Love Took Center Stage at PARSE Conference
In mid-November last year, the fifth biennial PARSE conference took place in Gothenburg. Since the fourth conference was completely digital, due to the ongoing pandemic, this was the first occasion since 2019 when PARSE conference participants could gather and meet in person. The year’s theme was love.
“Love is what we search for to affirm something about our humanity,” says Jyoti Mistry, professor in film at HDK-Valand and editor in chief of PARSE.
PARSE is an international artistic research publishing platform, as well as a biennial conference, based out of the Artistic Faculty. It strives to bring interdisciplinary art practices and researchers from across disciplines into dialogue. The first PARSE conference took place in 2015, and it has since been arranged every two years. This year’s conference title was Powers of Love: Enchantment to Disaffection and was attended by more than 150 participants.
The theme of love sprung from the last PARSE conference’s theme, which was violence. Jyoti Mistry explains that the PARSE Working Group wanted to respond to their own previous theme of violence and the reply was love.
“We wanted to explore the politics of love, love as an all-encompassing transformative force and how love advances our understanding of the contemporary world.”
For the duration of three days, the participants attended seminars, lectures, workshops, movie screenings, exhibits and concerts, all connected to the overall theme. The content could range from a weaver’s motivation behind handweaving a giant portrait of a beloved dog, selfie taking as a practice of care and self-love to writing love letters as a part of ethnographic research methodology. Keynote speakers, as well as attendees, came from all over the world.
“We strived for geopolitical diversity, not just pertaining to countries but also to art practices, research and disciplines.”
A Grand Return to Meeting in Person
As the fourth conference took place in 2021, hosting a traditional conference would have proven difficult. Hence, that conference was solely digital, making this year’s PARSE event a grand return to actually meeting in person. Apart from Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, who held a lecture about the possibility of robots developing a sense of love via link from Japan, every participant and speaker attended the physical event. “This was a chance to celebrate the opportunity to meet in person. It was an intimate conference where we hoped to enact the atmosphere, and not just state the theme and leave it at that,” says Jyoti Mistry.
The conference took place in and around HDK-Valand’s facilities, and an important conference hub was the Glass House. In her opening speech during the inauguration ceremony Jyoti Mistry urged the participants to use the Glass House for rest and as a place to meet each other. It remained open during the entirety of the conference, offering coffee and fika at the participants convenience.
“We did not want anyone to feel pressured to attend every single event during the entire conference as people have different paces and different needs for breaks. The Glass House became a space where the participants could talk and get to know one another and have a sense of community. Never underestimate the power of good cup of coffee.”
Apart from facilities within the university, PARSE also used venues such as the Gothenburg City Library and Bio Roy. This made navigating the city a part of the event and moving between different locations for different items in the program gave the guests a good sense of Gothenburg.
“It was very appreciated and for me it was wonderful to collaborate with people in the city. We have had a great working relationship with the City Library, Bio Roy, the Hasselblad Center, Röda Sten and Göteborgs Konsthall (GIBCA). I hope we can expand on this in the future with more collaborations within the city.”
PARSE will celebrate its 10-year anniversary with a symposium scheduled for 25-26 April 2024. Read more about PARSE and the symposium at PARSE’s website.