The Almedalen Week is Sweden’s biggest political meeting place, taking place each year at the end of June in Visby, Gotland. It started with Olof Palme from the Social Democratic Party giving a speech from the back of a lorry at Kruttornet by Almedalen in 1968. Today, the week-long event has grown to include all Swedish parliamentary parties as well as hundreds of special interest organizations, businesses, unions and universities as well as PR consultants, lobbyists and the mass media. The Swedish parliamentary parties are the main organizers of the Almedalen Week, the Municipality of Gotland is the host. In recent years the number of seminars have multiplied, including over 1040 events by 560 different organizers in 2009.

This year during Almedalen Week BAC will host a series of conversations with invited guests about the conditions and possibilities for art to act politically, as well as about roles, strategies and aesthetics within the political field. The conversations are initiated by Filmklubben and conceived in collaboration with Fredrik Svensk and Sofia Wiberg. During the entire week, the video archive The Immigrant Files: Democracy is not dead, it just smells funny by Carlos Motta can be viewed in the BAC reading room.

PROGRAM

How and by whom are politics formulated today?
Filmklubben invites Anna Tyllström (phd researcher in PR and Politics at Uppsala University) and Pelle Strandberg (PR-consultant at Strandberg&Haage) to discuss the merging of roles between politicians, journalists and PR-consultants.
Tuesday 30 June, 08.30–10.00am

What is the relationship between the aesthetics of politics and the political in art?
Filmklubben invites America Vera-Zavala (Artistic Director of Botkyrka Community Theater, political activist) and Maria Enekvist (Project Manager, Riksteatern) to discuss their experiences of working between the fields of politics and art. About the conditions and possibilities for art to act politically.
Wednesday 1 July, 08.30–10.00am

How can we resist and make visible discriminating structures and xenophobia?
Filmklubben takes Carlos Motta’s work The Immigrant Files: Democracy is not dead, it just smells funny as a starting point for discussing strategies of communication and change from an intersectional perspective in relation to questions of immigration and integration with Karla Lopez (former Member of Parliament, the Green Party).
Thursday 2 July, 08.00–09.30am

Language: Swedish

Limited availability, please RSVP to: lisa@balticartcenter.com

Filmklubben consist of artists Petra Bauer, Michele Masucci and Jesper Nordahl. Fredrik Svensk is an art critic and teaches art- and cultural theory at Valand Art Academy at Gothenburg University. Sofia Wiberg is a political scientist working with citizen dialogue.

The Immigrant Files: Democracy is not dead, it just smells funny by Carlos Motta is presented in collaboration with Konsthall C. The work was produced by Konsthall C in collaboration with Bokförlaget Atlas, with support from Iaspis and the Swedish Arts Council. For more information please visit www.carlosmotta.com