Index has existed for more than four decades. However, in 2023 it celebrates the fact that twenty-five years ago it was established as a foundation and focused its activity on contemporary artistic practice. The institution is a benchmark for its approach to research processes, learning programmes and the creation of relationships with both artists and audiences. Since 2018, its director is Marti Manen, with whom we spoke below.

I

ALBERTO AGUILAR: Let's begin by addressing the role of your institution in the contemporary art complex. Or in other words: In what sense has Index played an axial role in the artistic context of the city, the country and Northern Europe over the last decades?

MARTI MANEN: There are historical reasons that explain what role Index has had and has had in the context of the city, country or region. The institution was born as a foundation because a series of artists and artistic agents saw the need for Index to exist. It was born directly from the context. Before being a foundation it was two things: one, an exhibition space within the photography association; and the other, a magazine; in the same place. First focused on photography, then it changed to image and then to contemporary culture and art.

So, at a time of change, there are a number of people who understand that it is important for there to be a place where artistic experimentation can be facilitated, where people can work conceptually in a rigorous and advanced way, and which can also be a context for international connection. Index was born with this desire. Artistic practice is produced in this place and we also need an interlocution with other places.

From here, as an institution, it evolves, but always having a very clear idea of what it is, and now it has been 25 years with a very well-defined DNA. Index is a very flexible, small institution, and being small allows it precisely this flexibility: we are very attentive to artistic practices. For us it is very important to work with artists from our context, but also to work with international practices that enter into dialogue with the context. When we invite international artists to work at Index they are read from the contemporary practice here, they are read from a context that can be negotiated and understood, or debated with these artistic practices that are presented. And it's true that Index has a central role because of its experimental practice. This is where a lot of things are being tested: both on an artistic level and on an institutional level. We are aware that what we are doing here now will have an impact on other institutions in five, six, seven years.

II

AA: Regarding institutional substratum, this spring you are holding conversations between your team and relevant figures from the contemporary art sphere. What is the art institution aiming at? What are the upcoming models of thought and action that, from what you say, you are already implementing in Index?

MM: As an institution we allow ourselves to implement many things without knowing if they will work. We are constantly asking ourselves about institutional models, about working rhythms, about working systems, what vocabulary we are using. There is an internal questioning that then translates into ways of doing.

To be very practical, I will talk about the work we do with the Index Teen Advisory Board. We have a second board with young people to whom we present what the institution is and see how they react. It is a type of institutional work that we will find in other organisations in the short term. Index has been running this project for seven years and as a format it is applicable to other places. To see how at the level of internal management, of power systems, we give agency to the next generations. And how in this giving agency we also define a learning proposal. It is something that is specific to Index, but it is applicable to other places.

As well as thinking about what vocabulary we are using at the level of writing: being very conscious of how you write about exhibitions, and how you work with audiences. Index is a place of experimentation because of how we relate to the audience: from a very short distance. When I started running the institution, the first change was to place the workspace, the office, inside the exhibition. We work from it. We are in contact with the people who visit the exhibitions. There is no mediation work that is handed over to third parties, but the institution directly talks to the people who visit it. What does this mean? That our audience will always meet someone who knows perfectly well what the current exhibition is talking about; but also what the one we will have in three years' time will be talking about, or what the one that took place five years ago was talking about. This is important because you offer a kind of relationship to the people who visit us from a - shall we say - raw knowledge. What's more: at the same time as you attend an exhibition you visit an institution. Here we have meetings, we talk about budgets and artists. We don't hide the machinery. This is an interesting gesture, I think.

We work with exhibitions because they continue to mark and define the calendar. But we also work with other rhythms. And the fact of inviting artists is important: every year we pay money to one of them so that they don't do anything, without the need for them to have a production process. Thinking about the level of institutional porosity, opening up the institution, we do a lot of programming with other people. We are interested in rethinking, for example, what the presentation of a book might be: what it means, we don't work with publishers but with artists. We also want to present projects that are being done, to look for other moments of interaction beyond the current exhibition. Or to think on the level of distribution: how art needs to be understood as a distribution machine where the contents can take different forms. And that's where we go round and round all the time.

AA: But You've just said it, you are a small institution and therefore flexible. Are the dynamics you describe feasible in larger institutions?

