UmArts is part of Umeå University
About the Programme
The UmArts programme aims to strengthen and develop the artistic research environment at Umeå University to address urgent societal and environmental concerns. Interdisciplinary research themes provide starting points for discussion and research, including the Commons, Planetary Care, Nuclear Anthropocene, and Decolonisation. The programme includes a range of research activities including interdisciplinary working groups, research seminars, symposia, field research reading groups and exhibitions.
Each event leaves a trace in the space, starting with the art students’ plimsoles which were found tied to a ventilation pipe. Each subsequent intervention into the building exists in dialogue with new projects. For the UmArts Studio Opening in June 2023 Gerd Aurell created her Forest Portal wall drawing to connect with the outside, and Luis Berrios-Negron wheat-pasted his recovered canvas DIY screen-printed poster Untitled (Geoengineering Billionaires) directly onto the wall. These works form a line of flight to speculative places, not as an escape, but as as a way of forming connections with other ways of being, poetically and politically.