Birgit Eriksson

• PhD
• Professor at Aarhus University

The article “Off the pedestal: Dialogic, feminine and critical versions of public art and cultural heritage” investigates how the collaborative art project Things Matter uses knitting to engage in creative and critical discussions about collective memory and identity. With Things Matter (2023-2024), Trapholt and textile artist Randi Samsonsen invit...

In this editorial we introduce a special issue of Conjunctions that focuses on how participation is experienced. While participation unfolds as an object of study in its own right across a variety of social practices, sectors, and disciplines, its experiential dimensions are underexplored. This is the case both when we understand the concept 'exper...

The development of participatory research practices has been linked to high hopes of creating more relevant, socially robust, and democratic forms of academic knowledge. Researchers have, however, also pointed to a discrepancy between the ideals and realities of participation, in research and elsewhere. This paper uses these critiques of participat...

Participation in arts and culture is often claimed to enhance community-building and social cohesion. However, our knowledge as to what kinds of communities and cohesion cultural institutions offer, and under what conditions, is limited. The article contributes to this knowledge by studying social cohesion in citizens’ own practices of culture in l...

Some low-income social housing neighborhoods are undergoing radical transformations in Denmark. Classified as "ghettos" and "parallel societies," and marked by area-specific legislation, we identify a triple exposure in these neighborhoods. The residents are exposed to inequality, stigmatization, and discriminatory interventions. Parallel to this,...

In 2020, Trapholt (a Danish museum of modern art, craft and design) and textile designer Iben Høj launched a grand collaborative art project involving almost 800 embroiderers. The project, named Stitches Beyond Borders, was part of the centenary celebratrions of Denmark’s reunification with Southern Jutland, and participants were asked to embroider...

Kunstskapte fellesskap inviterer til en samtale om hva fellesskap i og rundt kunsten er og kan være. Hvilke former for samvær og samhørighet preger ulike kunst- og kulturoffentligheter, og hva slags offentligheter bidrar til at det dannes nye kunstskapte fellesskap? Hva skjer når kunst skaper friksjon ved å utfordre etablerte virkelighetsoppfatning...

Kunstskapte fellesskap inviterer til en samtale om hva fellesskap i og rundt kunsten er og kan være. Hvilke former for samvær og samhørighet preger ulike kunst- og kulturoffentligheter, og hva slags offentligheter bidrar til at det dannes nye kunstskapte fellesskap? Hva skjer når kunst skaper friksjon ved å utfordre etablerte virkelighetsoppfatning...

In 2020, 778 embroiderers co-created a textile artwork at the Danish museum Trapholt. Textile artist Iben Høj developed the artistic design, and citizens contributed 713 embroideries, which Høj assembled in a huge mobile, exhibited at Trapholt 2020–21. The project, Stitches Beyond Borders, was part of a celebration of the cession of North Schleswig...

In 2020, Trapholt (a Danish museum of modern art, craft and design) and textile designer Iben Høj launched a grand collaborative art project involving almost 800 embroiderers. The project, named Stitches Beyond Borders, was part of the centenary celebratrions of Denmark’s reunification with Southern Jutland, and participants were asked to embroider...

A short guide to developing citizen participation in cultural centers and institutions (in Danish)

The report focuses on how to engage citizens in knowledge making. It describes different engaging models and positions, e.g. what do we mean by participation, and how is it done? How can art and aesthetics communication create new insights and engage people to interact with knowledge, art and each other? How can knowledge and the production of know...

Western European cultural policies increasingly target marginalized and socially deprived communities. In Denmark, this happens in the political and discursive context of the so-called “ghetto act” (2018), a set of laws and amendments aimed at radically changing low-income public housing neighbourhoods with a high percentage of “non-Western” reside...

This report addresses the challenge of how to communicate research-based knowledge through aesthetic processes that engage citizens as participants. It presents and qualifies existing knowledge and models of aesthetic and participatory dissemination of research-based knowledge and discuss their relevance for the Capital of Children in Billund. The...

Even though the right to participate equally in art and culture has been a universal right since the mid-20th century , many people still do not participate in the arts. Artists, art institutions and cultural policies attempt to change this through an increased focus on “citizen participation”, entailing new challenges and potentials. Building on a...

This book examines cultural participation from three different, but interrelated perspectives: participatory art and aesthetics; participatory digital media, and participatory cultural policies and institutions. Focusing on how ideals and practices relating to cultural participation express and (re)produce different "cultures of participation", an...

This article analyses the methodology of the “Reccord” research project, which had the dual ambition of (1) being participatory and (2) studying cultural participation within a specific type of under-researched cultural institution in which participation is frequently stressed as a key objective: cultural centres. To address how the methodology is...

This special issue of Conjunctions brings together seven academic articles that shed light on to two different fields: the affective and bodily dimension of social media participation and cultural participation in aesthetic activities, in- or outside institutions. The articles more specifically present new research from a range of national and glob...