MM: Things can happen in big institutions. Of course, it is not the same to work with a museum: with a big machine, as with a flexible one. The former, however, remain attentive to what happens and have a desire to modify forms. Elements that are extremely defining here can be applied elsewhere. The question is how and whether it is done seriously or not. But there are possibilities to affect at the institutional level, because basically what we are doing is something that works for everyone: to rethink together how we work and to be very conscious that we are offering artistic practice, something that needs to be active.

On an ecosystem level it has all the logic in the world, because from where you can make mistakes is from our position: not from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, however. The big museum needs the small places to see how the tests work and to discover how far it could go. That's how it is. What we do is not new for the institution, it is part of the idea of Index. And we are always very conscious of the fact that we do it from artistic practice. The institutional work is linked to it: what artists think, what interaction needs we encounter.

We work with creators thinking about the future. We are producing work, exhibitions with artists we want to see in other places. Index is not a gallery because we don't sell anything, but the relationship with them is for life. You have an exhibition but your work doesn't end there. We are always there. Because it's in your interest —in a selfish way— that they do well. Trying to do this networking that allows artists to have more presence is something we do. We don't hide, it's part of the idiosyncrasy of the place. Networking: thinking about which artist in which place and at what time could be doing things. It's trying to think with other time spectra.

III

AA: While you're talking about networks... what complicity is there with the rest of the city's initiatives?

MM: Here things are not at the level of competition but of interaction. So far, because the public system has allowed it: that everything coexists. We will see what happens when there is a political change. At the moment the ultra-right supports the government, and the programme with which it presented itself stated that it was necessary to allocate no money at all to contemporary art. If this is the case, a change could come next year. We shall see. It would be a substantial change at the level of national identity. A country that ceases to be a cultural country and becomes something else.

But Stockholm contextually is a place where there is a lot of interaction. Compared to other cities, here you talk institutionally with all actors. It is extremely tolerant and there is a constant desire for dialogue. I haven't seen that in other places. For example, we are preparing an exhibition with the big museum, Moderna Museet, for next year. But we are also working on a project of an international nature with an independent space that is much smaller than us. Things always happen where the scale breaks down.

IV

AA: Sometimes we have the impression that the audience is more cultivated in cities like Stockholm and that there is a greater curiosity and sensitivity when it comes to approaching "things": not necessarily contemporary art, but also music, or different issues. How would you characterise the cultural sphere generated by current artistic practice in your city?

MM: And I agree so. There is no problem with cultural complexity. It is accepted that the public has the capacity to interact with any cultural item, whatever level it may be, in general there is no conceptual discounting anywhere. There is a desire, on the contrary, to problematise and work with problems, with ideas, with themes, that include this complexity. Because evidently art is where you can talk better about class, racism, about situations around identity, political situations, because it is here that we can generate a language that is shared, compatible or whatever. But it is understood that from these places there is a possibility of exchange and this is noticeable. And it obliges us to offer something that is in tune.

And even more so from Index, where we see the public live, we see the people and we are there with those who visit the exhibition. There is an interaction based on mutual respect. If someone is visiting an exhibition here I know that this person knows what they are doing and that their opinion is valid, therefore I need channels for this opinion to reach me. I am not going to bunkerise myself to avoid having access to information.

But it is something that is related to what you were talking about: definitions of society. Societies where culture traditionally plays an important role. And it is understood that, furthermore, in culture there is the possibility of experimentation: it is here that things can be tried out. You were talking about the musical field. It makes sense to see it at the level of musical production, what products come out of here and what producers are making music. There is that desire for experimentation as well, and experimentation doesn't mean it's cold, there is a sensuality through complexity: things can be difficult, but that doesn't mean they are not attractive. It's something we work with a lot here as well.

But I totally understand what you are saying. This feeling that we are going to talk, we are going to be aware that this is a cultural context where there is an advanced desire. It's also true that it has to do with the system and with how the artists are. I am also part of the government committee that distributes support for artists. You have a high percentage of the artists here who have a public salary, which is not a lot of money, but they receive an amount for the mere fact of being artists. This gives a contextual security. The artists can work and you see that in the works. That's why there is a kind of finish that is far removed from precariousness. This is interesting. In the end we all work from precariousness, it's not Spotify. You do an exhibition with a fairly young artist and this person has had two years to do his project: to be able to work conceptually with his work, to be able to produce it, and this in the end evidently gives results, because there is time invested in artistic production —you will like it more or less— but there is no doubt that the quality of the production is affected by the fact that there is a capacity for production and a will to produce as well.

