CURRICULUM
This isn’t your typical residency, course, or workshop. It’s a mind-bending, intimate, concentrated experience where you turn inwards and study the workings of your own critical art-making process.
The week-long Curriculum is tailor-made for ambitious racialised artists and designers who explore socio-political contexts at an intermediate or advanced level.
Cycle 1 of the workshop will be held across 5 days from 7 to 11 July 2025 in Aarhus, Denmark and requires full-time, daily commitment from participants.
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Read about the process, location, costs, and eligibility below.
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why apply?
You’re ready to deepen your political commitments to an intermediate or advanced level.
You want to bring together the critical theory you’re reading about, the things you’re making, and the everyday things you’re experiencing.
You’re craving space and time exclusively for and exclusively by racialised artists. If you know, you know.
You want to bring together the critical theory you’re reading about, the things you’re making, and the everyday things you’re experiencing.
You’re craving space and time exclusively for and exclusively by racialised artists. If you know, you know.
process
The unique process concentrates on 3 things:
OVERVIEW 4 artists will be selected to participate in each cycle. The Curriculum runs over a period of 5 consecutive days. Each day is guided with facilitation and structured studio time. The process is facilitated by Dr. Myriam Diatta, Black-Asian independent scholar and former educator at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute in NYC. She will facilitate the workshop in partnership with a BIPoC coordinator. The workshop is hosted at Andromeda8220 in Aarhus, DK. Read ‘site’ section below for more.
PROCESS Through the use of abstraction, participants will be able to ‘map’ how making, thinking, and being have mutually influenced each other in their past work. With open guidance, participants will be using the critical theory they’re already engaging with (via literature, interviews, documentaries, etc.) and mediums with which they are already fluent (i.e. clay, code, fiber, sound, etc.). Seen collectively, the group can share with each other the inner workings of what they do to deepen and develop langauge for what they find.
The process includes settling into each other and the space, care practices, preparatory exercises, mapping, map-reading, and soft assessment criteria.
THIS IS NOT... In the Curriculum, participants will not produce new creative works—Nordic Otherwise specialises exclusively on processes behind socio-political art-making and cultural work. The Curriculum does not seek to teach participants about socio-political concepts—The workshop will provide participants with structured days and tailor-made exercises for each participant to investigate their own ongoing engagement with critical concepts and creative practice.
- the materials the artist uses in their practice
- the critical theoretical texts the artist engages
- the artist’s everyday politicized experiences being in the world
OVERVIEW 4 artists will be selected to participate in each cycle. The Curriculum runs over a period of 5 consecutive days. Each day is guided with facilitation and structured studio time. The process is facilitated by Dr. Myriam Diatta, Black-Asian independent scholar and former educator at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute in NYC. She will facilitate the workshop in partnership with a BIPoC coordinator. The workshop is hosted at Andromeda8220 in Aarhus, DK. Read ‘site’ section below for more.
PROCESS Through the use of abstraction, participants will be able to ‘map’ how making, thinking, and being have mutually influenced each other in their past work. With open guidance, participants will be using the critical theory they’re already engaging with (via literature, interviews, documentaries, etc.) and mediums with which they are already fluent (i.e. clay, code, fiber, sound, etc.). Seen collectively, the group can share with each other the inner workings of what they do to deepen and develop langauge for what they find.
The process includes settling into each other and the space, care practices, preparatory exercises, mapping, map-reading, and soft assessment criteria.
THIS IS NOT... In the Curriculum, participants will not produce new creative works—Nordic Otherwise specialises exclusively on processes behind socio-political art-making and cultural work. The Curriculum does not seek to teach participants about socio-political concepts—The workshop will provide participants with structured days and tailor-made exercises for each participant to investigate their own ongoing engagement with critical concepts and creative practice.
A moment of protest becomes a Curricular object.
The curricular object that Black Studies became —as a repertoire of critical inquiry— means that my generation of [B]lack scholars and creative intellectuals had to create fields of study and practice, not always with happy results.
— Hortense Spillers, A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society (2020)
The curricular object that Black Studies became —as a repertoire of critical inquiry— means that my generation of [B]lack scholars and creative intellectuals had to create fields of study and practice, not always with happy results.
— Hortense Spillers, A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society (2020)
eligibility checklist
Participants must meet all 4 criteria.
You identify as a person who is racialised.
You have a creative practice that is spatial and/or material.
You deliberately engage with socio-political concepts at an intermediate or advanced level through your artistic practice.
You’re based in Sweden, Finland, Norway, or Denmark.
You have a creative practice that is spatial and/or material.
You work closely with a medium such as sculpture, performance, music, film, body movement, archiving, sound, internet, poetry, design, architecture, and/or more.
You deliberately engage with socio-political concepts at an intermediate or advanced level through your artistic practice.
These concepts may include, but are not limited to ecofeminism, Black critical thought, queerness, geo-political borderlands, abolition, disability, Afropessimism, and more.
