During three months this spring, three comics creators are employed as artists-in-residence at K3: Amalia Alvarez, Daria Bogdanska and Steve Nyberg.

At this seminar they will present their work. 

It will take place on Wednesday, February 14 at 10.15-12.00 in room NIC 0826, Niagara. 

The seminar will be held in Swedish.

Amalia Alvarez: Representativitet inom seriebranschen

Hur är representativiteten i den svenska seriebranschen idag? Finns det brister? Är bristen på representativitet ett problem och varför? Amalia kommer att göra en presentation som kommer att få oss att reflektera över frågan om representativitet inom serier. Med representativitet menar Amalia här främst närvaron av personer med en så kallad icke västerländsk bakgrund. Amalia kommer även att presentera en liten del av hennes serier.

Läs om Amalia här: https://blogg.mah.se/motesplatsserier/2018/01/09/100/

Daria Bogdanska: Det personliga och det politiska

2016 debuterade Daria Bogdanska med serieromanen Wage Slaves baserad på hennes erfarenheter som migrant i Sverige och hennes fackliga kamp mot en utnyttjande arbetsgivare. I en blandning av journalistik och självbiografi målar hon upp bilden av ett Malmö som inte alltid syns på ytan och berättar om både det privata och det politiska. Under seminariet kommer hon berätta om sin serie, om sverigesjälvbilden och hur det är att försöka skildra sin egen generation i serieform.

Läs om Daria här: https://blogg.mah.se/motesplatsserier/2018/01/17/daria-bogdanska-serietecknare/

Steve Nyberg: Att levandegöra arkivmaterial

Steve Nyberg berättar om hur han jobbar med efterforskningar i arkiv och andra källor för att skildra verkliga händelser i serieform. I boken Trygga lilla Sverige samlade han serier om bland annat terrordådet mot Norrskensflamman 1940, Sabbatssabotören som sprängde bomber i Stockholm 1946, världens första brevbombare och andra mer eller mindre bortgömda händelser i svensk historia.

Läs om Steve här: https://blogg.mah.se/motesplatsserier/2018/02/01/steve-nyberg-serietecknare/

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Gunnar Krantz, Senior Lecturer in Visual Communication, K3. The title of the talk is:

The Co-Operator – A Comic about Advertisement in the Swedish Co-Operative Movement.

It will take place on Wednesday, February 7, at 10.15-12.00 in room NIC 0541 (K3 Open Studio), Niagara.

Here is an abstract for this talk:

Researching the influence of functionalism in the Swedish cooperative movements advertising in the late 20s and early 30s using comics as a method of structuring material and creating a narrative.

The Swedish Co-operative movement (KF) – one of the most successful co-operative movements in the world – had an enormous influence on Swedish society in the 20th century. Part of this success was due to its early embrace of modernism – especially functionalism in architecture. With KFs network of Konsum-stores (around 4000), strong economy during the depression, belief in rationality and an outspoken mission to educate members to become conscious consumers (kooperatörer), KF had both the infrastructure and muscles to reach out and influence. Many of the ideas KF introduced are things we now take for granted. KF opened the first self-service store, introduced membership with refunds (loyal customers) and launched own brands such as Cirkelkaffe and Luma. Through the ad-agency Svea, run by my grandfather Knut Krantz, the modern way of advertising was presented with colourful posters and campaigns. I have investigated his contribution by using comics as a method of organizing material and thus creating a narrative – a comic called Kooperatören.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Agnese Davidsone, Director of Media and Communication Studies, Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences, Latvia. The title of the talk is:

Ethical Issues Related to Media Representations of Migration and Citizens of Third Countries: Opinions from Latvian Media Journalists and Editors

It will be held at Wednesday, January 31 at 10.15-12.00 in room NIC 0541 (K3 Open Studio), Niagara.