V

AA: A few weeks ago, we spoke with Marina Fokidis about the curatorial project she presented at ARCOmadrid 2023: the Mediterranean Sea from an artistic approach. She argues that the South is a state of mind. We're not going to ask you if the North is too. But... haven't we been socialised in the North/South dyad and this offers us a cognitive map that is operative but too simple? Given that art should focus on understanding the complexity of the world, do you think that current artistic practice questions the aforementioned dyad? Listening to you, it seems that both in Stockholm and in the rest of the region the North/South cleavage is questioned.

MM: Everything is more complex than it might seem at first glance. It's not the same to be working in the 1990s as it is to be working from the year 2023. In the 1990s, there is a moment in Nordic art where the idea of the Nordic is strengthened. It's Hans Ulrich Obrist: talking about the Nordic dream, and it's Eija-Liisa Ahtila or Anika Larsons. There are a number of artists who respond to a situation: they are presented as the Nordic. Just as the Nordic is Edvard Munch.

There are some historical desires, but with the passage of time and with the processes of globalisation and macro-politics everything is much more unstable. What remains interesting is this projection. Both the north and the south are projections of desire, affecting less the place than the view from the outside. And Sweden is still a projection of desire, just as Canada is, and you see it in migration routes: in global despair you need utopian images. This has complicated life in Sweden, because it has taken on a role of being a utopian image: a perfect, ideal society, which is not. Life is much more complex. There are many problems.

The desire for utopia, which is in fact necessary for survival, has been applied from the South to the North. And vice versa, with other criteria: in the South there is a good climate, good food, a good life. This desire for another utopia is caused by the distances. However, these distances are obviously much shorter now: in terms of information, travel, and so the ideal construction is constantly being dismantled.

But it is interesting to read it on a historical level. In Venice there is the Nordic pavilion, which comprises three countries: Finland, Norway, Sweden. In the last edition of the biennale, the pavilion is no longer the Nordic pavilion but the Sami pavilion. There is a series of gestures around what is pan-Nordic that is also necessary, which is done from here. For example, we as Index have financial support from the fact that we are working with an institution in Oslo and another in Helsinki. There are systems that facilitate an idea of a Nordic connection. There is a kind of double process: a reality that is mixed and an ideological construction that tends to polarise, both here and there.

VI

AA: It is not a question of listing the interests of the Nordic region, but we would like to know what contemporary issues are being addressed by artists and institutions in the sector, or what contemporary issues are being addressed far north of the Mediterranean Sea from an artistic perspective?

MM: The feeling is that it goes through a questioning of identity, we continue with the need to question an identity, both on an individual and group level. We start from a question: we continue to ask ourselves who we are. Whether at the level of gender, class, race, this question is key.

But it is linked to what was said before: with time. Work is time and the relationship with artistic practice is no longer mediated by space. What does it mean? It means that there are many artists working from performativity, where installations are moments, where interaction is necessary and where places are being defined to work with language. Starting from a questioning, to construct a language together. It is an unstable language. And that's why it is in contemporary art and can be in contemporary dance as well.

The feeling is that these are the starting points. And they are slow processes. And it is accepted that they are slow processes without the need for brilliant answers. We are seeing a lot of this desire for collectivity, for rethinking relationships. And it is a political project. We are going to much shorter distances and fleeing from a certain monumentality. The artists work with lines of fragility. It is a philosophical fragility. This rethinking of who we are places you in a fragile moment. It's inviting the audience to participate in what you are doing. Therefore, you also place yourself in a situation of fragility. For example, the fact that the Index team works in the exhibition hall: you don't decide the moments of interaction but the public does. There is a rethinking to look for another kind of relationship. And it's not relational art. It's a much higher question: in a way, it's closer to philosophy and poetry.

VII

AA: Let's talk about the public sphere and the civil society that Index is part of. We don't think this is its remit. We'll stay at the neighbourhood level, if that's OK with you. In the practice of the artists you work with and in the networks you build from the institution, is there a will to improve the citizenry? If so, could you illustrate it with projects or activities that you have programmed?

