Summer Course: Text as an Artistic Medium (2025)

For the second year running, Index hosts the summer course Text as an Artistic Medium in collaboration with Royal Institute of Art. The course is aimed at students, artists and cultural practitioners who want to develop their writing and find methods for using text and writing as artistic material. The course aims at individual artistic development through critical reflection on one’s own artistic practice and the working process for artistic text work.

Course content
Inspired by autofiction, queer perspectives and contemporary overlaps between poetry, art and literature, the course participants will be provided with a set of tools to apply in their own practices. The course prioritizes the participants own interests who are developed through joint writing exercises, the reading of each other’s and other people’s text and in-depth studies of artistic textual practices. The course is based on the idea of text as an artistic medium and will observe and present content related to performative writing, the relationship between writer/sender and reader/recipient, and text as an artistic method in performance. The methods and content of the course draw inspiration from trans and queer feminist, intersectional, power critical and experimental theories.

Course structure
The course consists of three workshop modules, with lectures, discussions, shared reading and feedback on participants’ work. In addition, students will develop their own text projects and work independently. The course ends with public presentations of the students’ work at Index.

Module # 1 To write
9–11 June

The course begins with a focus on the writing process, which is explored and developed through individual and collective approaches and methods.

Module # 2 To read
23–25 June

The second module of the course introduces relevant theory and reference texts.

After these two initial weeks, participants start their individual text project. Come August, all course participants are offered a one-to-one meeting (digitally or physically) with one of the three course leaders for feedback on form, content and work process. After this, the participants’ independent text work resumes until the last joint course week.

Module # 3 To distribute
18–20 August

The focus of this module is on the sharing or distribution of text-based works, with examples from different artistic expressions and concretely applied to the participants’ own materials. Participants will present the work they have completed over the summer and will receive feedback from the rest of the student group, the course leaders and the Index team.

At the centre of the course is the student’s own individually designed project and the work to achieve the goal that the student has set for the project. During the course there will be both tutorials and joint meetings to reflect, discuss and help students in their artistic process.

Course leaders
Isabella Tjäder, co-director at Index
Andria Nyberg Forshage, writer, poet, curator
Ruby Nilsson, artist, dramatist

Course Period
9 June–20 August 2025