This article proposes a framework for understanding citizen participation in European cultural centres. Europe has thousands of cultural centres with many millions of annual visitors and actively involved citizens. Citizen participation is a core value of the centres but has, like the centres themselves, been under-researched. The article presents...

Resumo: A participação apresenta formas novas e interessantes de co-criação, engajamento cívico e emancipação, mas, também, demandas e legitimações altamente problemáticas. Este trabalho aborda o caráter ambivalente da participação cultural e cívica por meio de uma simples pergunta: que sensação ela provoca? Em primeiro lugar, examino como a agenda...

Dentro e fora das instituições, a agenda participativa está em ascensão. Enquanto as instituições políticas tradicionais enfrentam uma crise, e o sistema democrático parece estar perdendo legitimidade, especialmente entre os jovens, os novos repertórios participativos evoluem. Visíveis nas artes, na mídia e nos movimentos sociais do início do sécul...

When the performance Living Dead premiered in Denmark in 2016, its reception was characterized by an equal amount of praise and unease. Written and directed by Christian Lollike, Living Dead dealt with the increasing number of refugees coming to Europe from Af-rica and the Middle East. Controversially, it was a "horror perfor-mance" focusing on the...

Rethinking Cultural Centres in a European Dimension (RECcORD) is a research and action project about citizen participation in European cultural centres. It is motivated by a double challenge: a) the declining engagement in democratic and societal institutions across Europe, b) the lack of knowledge about cultural centres in Europe. In RECcORD we me...

The article analyses two performances that have staged firsthand witnesses of contemporary Danish warfare: Matthaei und Konsorten’s site-specific performance "War – you should have been there (3rd ed.)" from 2013, and Christian Lollike's war ballet "In Contact" from 2014-15. Based on these two performances, the article investigates the aesthetical,...

In 2012 the Danish city of Aarhus was appointed European Capital of Culture for 2017. The appointment was based on an ambitious programme that – under the headline Rethink – tried to set an agenda of societal transformation, mainly by seeking to increase the impact of art and culture, and to enhance civic participation at all levels of society. In...

In this introductions the authors frames the concept of participation as it works across a range of institutions and disciplinary contexts. The different institutional and disciplinary fields often interact indirectly by building on the same or interconnected ideals, logics and discourses or by using the same or similar theories. But it is quite ra...

The French philosopher Yves Michaud modernity has characterised modernity by three utopias: the utopia of democratic citizenship, which deals with freedom and equality; the utopia of labour, which deals with social change; and the utopia of art, which deals with inter-subjective communication and community. He has argued that the utopia of art, whi...

Birgit Eriksson: “Money and Life. Exchanges in and between Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister and Simmel’s philosophy of money”The article studies the meaning of money in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship Years (1795-96) and Georg Simmel’s Philosophy of Money (1807). It examines how Simmel’s philosophical and sociological work can contribute to a new...

This article investigates the impact of the French Revolution on Goethe's narrative works in the mid-1790s. I argue that the reductive interpretation of Goethe's attitude to the Revolution as distant and reluctant ignores the formal and thematic impact of the Revolution on his prose works. Similarly, we lose important perspectives when reducing Ger...

Hvorfor er ”dannelse” igen blevet et vedkommende begreb i aktuelle diskussioner af identitets- og samfundsmæssige problemer? Hvorfor er dannelsesromanen ikke død? Hvad er det, genren kan? Og hvordan kan en dannelsesroman som Goethes Wilhelm Meisters Læreår gøre os klogere på sammenhængen mellem identitets- og formdannelse? Disse spørgsmål forfølg...

In recent years aesthetics and cosmopolitanism have been linked in new ways. On the one hand, contemporary research in the sociology of art indicates an increasing openness and a potential cosmopolitanism in aesthetic taste and consumption. On the other hand, aesthetic concepts and ideals play an important but often implicit role in some of the the...

Birgit Eriksson: "Revolutionen, moderniteten og de mulige genrer - Om selvbestemmelse og historieskrivning hos Goethe"AbstractBirgit Eriksson: “Revolution, Modernity and Possible Genres: Self-Determination and Writing of History in Goethe’s Work”The article deals with Goethe and the French revolution. Contrary to the usual description of Goethe’s a...

Anne Scott Sørensen, Ole Martin Høystad, Erling Bjurström og Halvard Vike: Nye kulturstudier, Oslo 2008 (Spartacus Forlag).

Umberto Ecos forfatterskab er encyklopaedisk i mere end én forstand. Dels er det usaedvanligt altfavnende. I løbet af de sidste mere end 50 år har han skrevet teoretiske og historiske vaerker, essayistik og kultur-journalistik, romaner og satire. Inden for alle disse genrer har han bredt sig over mangfoldige emner fra James Joyce til Bond, fra Thom...