MM: I agree with what you say about the role of art: is art the place for politics understood as politics is today, or is art a place for political rethinking, understanding that politics is something much broader: then we go to philosophy and thought?

At Index, we have been working on rethinking. We're hardly going to offer a closed discourse, because that's not what we can do. But we can constantly question what we do as an artistic context. And again the complexity: to understand that this is where we can doubt. To understand artistic practice as something politically pamphleteering goes against art, because you are simplifying: the language, the discourse. What we should do is fight to have a complex discourse that allows for a qualitative society: to understand that democracy is not just about voting, but that we are in a place where we can talk about philosophy, poetry, we can be discussing politics. Try to avoid the polarisation that makes everything very, very easy. To fall into this is very vulgar, because it is representation. You don't do politics but representation. And you lose an opportunity to have other rhythms. What I see from here is that. And we try to work generating other rhythms: we are not going to change the world, but maybe we can change some people's lives. And that is enough: that someone has the possibility of thinking or can participate in thinking is more than enough. This too with a long-term view.

We see it with the fact that we have been working with young people for seven years, we see where they are now. It's a kind of project that goes this way, instead of doing guided tours for schools, we focus on 10 kids for a year and a half and work with them, no more. You are training someone in a dialogue who will have a lot of information. Instead of giving a superficial patina of contact with art, what we try to do is to have people who have the capacity for dialogue afterwards. For me, it's a working system, we're not going to reach everybody, because as Dora García says: art is for everybody but only a few know it.

It is undeniable that we start from a position that cannot be assumed in general. We start from a privilege: the fact of having time to think. It is good to be aware of it and not to burden it. We should be able to share this privilege with other people in order to improve on a philosophical level, on an ideological level that moves away from a polarised and pamphlet politics. What we do here is very political, but it is another politics. It is very political because we question over and over again the ways of being, the ways of inhabiting.

A very basic example: in the last five years all our solo exhibitions have been with women artists, and non-binary artists, all of them, but this is not written. For five years we have seen that it was necessary to do this and we are still doing it, because historically there is a gap. There is a historical desire: you have to be aware that your programming is in balance with previous programming. Obviously, a programme in the 90s is not based on gender or equality, to balance this previous programme you have to overcome all the quotas, it's not a question of quotas, it's a question of historical justice. In the future things will be different because we can generate now among all the people a historical construction with other names, beyond the usual ones, but at the same time, what you say, we don't do it for the sake of it, it's done. For me, it is much more interesting to do it than to announce it. You can announce many things and then not do them. That's why it's interesting the practical capacity as opposed to what is said. In this case, we are going to try to work from a feminist and queer theory starting point, but we are not going to announce it. We will be able to talk a posteriori about what we have done. That's why everything is a test. That's why we needed some time to put things into practice, to see what critical capacity there is and to see other kinds of work.

We are interested in recovering tangential figures. That's why it was important to make an exhibition with Cris Kraus, who is someone who works in literature, but she wanted to make films, she doesn't manage to make films, probably because of her position in genre, and she jumps to literature and there it really works. We were interested in going back to that moment and seeing what kind of films are being made and how they can be read from the here and now. Also, from Sweden it made sense to do an exhibition with Fina Miralles. We worked with MACBA to bring her here. Because in the 1970s this artist was already working with ecology, with identity, with questions of relations of possession of space: who has the capacity for real possession. This reads very well here. Because contextually it makes sense to do these things now. I'm interested in these moments where you speak from practice, where you do. To avoid propagandistic gestures and for the artistic practice itself to offer a discursive field.

VIII

AA: Could you shed light on your statement that art today must design and offer discursive situations? Is the criterion for recognising the worth of an institution or the work of an artist the capacity to develop them?

Is it necessary to look at whoever is capable of conceiving such situations because he or she is an example —valid, legitimised or homologated— of art today? We are interested in the Nordic art scene, could you discover for us not the emerging artists but the young artists who stand out in this respect, please? And we say young because someone in their eighties could be emerging: they get to work and emerge.

MM: It is clear that any programme implies a selection and there is a legitimisation process. Institutionally we are aware that we are part of a system that legitimises some voices and not all voices. What is interesting is that there are very clear elements in Index's DNA: in how we work and in the types of projects we carry out.

