“Rehearsing decolonial ecologies”
Ida Bencke will give a talk at The Nordic Gueststudio, Nytorget 15A, on 15 November 2025, from 14:00 to 15:30
the talk will be in English.
What could a less extractive curatorial practice that seeks to confront colonial logics while operating within the hyper local, and from within a western context come to look like? One that seeks to invest artworld resources in supporting self-organized initiatives for building and claiming space beyond the logics of capitalism? How do we counter fragmentation and share what we have across localities, privileges and contexts while finding ourselves (sometimes trapped) in the identities assigned to our different positionalities and our different levels of access in this world? How to become strategic about the stories we tell without selling ourselves or each other out?
In this talk, Ida Bencke will share some of the reflections and hesitations connected to the exhibition Hosting Lands which she is co-curating along with Dea Antonsen and Aziza Hamel.
Ida Bencke, MA, is an independent curator and publisher with the self-organized platform Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, residing on the island of Møn. She is currently co-curating Hosting Lands, a decentralized exhibition process exploring relations between land care, community care and self-organized arts initiatives. Hosting Lands is invested in questions of hacking and redirecting artworld resources towards ecological regeneration, and setting up infrastructures for redistributive practices and trans-local solidarity. She is currently working on a practice-based PhD as part of the research project Oikos - A cultural analysis of care and Crisis in the 21st century at the University of Copenhagen.
More than human – more than residency
The project More than human – more than residency aims to create an exchange of ideas and knowledge between residency actors in the Stockholm region and to build and strengthen networks between us. Small actors often work on a voluntary basis and there are few or no opportunities to reflect together on working methods and larger visions.
The project focuses on the intimate dimension of running residencies and of communicating what emerges from the residency periods in the form of art exhibitions, artist talks, open studios, and other public activities. The question of intimacy is a fundamental, but often overlooked, aspect of small actors’ activities. By intimacy we mean, first and foremost, a sense of closeness and trust that forms the basis for being able to meet human to human and in “more-than-human” relations, as well as to connect to a place. It is also a necessary quality in order to create art, share one’s creation, and to be able to receive art and culture. It is a quality that this project values and will generate knowledge about. We will also ask ourselves what intimacy is and can be in a time of both geological and geopolitical crisis.
The project focuses on what it means to be a host for a residency and for a small-scale public art space, where a combined studio and dwelling form the physical framework for artistic meetings and exchanges. The project also explores the relationship between host and guest, as well as the link between the local and the global, with guiding concepts such as regionalism, localism, and closeness.
Hosted by NKF, Loutchko and Larsson
Natasja Loutchko is an artist based in Stockholm. She coordinates the residency program at the Nordic guest studio and has initiated More than Human – More than Residency together with curator and researcher Camilla Larsson to open dialogue around small-scale artistic hosting and the value of sharing.
The project is supported by Region Stockholm