The Looking-Glass Dialogues: Sam Hultin and Magnus Bärtås on Archives and Microhistory

This series of talks takes its guiding metaphor from The Looking Glass in Lewis Carroll’s novel of the same name: a portal between two worlds, each appearing slightly estranged or surreal from the vantage point of the other. In this programme, the two “worlds” are those of higher art education and contemporary artistic practice, each shaped by its own institutional histories, epistemologies, and modes of cultural production. 

In The Looking-Glass Dialogues, two practitioners meet through this metaphorical mirror to examine the problems, frictions, and potentials they encounter within artistic research.  

Through a situated conversation grounded in their own specific practices, methods, and lived contexts, the dialogue seeks to unravel the perspectives, contradictions, and shared concerns that traverse the diverse field of artistic research today. Rather than speaking about the field in abstraction, the series foregrounds practice-based insight as a way to illuminate commonalities, divergences, and the forms of knowledge that emerge when artists reflect critically on their own research trajectories.