The Monster Writing Workshop will be led by Line Henriksen, and is based on her work with the more ‘monstrous’ aspects of writing, such as writing blocks and writing anxieties (Henriksen et al. 2022) In this session we explore what stories might evolve through writing with monsters.
Katja Aglert’s and Line Henriksen’s ongoing project, the three episodes podcast series Monstrous soundscapes – 7, 45, not yet released, is the point of the departure for the listening seminar that is part of One Day About: Monsters. In this project we ask: What new artistic methods can evolve through exploring artistically how we listen to the more-than-human?
Recent years have seen an increased artistic and academic interest in the monster and the monstrous as expressions of otherness and difference rather than evil (Davies 2025; Mittman 2012; Shildrick 2002); the monster’s hybrid body challenges normative hierarchies and definitions, and its otherness makes it strangely vulnerable in the sense that the monster has no rights to protection, but can be killed with impunity (Shildrick 2002; Braidotti 1999). To monster researchers within decolonial, feminist, queer and critical disabilities studies, it is this - the otherness and vulnerability of the monster - that makes it potentially terrifying, since it holds up a mirror to ourselves, showing that we are all vulnerable and other; the monster is always already inside. How, then, do we invite our more-than-human monsters to participate in co-creation instead of attempting to exorcise them? How do we live and create with our own otherness and vulnerability - with our monsters?
Organizers
Katja Aglert is a senior lecturer at the Department of Fine Art. Her artistic practice explores transdisciplinary processes founded in feminist and more-than-human imaginaries, shaped through collage, text, performance, video and sculpture. Recent public appearances include the performance walk ‘Penumbra Tales’ at the Art And Words Festival: The Forest Sings At Night, Wanås Konst, Knislinge. She is the co-author of the book Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters: Ethical Co-Existence in More-than-Human Worlds (2024) together with Nina Lykke and Line Henriksen.
Line Henriksen is senior lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at the School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University. Her research interests include monster theory, hauntology and creative writing as method, and she is the author of the monograph In the Company of Ghosts - Hauntology, Ethics, Digital Monsters (2016) and co-author of the book Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters: Ethical Co-Existence in More-than-Human Worlds (2024) together with Katja Aglert and Nina Lykke. She is co-founder and director of the K3 research group The Monster Lab.
References
Braidotti, Rosi. 1999. ‘Signs of Wonder and Traces of Doubt: On Teratology and Embodied Differences’, in: Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader, eds. Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick. Edinburgh University Press. pp 290 - 302.
Davies, Surekha. 2025. Humans: A Monstrous History. University of California Press
Henriksen, L., Kjær, K. M., Blønd, M., Cohn, M., Cakici, B., Douglas-Jones, R., Ferreira, P., Feshak, V., Gahoonia, S. K., & Sandbukt, S. (2022). Writing bodies and bodies of text: Thinking vulnerability through monsters. Gender, Work & Organization, 29(2), 561–574. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12782
Lykke, Nina, Katja Aglert and Line Henriksen. 2024. Feminist Reconfigurings of Alien Encounters Ethical Co-Existence in More-than-Human Worlds. Routledge.
Mittman, Asa Simon and Peter J. Dendle (eds). 2012. The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous. Ashgate.
Shildrick, Margrit. 2002. Embodying the Monster: Encounters with the Vulnerable Self. Sage.