Acts of Maintenance
I am a spatial practitioner, researcher, maker and educator based in Sweden. My research interests center on urban commoning, collective care, and socially engaged spatial practices. Previously, I have worked as an urban planner and design consultant, focusing on dialogue processes; created site-specific installations as a member of the Creature Collective, and co-founded Studio REplay. I hold a master’s degree in Architecture and Planning Beyond Sustainability from Chalmers and am currently doing PhD in artistic research at HDK-Valand Academy of Art and Design. My research examines spatial practices from the margins, particularly maintenance as a form of spatial activism. Employing methodologies such as participatory action research and drawing upon the framework of feminist posthumanities, I use ficto-critical and speculative methods, counter-mapping and walking/movement techniques, employing both literary and visual tools in my work. My work has been presented at international conferences and seminars; I have been invited to lecture and hold workshops at both universities and self-organised spaces. Most recently, I have developed a course titled Spatial Activism, which I currently teach at the Faculty of Fine, Applied and Performing Arts at the University of Gothenburg.
Acts of Maintenance is an ongoing artistic research project. Situated within contemporary debates—ranging from discussions on demolition and the value of interstitial sites, to ecological and posthumanist approaches to participatory community work—the project seeks to foreground collective forms of organization and degrowth thinking within architectural practice.
Central to this inquiry is the conceptualization of maintenance as a spatial, cultural and political practice, particularly as it emerges in self-organized cultural venues. For several years I have been working closely with self-organized cultural spaces occupying neglected by-products of urban development mainly in Sweden, Denmark, Slovakia and the Baltic region. I explore maintenance not as a secondary or reactive activity, but as a generative mode of spatial engagement aligned with post-extractivist thought and ethics.
This research constitutes a core component of my ongoing doctoral dissertation, which investigates the socio-material assemblages inherent in practices of maintenance. The practice-based component of research will be exhibited and published in collaboration with several contemporary art spaces in Sweden by the end of next year 2026. Central to this dissemination is the production of An Atlas of Maintenance Acts—a curated compendium based on an ongoing archive of sites, stories, scores, visual mappings, and critical texts.
Beyond conventional academic outputs, the project will be activated through a series of public moments, a seminar, workshops, and a summer school. These platforms will not only present the research outcomes but also serve as sites for testing and sharing a provisional toolkit of methodologies and practices that have emerged iteratively through the research process.