaches in experiential and community-inclusive research practices – foregrounding art as a mode of knowledge-making capable of transforming conditions of remoteness into shared spaces of relation and agency. Project results will include documented artistic research presentations and the recording of artistic methodologies – ultimately, contributing to a flipping of perspectives from economic, ecological, and intergenerational “polycrisis” faced by remote communities, to “polysolutions” of dignity, care and resilience.

Art as Agency begins as an online collaboration in May 2026. Primary partners and participants contribute artistic presentations to the SiR symposia Time Work: Debt, inheritance, and intergenerational practice  (Saulkrasti, Latvia, July 24-31 2026) and/or Circumpolar Remoteness: Politics and poetics of distance, discordance, and dispensability (Stockholm, Sweden, April 8-10 2027). To prepare for and reflect upon these symposia, project participants will meet online for monthly roundtable discussions. This developing communication with participants will determine the final configuration of the project’s interface with the SiR study circle and the Nordic Summer University at large. After each symposium, partners and participants further evaluate how to carry forth the initiative.

Within the structure of SiR symposia  Art as Agency intends to facilitate (1) method workshops and presentations of the contributing artists’ art / culture / community projects (2) reflection upon and assessment of intrinsic methodologies, (3) further development of in-depth collaborations, also of interdisciplinary character, and (4) the dissemination of outcomes digitally and the planning of a physical publication of a methodological handbook. Meetings to support the grant writing process for the publication will begin in the fall of 2026, continuing through May of 2027. In the same period, project participants will draft initial material, and an online, open-access version of the publication will be published on Scalar.

Project partner artists include:

Adrian Trujillo Centeno  / USA / playwright, dramaturg, professor / https://www.luchaturgy.com/
Anastasiya Maksymchuk / Ukraine, Portugal / artistic researcher, lecturer

 / https://maksymchukanastasiya.my.canva.site/
Hanna Sjöberg / Germany, Sweden / artistic researcher, lecturer / https://hannasjoeberg.se/text_tabula_rasa/
Hector MacInnes / Ilse of Skye / artistic researcher, lecturer / http://www.hectormacinnes.com/
Katt Hernandez/Sweden/artistic researcher, musician and composer/ www.katthernandez.com
Maria Backman Koch / Sweden / artistic researcher, lecturer / https://konstproduktion.se/
Tinka Harvard / USA, Finland / writer, researcher, lecturer / https://www.tinkaharvard.com/
Vera Boitcova / Finland / artistic researcher, lecturer / https://futurelaboratory.eu/artists/vera-boitcova