Artistic Research Lecture Series: Ele Carpenter
Di. 20.1.2026
Vortrag
Eintritt frei!
The Artistic Research Lecture Series explores diverse perspectives and methodologies within the field of artistic research. Invited speakers—artist-researchers and scholars from adjacent fields—present their work and engage in discussions on how artistic processes generate knowledge. The series serves as a forum for critical discourse on artistic research, both within and beyond Mozarteum.
Ele Carpenter
Curating Incommensurable Nuclear Futures
Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s ethic of incommensurability as a way forward is a productive framework for rethinking the role and agency of art in nuclear sites and communities. They argue that decolonisation is not a metaphor, and that decolonisation as a form of reconciliation is not possible. What is done cannot be undone, and metaphorical forms of decolonisation only serve to absolve settler guilt. This presents a direct challenge for art and artists who deal in meaning and representations that are both real and symbolic, concrete and allegorical. In the same way that Sadie Plant described the World Wide Web as both actual and metaphorical, artists seek conceptual frameworks that trace relationships between materials and places, multiple histories and speculative futures, all within the moment of the present. Metaphor is intrinsic to storytelling, transferring meaning between different conceptual frames, often shifting between the material and dramatised worlds.
Dr Ele Carpenter is a research-based curator of interdisciplinary politicised art, with over 25 years experience in public museums, artist run spaces, research networks and academia. In 2021 Ele Carpenter was appointed as Professor of Interdisciplinary Art & Culture at Umeå School of Architecture, and Director of the new UmArts Research Centre in partnership with Bildmuseet. Ele’s curatorial research investigates nuclear culture and aesthetics through commissioning new artwork, curating exhibitions, writing, and roundtable discussions in partnership with arts organisations and nuclear agencies. She is curator of the Nuclear Culture Research Group, and editor of The Nuclear Culture Source Book (2016), and curator of Splitting the Atom, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania, (2020), Perpetual Uncertainty: Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden; Z33 House of Contemporary Art, Belgium, and Malmo Konstmuseum (2016-18).
Curating Incommensurable Nuclear Futures
Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s ethic of incommensurability as a way forward is a productive framework for rethinking the role and agency of art in nuclear sites and communities. They argue that decolonisation is not a metaphor, and that decolonisation as a form of reconciliation is not possible. What is done cannot be undone, and metaphorical forms of decolonisation only serve to absolve settler guilt. This presents a direct challenge for art and artists who deal in meaning and representations that are both real and symbolic, concrete and allegorical. In the same way that Sadie Plant described the World Wide Web as both actual and metaphorical, artists seek conceptual frameworks that trace relationships between materials and places, multiple histories and speculative futures, all within the moment of the present. Metaphor is intrinsic to storytelling, transferring meaning between different conceptual frames, often shifting between the material and dramatised worlds.
Dr Ele Carpenter is a research-based curator of interdisciplinary politicised art, with over 25 years experience in public museums, artist run spaces, research networks and academia. In 2021 Ele Carpenter was appointed as Professor of Interdisciplinary Art & Culture at Umeå School of Architecture, and Director of the new UmArts Research Centre in partnership with Bildmuseet. Ele’s curatorial research investigates nuclear culture and aesthetics through commissioning new artwork, curating exhibitions, writing, and roundtable discussions in partnership with arts organisations and nuclear agencies. She is curator of the Nuclear Culture Research Group, and editor of The Nuclear Culture Source Book (2016), and curator of Splitting the Atom, CAC Vilnius, Lithuania, (2020), Perpetual Uncertainty: Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden; Z33 House of Contemporary Art, Belgium, and Malmo Konstmuseum (2016-18).