Nick Aikens

Nick Aikens is a curator, researcher, editor and educator. He is Researcher at HDK-Valand, University of Gothenburg and Managing Editor / Research Responsible for L’Internationale Online. He assumed his role in August 2023 as part of the four year, EU funded project ’Museum of the Commons’.

Nick has a PhD from HDK-Valand, academic partner of L'Internationale. He was previously Curator at the Van Abbemuseum (2012–2023) where he worked on numerous exhibitions and publications as well as leading the research programme Deviant Practice (2016–2019). He was a tutor and course leader at the Dutch Art Institute in Arnhem (2012–2019) and Guest Professor in the department of Exhibitions and Scenography at Karlsruhe University (2023–2024).

Publishing, Curatorial Learning and ‘Collective Study’

In his talk curator, editor and researcher Nick Aikens speaks from his position as Managing Editor and Research Responsible for L’Internationale Online (LIO), the research and publishing platform for the confederation L’Internationale. In the context of the Positionings symposium Nick will introduce the work of LIO as a form of curatorial learning. The editorial board of LIO frame their work as ‘collective study’, what radical thinkers Fred Moten and Stefano Harney call, in The Undercommons, a ‘study without an end’. In such a framing publishing is not seen as an end point or illustration of research but as part of an ongoing process of enquiry – a disclosure of work, ideas and histories in continual formation. Equally, it comes into a porous dialogue with other forms of curatorial practice and epistemological processes – exhibition making, public programming, schooling.