Unworlding the Anatomical Theater in Uppsala
The purpose of this project is to develop new knowledge on reciprocal relationships between the formation and upholding of racial logics and the architecture of Olof Rudbeck’s anatomical theater in Uppsala, first constructed in 1663. By studying the theater in light of its previously un-researched reconstruction, led by eugenicist Nils von Hofsten in the 1920’s-1950’s, the project examines this site of knowledge production central to the formation of race in Sweden.
Project name: Formande och upprätthållande av rasial logik i den anatomiska teatern i Uppsala
Project leader:
Malin Heyman
, KTH Architecture
Participating researcher:
Helena Mattsson
, KTH Architecture
Participating university: KTH
Project period: 2024–2026
Funding:
Vetenskapsrådet
Using Jack Halberstam’s concept of “unworlding” as a framework, this project aims at developing a methodology for a practice based and performative critical historiography. Through methods of architectural analysis and artistic investigations of making, the project explores architecture’s capacity to fiction and maintain “systems of truth” in totalizing utopian world-making projects predicated on racial hierarchies. In modeling and embodying utopian projects of Stormaktstiden and folkhemmet, the theater reveals latent connections between them. In so doing, we respond to an international call to deconstruct the canon as it relates to colonial structures of power.
This work will be developed through archival research and experimental production of writings and original artworks, frequently staging discursive events for collective critical reflection with previously engaged collaborators. The work will be made accessible through papers, exhibitions and a final publication.