STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN.-In recent years, a renewed interest in collective work and activity can be discerned more and more clearly. Collaborations of various sorts have begun to appear as alternatives to the predominant focus on the individual so often found in the art world. In a variety of projects, the form and basis of collective activities have been presented, examined, and called into question. Taking the Matter into Common Hands is a symposium in two parts which, against the background of this development, seeks to map these activities and to discuss the working relations and conditions of artists and other producers of culture. It also aims at exploring the future prospects for the kind of collective action in the art world that is geared towards long-term research and production of knowledge.

Participants 23 - 25 September; Johanna Billing (artist, Stockholm), Alex Foti (activist fighting against precarity, Milan), IKK (organization working with issues concerning economic and social conditions for artists, curators and other professionals in the art field), Maria Lind (director IASPIS), Lars Nilsson (artist and writer, Gothenburg), Marion von Osten (artist and theorist, Berlin), Simon Sheikh (critic, curator and writer, Copenhagen, Berlin, Malmö), Katharina Schlieben (curator at Shedhalle, Zurich), Apolonija Sustersic (architect and visual artist, Stockholm), Tirdad Zolghadr (film-maker, critic and curator, Teheran/Zurich ) and Å.b.ä.k.e. (graphic design collective, London).

Participants 30 September - 2 October; B B (curatorial partnership, London), 16 Beaver Group (network of artists, curators, writers, thinkers and activists, New York), Copenhagen Free University (self-organised institution dedicated to the production of critical consciousness and poetic language), Brian Holmes (art and culture critic, Paris), Marysia Lewandowska (artist, London), Schleuser.net (lobby organization and art project), School of Missing Studies (international network for experimental study of cities), Judith Schwarzbart (curator and researcher, Edinburgh), Sharzhad (accomplish things others cannot), Anton Vidokle (artist and founding director of e-flux, New York), What, How & for Whom / WHW (independent curatorial collective, Zagreb).

Location: In the IASPIS Project Studio, where there is an installation by Michael Beutler (artist, Berlin), as well as the Archive on Collaborative Practices, an archive that documents different forms of collaboration in and around the art world.

Taking the Matter into Common Hands is put together by Johanna Billing, Maria Lind and Lars Nilsson.