Here is an abstract for the talk:

Several previous studies point towards an abundance of ethical problems in the ways how Latvian media have reported on the migration process in Europe and the placement of citizens of third countries in Latvia. However, most studies in this area are based on analysis of the content that media have produced. The study that I will report on, is one of the few that focus on the opinions of editors and journalists, media professionals who are behind the stories and publications that we consume as media audiences. The opinions of the media professionals are vital for understanding how the personal attitudes and opinions, the editorial policies, and adherence to universal codes of media ethics collide and shape the ethical decisions in the process of news production. Our data consist of 9 interviews with editors of various media (print, online, radio, TV), and 92 survey responses from news journalists. Data tell us about the following questions: How are the ethical issues related to migration representation discussed inside the newsrooms? How do journalists handle controversies and potential dilemmas related to reporting on citizens of third countries seeking asylum in Europe and Latvia? How free do the journalists feel in choosing the focus and points to stress when they report on events related to migration? These questions are debated in a larger context of media responsibility and roles in the process of societal integration. The study has been supported by the European Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund.

Welcome to the first K3 seminar of the term. This will be a working seminar where we will discuss drafts of application due to be sent to Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The seminar will take place in the K3 Open Studio (room NIC 0541 in Niagara) at 10.15-12.00 on Wednesday, January 17

Welcome to the last K3 seminar before Christmas. This time Bernard Perron, Professor of Cinema, Université de Montréal, will take about horror video games under the heading of:

A Question of Genre Labeling: Horror, Survival Horror or Scary Video Games?

The seminar will take place on Wednesday, December 20 at 10.15-12.00 in room NIC 0541(the K3 Open Studio), Niagara.

Here is an abstract for the talk:

As we could easily think that a generic study of horror in the video game would be simple because an idiom was coined in mid-1990s to characterize these games – the “survival horror”, things are more complicated than that. Based on the research, and even on the title of my forthcoming book The World of Scary Video Games: A Study in Videoludic Horror, this seminar will reflect on the ways we talk about this video game genre. It will underline once again how the notion of genre needs to be viewed as a discursive phenomenon aiming over time to encompass the temporary crystallization of a common cultural consensus.

Welcome to a seminar with Pille Pruulmann Vengerfeldt, Professor of Media and Communication Studies K3. The title of the seminar is:

Visitors, users and audiences – modes of engagement for diverse audiences in museum communication?

It will be held at Wednesday, December 13 at 10.15-12.00 in room NIC 0541 (K3 Open Studio), Niagara.

Here is an abstract for the talk:

In this seminar, I would like to discuss the potential of descriptive and prescriptive analytical frameworks to evaluate museum communication. Museums are targeted by a number of large societal changes like digitalization of cultural heritage, attention economy where museums are increasingly expected to “earn their keep”, but also challenges on truthfulness, authority and democratization of knowledge. Different researchers have approached museum participation (Simon, 2010) or museum engagement (Lotina, 2016) from a diversity of angles, some from more normative perspectives than others. At the same time, museums are grappling with these challenges the best they can, often with little or no analytical support. Visitor studies paradigm takes a very instrumental and functionalist approach to learning, resembling more media effects studies paradigm that is often criticized by more contextual and critical media studies. I am hoping to discuss with interested colleagues a research proposal idea that would help to develop in practice an analytical framework of museum people which would use the advances of media and audience studies and contextualise those for museums, but also add to specific knowledge in museum studies area. The framework could be used to understand what museums offer for diverse audiences and how can different modes of engagement be meaningfully used to facilitate museums to diverse audiences.

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Ronald Stade, professor of Peace and Conflict Studies/Anthropology, on Wednesday, November 29 at 10.15-12.00.The title of the talk is:

The Irony of Sectarianism in Lebanon

The talk will be held in room NIC 0541 (K3 Open Studio) in Niagara,

Here is an abstract for the talk:

