Publications
Below you will find news and interviews relating to publications that researchers within the CROCUS network have published that discusses subject areas that CRCOUS focuses on, as well as within CROCUS-based projects.
Book related news:
The new book 'Mundania - How and where technologies are made ordinary' by CROCUS network members Robert Willim discusses how digital services, platforms and arrangements often are promoted as smooth and convenient, smart or intelligent. When introduced, devices can appear utterly fascinating or awkward, even disquieting. Eventually, however, they soon disappear in the muddle of everyday life. This is how Mundania takes form. Based on original research, the book uses the concept of mundania to better understand technological change. Scholar-artist Robert Willim deftly unpacks the interplay between everyday life and the immense complexity of technological infrastructures. Offering imaginative new insights into our relationship with technology, this book will appeal to readers in a range of fields from science and technology studies and media studies to the arts.
[E]merging technologies are continuously made ordinary, while they also stay out of grasp and beyond control. In Mundania technologies become simultaneously banal and uncanny, ordinary and weird. Mundania is characterized by ambiguous circumstances.
- Robert Willim (Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University)
Read the full interview with Robert Willim (Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University) below.
The title of the book is ‘Mundania’, in short what does that stand for?
Mundania is a proposal to imagine differently about everyday life with complex technologies. I have used the concept in the book, in articles as well as in a number of art projects. Taking point of departure in the concept, I pose the questions: What if everyday life is a life in the realm Mundania? What if we all live in different variations of this realm? Here, emerging technologies are continuously made ordinary, while they also stay out of grasp and beyond control. In Mundania technologies become simultaneously banal and uncanny, ordinary and weird. Mundania is characterized by ambiguous circumstances.
Another question is if evermore advanced networked digital technologies are really tamed or domesticated? I propose that they are seldom really domesticated, they are mundanized. They can to some extent be controlled, but they also stay out of grasp. Intangible. How can different aspects of technologies be controlled in Mundania, and by whom? What do different people have to know about the technologies they live with? What can they know? These are questions and thoughts I discuss in the book, often in poetic and quiet speculative ways.
As an artist and researcher, you bring both perspectives to the table through a process you call ‘probing’. What do you mean by that, and how has that influenced the book?
By probing I mean a process that oscillates between artistic work and scientific practice. To some extent it is artistic research, but I also move in and out of contexts where the focus is sometimes more thoroughly on either art or research.
I often start with a concept as a point of departure. Such as Mundania. It is the point from where to initiate something, from where to set something in motion. It is often the beginning of an open-ended process through which I follow and try different ways to create things and to let subsequent projects grow from the concept. It is a way to combine art and research with different collaborations. The aim is to also embrace the provisional, both when it comes to output and insights. It means that earlier work can be continuously revisited and remodeled. In that sense, probing is a process that is both iterative and generative.
Who should read this book?
The Mundania-book could be of interest to anyone who is keen on a thought-provoking take on emerging technologies. It hopefully can lead to insights about new technologies such as AI, without necessarily staring into the whirlpool of the most recent technological debate or listening to the numbing buzz surrounding the pleasures and perils of the latest technological innovations. Instead, Mundania could inspire to examine that which is often overlooked, considered as banal or even boring. Overlooked things can be hidden gems when it comes to surprising insights.
Read more about the Mundania-book and the concept at: www.mundania.se/
Book talk about culture and the creative industries
On April 15 at 15:15-17:00, we invite you to an exciting book talk around three newly launched books that all touch on aspects of the creative industries. The talk is held in English.
Welcome for a book talk with Katja Lindqvist (Department of Service Studies, Lund University), Lizette Gradén and Thomas O'dell (both from Division of Ethnology, Department of Arts and Cultural Sciences, Lund University), Lund (location to be announced shortly), and Erika Andersson Cederholm (Department of Service Studies, Lunds University) and moderator Chris Mathieu (Department of Sociology, Lund University). For more information about the book talk, see the following page.
NEW BOOK Creative Work. Conditions, Contexts and Practices
The new anthology - Creative work - Conditions, Contexts and Practices, where several of CROCUS network members has contributed, features case studies from the European context, contributors tap into the experiences and practices from creative workers, demonstrating their attempts to navigate a changing environment which affects spaces, identities, and professional roles. Providing an opportunity to expand our conception of what creative work is, the book draws on studies of a range of activities, practices and sectors that are usually included in the cultural and creative industries as well as ones that are more untraditional. See link for more information about the book.
