CAPIm Summer school

The Center for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm) Summer School 2026

(Please note that this system is usually used for recruitment.) 

About the Summer School

The Center for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm) Summer School 2026 will take place in Marseille, France between June 28 – July 6, 2026.

Each year CAPIm’s Summer School gathers artists, curators and artistic researchers to consider the relationship between art and the political imaginary through a thematic lens. This year, we take SHED’s publishing catalogue as a point of departure and engage with Ariella Aïsha Azoulay’s notion of potential history to think collectively about how unlearning imperialism might unfold within artistic research. Our focus on Marseille is not incidental: as a port city shaped by migration, extraction, and empire, it occupies a pivotal place in the ongoing potential history of decoloniality. To read Marseille through Azoulay’s lens is to refuse the closure of the colonial archive and to open a space in which artistic practice contributes to the repair and re-imagining of shared worlds.

The Summer School unfolds over nine days and will encompass participant presentations, collective food preparation, close reading sessions, intensive workshops with invited artists and theorists—including Ariella Aïsha Azoulay—and an evening program open to the public in Marseille curated by Arthur Eskenazi. All events will take place on-site in manner responsive to local conditions and the possibility of intense summer heat.

CAPIm is institutionally located in Sweden, hosted by two art schools at opposite ends of that country. Summer School faculty and participants are hosted in Marseille by local structures and cultural organizers, including Artagon Marseille and SHED Publishing, among others. All are guests in a contingent structure, which is fundamental to the imagination the Summer School.

Call for participants

The Summer School is open to artistic researchers from any discipline, students and doctoral candidates in the field of art or artistic research, artists, architects or cultural workers with a demonstrated investment in the political imaginary as an emancipatory practice. The core program will be capped at fourteen but a series of events in the evening will be open to the public on-site. It is not possible to join on-line for any part of the program.

During the Summer School participants are required to be present in Marseille for the entire period and attend an average of six hours a day of core programming. An elective schedule based on participant initiative and faculty propositions will be organized on-site and evolve out of collective discussions.

Participants are also asked to undertake preliminary reading in advance and required to attend an on-line introductory session on the context of Marseille and the logistical planning for the Summer School in late May 2026.

The program is free and will be delivered in English. Travel to and from Marseille, accommodation in collective, rented apartments, mid-day meals, and workshop materials are covered by the Summer School. Insurance, visas fees, ground transport on site, and evening meals are the responsibility of each participant.

How to apply

Apply by clicking the Apply box at the top right or at the bottom of this page. 

Selection is based on a statement of intention outlining why you wish to take part in the Summer School and what investment your practice demonstrates in the idea of the political imaginary, defined as you would like. 800 words max. There is also the possibility to link to a website and/or social media in the application. 

Application deadline is January 10, 2026, midnight Central European Time (CET).

Applicants may be called for an interview on the 3rd and 4th of February, 2026. Please mark these dates in mind when you apply. Final decisions will be made before the 15th of February.

About CAPIm

The Centre for Art and the Political Imaginary (CAPIm) is dedicated to studies of art, education and artistic research invested in the political imaginary. Our mission is to foster an environment where pedagogy and artistic research practices meet to challenge and articulate instances of the political imaginary. CAPIm is committed to building long-term institutional collaborations between HDK-Valand and Kungl. Konsthögskolan, developing the interplay between education in fine arts and artistic research. Through interdisciplinary and critical approaches, CAPIm aims to engage with the critical issues of our time, positioning art as a site for relating to past and ongoing transformations.

CAPIm’s Summer School is organized by Dr. Valentina Desideri, Kajsa Fogelberg, Prof., Natasha Marie Llorens, and Dr. Michele Masucci. For information about last year’s Summer School in 2025, please visit: https://capim.se/en/events/summer-school-for-a-justice-to-come