Urgent Pedagogies – Magnus Ericson

Magnus Ericson is a Stockholm-based curator and educator working across design, architecture, urbanism, and art. He is currently Head of IASPIS Applied Arts, leading the program related to design, crafts, architecture, spatial and urban practice. He has over the years, in different institutional settings and as an independent curator, combined curatorial and pedagogical practice with an emphasis on socially engaged critical practice, alternative pedagogies and organising spaces for learning. He is the together with Pelin Tan the founder and co-curator of the IASPIS project Urgent Pedagogies. Between 2007 and 2009 he was assigned to develop IASPIS activities within design, crafts and architecture. 2009 – 2014 he was Senior Advisor and Curator at ArkDes, Sweden´s National Center for Architecture and Design, in Stockholm. 2009 – 2018 he divided his practice between independent curatorial commissions and developing and managing experimental postgraduate courses on socially engaged critical practice at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm. In his current position at IASPIS Magnus Ericson has been curating public discursive projects such as ‘Urgent Pedagogies’, ‘Vulnerability by Design’, ‘Prism of the Past: An exchange on critical cultural heritage’, ‘[Re-]Thinking Curating Design and Craft’, ‘Re: Design Residencies’ and most recently ‘Practice Matters’. He is the author and editor of publications in relation to exhibitions, events and projects produced at IASPIS, ArkDes, Konstfack and KTH School of Architecture as well as author and co-editor of ‘IASPIS Forum for Design and Critical Practice – The Reader’ (Sternberg Press, Berlin 2009) and together with Ramia Maze ‘DESIGN ACT Socially and politically engaged design today – critical roles and emerging tactics’ (Berlin, Sternberg Press 2011). He has studied at KTH School of Architecture, KKH Royal Institute of Art, Glasgow School of Art, and holds a MA degree in design from Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm.

Urgent Pedagogies

Urgent Pedagogies is a project developed to create a space to highlight and discuss how socially engaged critical spatial practice may address urgent issues across different conflicts, and to examine the role of alternative pedagogies. Acting in relation to societal urgencies and situations of conflict demands the capacity to approach issues and contexts carefully, adopt different perspectives, and create strategies and settings for learning, unlearning, thinking together, and alternative forms of knowledge production and sharing. Moving beyond established institutional forms of research and teaching, and encouraging both old and new forms of learning, may help challenge social and political contexts shaped by hegemonic institutionalism, colonial legacies, and extractive capitalism. Alternatively, collectively initiated pedagogical platforms may be emancipative forms of action, care, solidarity, and resistance. Urgent Pedagogies was set up as a project and space for inquiry and dialogue to share knowledge and experience. It has focused on critical spatial practices; however, in both its research and distribution, it is a transdisciplinary project that connects various artistic practices, such as design, architecture, and spatial practice, with social movements, civil society, and activist initiatives. It aims to engage with practices and people from diverse experiences, situations, contexts, and geographies. Learning is also central to the project itself, through open-ended and experimental approaches, engaging with different perspectives, new encounters, and critical dialogues, and a growing network of alliances. In this talk the co-founders and curators Magnus Ericson and Pelin Tan will discuss the project as a curatorial, pedagogical, and spatial practice.