The collection's broad spectra of case studies and examples will surely be able to provide new knowledge to any student, practitioner or scholar with an interest in the creative industries, says Erika Andersson Cederholm (Department of Service Studies, Lunds University) one of the editors of the book Creative Work Conditions, Contexts and Practices
Read the interview with Erika Andersson Cederholm (Department of Service Studies, Lunds University) one of the editors of the book Creative Work Conditions, Contexts and Practices and one of the chapter contributor Charlotte Østergaard (Malmö Theatre Academy, Lund University) below.
Erika Andersson Cederholm, you are one of the editors of Creative Work. Conditions, Contexts and Practices that was recently published by Routledge. Could you please tell us a little bit about it?
Creative Work. Conditions, Contexts and Practices is a cross-disciplinary anthology that brings together insights from different disciplines on how creative workers work. It features case studies from the European context that tap into experiences and practices from creative workers and how they navigate a changing environment.
What makes this book different from previous publications within the field?
First of all, I would like to point out the book's cross disciplinary point of departure. The volume entails 18 different texts from the perspectives of artistic research, the humanities, policy research and social sciences. This is rare. Second, our focus on the mundane activities that must be carried out in the field of art and, thirdly, the multifaceted view of creative work where we include a multitude of activities such as managing, supporting, enabling, mediating and enterprising creative work.
Who should read this book?
Hopefully anyone! The collection's broad spectra of case studies and examples will surely be able to provide new knowledge to any student, practitioner or scholar with an interest in the creative industries.
Charlotte Østergaard, you have written a chapter in Creative Work. Conditions, Contexts and Practices. Could you please tell us what your contribution is about and why it is important?
My contribution is called “Performing Creative Work in Public” and builds on the artistic project Community Walk from 2020. Community Walk was a performative project where I walked through the central area of Copenhagen for twelve hours, wearing or dressed in a costume that connected me to twelve different participants – one participant at a time for one hour. In the chapter I unfold how the costume (that I call connecting costume) provoke different orientations, for example a sense of being exposed and vulnerable in the public environment. At the same time, the sense of being connected with another person through the stretchable connecting costume fostered a playful attitude between us towards other people and towards different elements in the environment. My chapter explores how the costume became a tool that invited us to explore ourselves and the environment in a way that differed from our daily life – a material-discursive tool that made us see, approach and experience the environment “in a different light.” A light that illuminated things that we might take for granted and therefore don’t pay attention to and/or that we had not noticed in our daily affairs.
I have written this contribution to expand the concept of costume or co-costuming beyond the “traditional” theatre context, beyond the perception of that a costume’s “job” is to serve a dramatic text and a specific character. Placing the experience of a connecting costume in a public setting fosters a relational awareness and/or attention between the co-wearers – a relational encounter between humans and non-humans. I suggest that co-costuming is a co-performative-experience and/or a playful co-exploration that invites us to become creative and inventive in the way that we engage with and encounter the world. Moreover, I suggest that artistic research contributes with embodied and tactile knowledge that is essential. In an era where we are caught up in digital platforms, where we sometimes forget to look up from our screens to sense our surrounding, I find that its critical to develop and explore creative and playful practices that activates our bodies. We must sense ourselves and each other, not “just” as an intellectual, but also as a physical material-discursive exercise that triggers our relational awareness of, our care for and our negotiation with that that surrounds us.
To read more about the book and the other contributors, see the following link for more information.
Erika Andersson Cederholm, Katja Lindqvist, Ida de Wit Sandström, Philip Warkander (Eds.) (2024) Creative work - Conditions, Contexts and Practices, London: Routledge.
Publications:
Below you will find selection of publications that researchers within the CROCUS network have published that discusses subject areas that CRCOUS focuses on, as well as within CROCUS-based projects. Additional publications can be found on Lund University Research Portal.
Books and anthologies:
- Andersson Cederholm, E., de Wit Sandström, I., Lindqvist, K. & Warkander, P. (Eds.) (2024) Creative Work. Myths, Conditions and Contexts, London: Routledge.
- Lindqvist, K. (2023) Utvecklingsarbete kring kulturella och kreativa näringar Drivkrafter, processer och samspel, Nordic Academic Press.
- Severinsson, E. & Warkander, P. (Eds). (2021) Modevetenskap, nya perspektiv på mode, stil och estetik, Stockholm: Appell förlag.
- Ledendal, M. & Warkander, P. (2020) Danius and fashion, Gothenburg: Hoc Press.
'I have used Helsingborg as the backdrop in three performances to discuss socio-economic division and the democratic engagement in Sweden.'
Read more about Jörgen Dahlqvist, Lund University and the others in Beyond Site/Sight's Community on the conference's community page.
Save-the-Date for CROCUS activities 2025
More information about next year's activities will be announced next year.
Until then, Happy Holidays!
For more information about events, see the page News from CROCUS.