This is very much marked by the desire for conceptual work. It doesn't mean that what we do is only conceptual practice, but Index is a discursive place: from the sensual, of contact, of invitation. We work a lot with language, with the generation of language, with possibilities beyond language itself, but we try to open up the field.

With all the complexity I'm talking about, Index is an open place. And it has been so generation after generation, because it is a place of formation: it is a place where many Swedish artists have their first institutional exhibition. You have a cast of young artists with an emotional attachment to this institution. And this happens generation after generation. With the kind of audience we have I can tell you this person was a direct user of Index in 1998, this one in 2003. When we are trained we go to visit a series of exhibitions, some of these training exhibitions are going to mark you more or less. In Index we can see it: what moments and what exhibitions have had a generational impact.

Hanni Kamaly is a very young artist in terms of production. Kamaly was at Index, then at the São Paulo Biennial. Someone who works with sculpture and video. Kamaly makes a post-colonial contextual analysis of state violence. But nothing pamphlet-like. Kamaly’s sculptures are extremely fragile because they speak of individual fragility in the face of a system. But they don't necessarily tell you that they talk about it. They are sculptures that happen.

On a contextual level, I can also talk to you about people who have not been in Index. It's interesting to see other voices from outside the institution. Ingela Ihrman has just exhibited at Gasworks, London. She is an artist who moves very well in performative practice and deconstructs identity, playing with the creation of characters, which is something that is typical of the Swedish context: escaping from oneself in order to try to recognise oneself.

In relation to the latter, in autumn we have an exhibition with Catti Brandelius, an artist who was a performance artist in the 90s and is still active. We are specifically interested in one of her projects, she declared herself Miss Universe and presented herself as such: in museums and when she was interviewed, and seeing it from our now makes sense. What does the creation of an identity mean? What does the sexualisation of an identity mean? What does a market of bodies mean? What does this mean in relation to positions of power?

In Index we are always playing an intergenerational game. If you compare Stockholm with Barcelona or Madrid there is something interesting: here the institutions do not work with age groups. It is not important. When you work with an artist there is confidence that a project is going to come out, you're not just supporting to see if something comes out. The concept of emerging art doesn't exist. Here, it doesn't define. In Madrid it defines something because there is a structured system around it. In Barcelona it defines a lot. But here it's never been important. I've never heard of emerging art, because you quickly become part of the context. You don't need to prove anything. The practices are part of the usual in a way. That's why it's interesting to see what you were saying before: an artist can be young even if they're 80 years old, it doesn't matter, it depends on the career, how they're working, it depends on what they're doing.

IX

AA: To conclude, let us return to the beginning of this conversation. What is the link between the research processes and artistic practice within your institution? 

MM: You are touching on a key issue. In Sweden the idea of artistic research is one of the big issues. Because artistic research means freeing the idea of research from academic structures and leaving it in the hands of artists: who are not necessarily going to follow a standard structure to understand what research is.

Research in the artistic field is not yet defined where it is going. For us it's interesting because it means that we are still in this doubt and in something that needs to be written down, it's pre-linguistic, this whole situation of what it will be, we have no idea, and we've been 30 years without any idea of what it will be. Antoni Muntadas was doing artistic research and he had his problems with the Academy in Spain. We are there, without closing that question: what exactly is it that we are doing.

One of the things that interests me is to get away from representation: that art should be real, that it's happening when you're doing it. Not that it refers to something you have to transcribe. I'm interested in research being something that is defining an artistic project but that you are aware of and physically notice the artistic experience. It's still something very physical, the artistic experience, it's conceptual, but it's still something extremely physical. And it's such an incredible tool that we can't let it go to waste. Advertising machines are much simpler, because on an emotional level they play in a much simpler way. We work with another complexity, with other rhythms, with other capacities of affectation. If we go to the pamphlet, to other narratives that come from other places, we are going to lose a field of action, which is a very invisible field of action, if you like, but it is still a field of action and a field of affectation.

MARTI MANEN is the director of Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm, where he lives. He has curated exhibitions at Museo de Historia Natural (Mexico City), Aara (Bangkok), Sala Rekalde (Bilbao), Konsthall C (Stockholm), CA2M (Madrid), Fundació Miró (Barcelona). He was the curator of the Spanish pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2015 and has curated Momentum10 (Biennale in Moss, Norway, 2019). In the 1990s, he curated five years of exhibitions in his room in a student flat.

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