You’re based in Sweden, Finland, Norway, or Denmark.
For now, the Centre is only able to accept and cover travel costs for artists who live in and who will be traveling to and from the regions named above.
︎︎︎Images of ‘maps’ hand-made by Myriam Diatta through doctoral research, Thinking Form: Bringing Together the Everyday and Black Ontoepistemologies, 2022; Monash University | Melbourne, Australia
costs
For this pilot phase, costs covered include:
PER DIEM
1500 euro (incl. VAT) paid on completion of the Curriculum
TRAVEL
Round-trip between Aarhus and a city in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, or Finland
ACCOMODATION
In Aarhus, Denmark for 6 nights
Daily meals are not covered. Future open calls may not cover costs. The Curriculum is supported by Nordic Culture Fund. Participation of Norway-based artists is made possible by the Centre’s partner, ASSATA and Arts Council Norway.
PER DIEM
1500 euro (incl. VAT) paid on completion of the Curriculum
TRAVEL
Round-trip between Aarhus and a city in Norway, Denmark, Sweden, or Finland
ACCOMODATION
In Aarhus, Denmark for 6 nights
Daily meals are not covered. Future open calls may not cover costs. The Curriculum is supported by Nordic Culture Fund. Participation of Norway-based artists is made possible by the Centre’s partner, ASSATA and Arts Council Norway.
site
Andromeda 8220
Gudrunsvej 78
8220 Aarhus G, Denmark
background
APPROACH The approach behind the Curriculum is based in Black critical thought, performance studies, and design. The Centre’s founder, Dr. Myriam Diatta, designed and established the Curriculum in 2021. She first developed the process in 2018 by investigating the inner workings of her own critical creative practice as a case study. In 2023, Monash University's Faculty of Art, Design & Architecture (Melbourne, AU) nominated the research behind the Curriculum for their Doctoral Thesis Excellence award. Read more about the methodology here on Myriam’s website.
SECTOR AND INDUSTRY Contemporary cultural institutions in Nordic countries have increasingly been representing a growing diversity of works by young artists who immerse themselves in critical and racialized perspectives. However, processes specifically to develop the critical artist and the criticality of their work—beyond lectures and discussions—are limited. Nordic Otherwise contributes to filling the gap by running its Curriculum.
ART, DESIGN, AND ARCHITECTURE Racialised creative practitioners engage with theoretical texts as an integrated part of their process. For example, American Artist (US) engages with Fred Moten’s book, In The Break: The Aesthetics Of The Black Radical Tradition; Dina El Kaisy Friemuth (DK) works with Ariella Asha Azoulay’s book, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. For the artist who contends with the socio-political condition, knowing, making, and being are engaged simultaneously. Each mutually influences the others at once. Nordic Otherwise seeks to develop strategies capable of supporting these critical processes.
SECTOR AND INDUSTRY Contemporary cultural institutions in Nordic countries have increasingly been representing a growing diversity of works by young artists who immerse themselves in critical and racialized perspectives. However, processes specifically to develop the critical artist and the criticality of their work—beyond lectures and discussions—are limited. Nordic Otherwise contributes to filling the gap by running its Curriculum.
ART, DESIGN, AND ARCHITECTURE Racialised creative practitioners engage with theoretical texts as an integrated part of their process. For example, American Artist (US) engages with Fred Moten’s book, In The Break: The Aesthetics Of The Black Radical Tradition; Dina El Kaisy Friemuth (DK) works with Ariella Asha Azoulay’s book, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. For the artist who contends with the socio-political condition, knowing, making, and being are engaged simultaneously. Each mutually influences the others at once. Nordic Otherwise seeks to develop strategies capable of supporting these critical processes.
what else?
Check out other must-know schools and courses that focus on (1) critical theory, (2) artistic practice, (3) centering QTBIPoC.
Note: The following are not affiliated with Nordic Otherwise.
︎︎︎ Accountability Mapping
︎︎︎ Wynter-Wells Drawing School for Environmental Liberation
︎︎︎ Reconstructions
︎︎︎ School for Poetic Computation
︎︎︎ WYFY School and graduation
Note: The following are not affiliated with Nordic Otherwise.
︎︎︎ Accountability Mapping
By Daria Garina, a course for abolition and developing Transformative Justice skills through one’s own body
Online
︎︎︎ Wynter-Wells Drawing School for Environmental Liberation
By Torkwase Dyson, an experimental curriculum based in Black critical thought, focused on the relationship between architecture, infrastructure and water
Roving in the US
︎︎︎ Reconstructions
By Marie-Louise Richards at Royal Institute of Art, a course to reimagine spatial practices “otherwise”–learning from Black feminism
Stockholm
︎︎︎ School for Poetic Computation
An experimental school for art, code, hardware and critical theory
New York City
︎︎︎ WYFY School and graduation
By BUFU, A learning community seeking to love Us well with practice, dreams, & care⠀
New York City