Lecture by Jonas Staal, followed by a dialogue with critic and scholar Kim West.
Parallel to the official art world exists a shadow art world where artists, designers, writers, and architects
are enlisted by the military-industrial complex, nationalist regimes, and corporate power to shape the aesthetics of domination. These cultural workers design the narratives and images that normalize war, surveillance, and control.
In this lecture, artist and CAPIm Senior researcher Jonas Staal will drawing on his ongoing work guiding us through the conditions of contemporary propaganda. What happens when the shadow art world becomes the official one? Can the same imaginative power that fuels propaganda be reclaimed for collective emancipation, solidarity, and repair?
The lecture will be followed by a dialogue with critic and scholar Kim West.
Kim West is a critic, researcher, and editor based in Stockholm. His research focuses on the contemporary development of critical aesthetic thought, the cultural history of popular avant-gardes, and the institutional and technical transformations of art’s forms of mediation. He is currently a lecturer at REMESO, the Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity, and Society at Linköping University, Sweden.
Jonas Staal is a visual artist whose work deals with the relation between art, democracy, and propaganda. He is the founder of the artistic and political organization New World Summit (2012–ongoing). Together with Florian Malzacher he co-directs the training camp Training for the Future (2018-ongoing), with writer and lawyer Radha D’Souza he founded the Court for Intergenerational Climate Crimes (2021-ongoing), and with Laure Prouvost he is co-administrator of the Obscure Union (2019-ongoing).
Time and place
When: December 10th 2025
Time: 18:00
Where: Statens konstråd, Skeppsholmen, Svensksundsvägen 11A
Registration: Registration is required.