The constitution of Lebanon recognizes eighteen confessional sects. Political conflicts and offices, patron-client networks, settlement patterns, marriages and other civil law matters, etc., largely follow sectarian dividing lines. This type of sectarianism creates an identitarian map that is absolute in that it is disjunct (no identity can belong to two sects), categorical (one either belongs to a sect or one does not) and exhaustive (no individual goes un-belonged). Periodically, the borders on Lebanon’s sectarian map turned bloody as identities were weaponized. Even so, both in times of war and in times of peace political and social alliances have been created across sectarian borders. In the absence of a functioning welfare state and public spirit, private and political alliances serve to mobilize resources and alleviate risks. At closer inspection, the absolute map of Lebanese sectarianism turns out to be more pragmatic than often assumed. This raises the question of confessional and political commitment: How committed are the people of Lebanon to their respective sect? After an overview of Lebanon’s sectarianism, the issue of commitment, and more specifically of sectarian commitment, will be discussed against the background of Søren Kierkegaard’s denunciation of irony as a lack of commitment. At stake is the relationship between sectarian commitment, private self- interest and irony as a public virtue.

Welome to a K3 seminar with Sara Bjärstorp and Petra Ragnerstam, Senior Lecturers in English Studies at K3. The title of the talk is:

Fortune and Felicity: Literature and Embodiment in Participatory Culture

The talk will be held on Wednesday, November 15 at 10.15-12.00 in room NIC 0541 (K3 Open Studio, Niagara).

Here is an abstract for the talk:

What happens when the world of Jane Austen is materialized in live action role playing? In this seminar we present recent field work on a major avant-garde live action role playing game (larp) where Jane Austen’s novels were adapted into a collaborative storytelling event. During five days, over one hundred participants constructed a collective story by embodying characters from Jane Austen’s world. In comparison to other adaptations, fidelity to the original is not the focus, but rather the participants’ immersion in the story and the storyworld. We will focus on how gender and sexuality was constructed in the game which is interesting since gender is a major issue in the novels, the numerous other adaptations of Jane Austen’s novels and in the construction of the Regency period. It was also a major issue in the creation of Fortune and Felicity and a major experience that the participants had of the larp. How was gender produced in the larp and what means did the participants have to produce gender and sexuality in specific ways? Was subversion possible, and if so, how? 

Welcome to a K3 seminar with Charlotte Asbjørn Sörensen, Lecturer in Product Design at K3. The title of the talk is:

Moral and Temporal Aspects of the New Material Taxonomy

It will be held on Wednesday, November 8, at 10.15-12.00 in the K3 Open Studio (NIC 0541, Niagara).

Here is an abstract for the talk:

We all surrounded by materials in our everyday life. Most of the time we take them for granted without contemplating on what role they play. I choose to see materials are active agents in a complex interplay between form, function and the experience of an object. Today we grow materials, we engineer smart materials and designers create their own materials in MDD-processes. How does that effect our approach to materials as designers, consumers and as teachers/researchers at K3? How do we introduce materials and materiality to our students at K3? Does interaction design look at smart materials as technical The fast consumption of materials in relation to limited resources have challenged the temporal side of materials. Can we create sustainable materials that allow fast consumption? What moral aspects do we encounter in such a design process?

Welcome to a seminar with Ewan Fernie, Chair of Shakespeare Studies, University of Birmingham. The title of the seminar is:

Shakespeare and Freedom

It will be held on Wednesday, November 1, at 13.00-15.00. Please note that it will be held at Intiman, Malmö Stadsteater, Östra Rönneholmsvägen 20.

Abstract for the seminar:

“So why does Shakespeare matter? I want to suggest, in this article, that he matters because he can teach us to be free, by which I mean that he can inspire us to live fuller, more expressive lives, both as individuals and as a society. Shakespeare can do this because his characters give us vital, unforgettable examples of that freedom. Whether we meet them on the page or on the stage, on celluloid or on YouTube – and whether we encounter them in the original English or in translation – Hamlet and Juliet, Macbeth and Cleopatra, Falstaff and Rosalind, as well as countless other of Shakespeare’s memorable creations demonstrate a freedom to be themselves that can help us to change our own lives for the better.”

“Some of the most canny and charismatic freedom fighters in our history have also recognised and made their own, more political use of Shakespearean freedom”.