SAAR is a joint Nordic project supporting doctoral artistic research practice facilitated by partner countries Finland, Sweden and Norway. It provides a stimulating intellectual environment and a supportive setting where doctoral artist-researchers from all fields collaborate, present their ongoing artistic research, and receive feedback from peers and tutors from the partner network.
SAAR Summer Academy for Artistic Research 2025
SAAR 2025 will take place in Sápmi in Kiruna (Northern Sámi: Giron; Finnish: Kiiruna; Meänkieli: Kieruna). The host is Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) and it is organised in collaboration with Kin Museum of Contemporary art.
SAAR provides a stimulating intellectual environment and a supportive setting where doctoral artist-researchers from all fields collaborate, present their ongoing artistic research, and receive feedback from peers and tutors from the partner network. SAAR 2025 will bring together 18 doctoral students and 9 supervisors from Sweden, Finland, and Norway. The activities of SAAR take different forms including intensive conversation, supervision, and shared practices. The structure is based on the participants’ sharing their individual projects with activities and discourse emerging from and generated by the specific context each artistic research project creates.
Organisation
The SAAR network is coordinated by Uniarts Helsinki and governed by a joint Nordic Steering Group. This year, in collaboration with the SAAR Steering Group and Kin Museum of Contemproary Art, Petra Bauer and Hanna Husberg from Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH) will develop the program.
Theme and program
In dialogue with sites in and around Kiruna, we will reflect through the different doctoral projects on how artistic explorations and ways of knowing intra-act with the social, cultural and political processes in which they are situated, and how they are complicit and implicated. Kiruna exists at the intersection of different ways of knowing; where the mine, natural and cultural landscapes, urban, military, and technoscientific infrastructures, Sámi- as well as Tornedalian/Kven/Lantalaisian and Swedish majoritarian-culture and traditions coexist and create tensions, conflicts, and different understandings of the past, present and future. SAAR 2025 proposes questions around practices of place-making, belonging, self-determination and ownership, legitimation and power imbalances, complex knowing and not knowing, learning, and unlearning and the position and response-abilities of artistic research and researchers in complex worldings.
Over the course of the week the participants will share and discuss their individual projects, hosted by different sites, communities and individuals in Kiruna.
Invitation to Deep Reading with Sápmi
As we approach SAAR 2025, we recognize the importance of preparing ourselves thoughtfully—acknowledging the histories, communities, and landscapes we will engage with. Deep Reading with Sápmi is designed as a space for learning, listening, and reflecting. The four online deep reading seminar will be open to doctoral students at SKH, and we warmly welcome and encourage artist-researchers attending SAAR 2025 to join. Find more information and register via Reading with Sápmi.
Key dates (2025)
1 March: SKH receives names of selected participants from the partner institutions
7 March 2025, 10:00-12:00: Reading with Sápmi
4 April 2025, 10:00-12:00: Reading with Sápmi
End April: Deadline for participants for sharing information about themselves, their research, and their practice with organisers
9 May 2025, 10:00-12:00: Reading with Sápmi
5 June 2025, 13:00-15:00: Reading with Sápmi
10 June: Launch of program, bios and research descriptions on RC
17 August: Arrival at Kiruna, and start of the Summer Academy for Artistic Research 2025.
Venue
Malmfältens Folkhögskola, Sweden’s northernmost folk high school is a folk education centre in Sápmi/Barents region.
