Bonniers Konsthall in collaboration with the Institute for Advanced Studies in Political Aesthetics (IAS) present a series of lectures and discussions in preparation of the exhibition The Defeated: The Aesthetics of Resistance 2026, which opens at Bonniers Konsthall on August 26 and continues until November 8, 2026.

The Defeated is based on the Swedish-German author Peter Weiss’s antifascist novel The Aesthetics of Resistance (1975–81). What can an aesthetics of resistance be today, in relation to the rising fascisms, the devastations, and the inequalities of our time? What challenges does The Aesthetics of Resistance pose to the present, and in what ways can artworks and cultural forms – such as an exhibition – attempt to respond to them?

Participants: Saga Gärde (Director, Stockholm), Anna Hallberg (Poet and critic, Stockholm) and Stefan Jonsson (Professor, Linköping University).

The program runs for two hours, including an interval.
In Swedish. Free admission, no pre-registration required. Limited number of seats.

The program series is curated by Kim West (researcher and critic. Stockholm); François Piron (curator, Paris); and Joanna Nordin (Artistic Director Bonniers Konsthall).

With support from The Swedish Academy.

Image from: Elisabeth Rohde, Pergamon, Burgberg und Altar, 1976