What if war comes? Curating affective militarism in Sweden

In November 2023, a bright yellow container appeared outside of Uppsala University’s main library. It housed part of an interactive exhibition entitled tänk om – tillsammans i krig och fred (translated to: what if – together in war and peace 1 ). The container outside the library was designed to look like an ‘average’ student room in the aftermath of a war; burned, bombed, destroyed. Whereas the accompanying exhibition inside the library centres around Sweden’s historical encounters with war, included accounts of those who have experienced these or contributed to them in some way or another, and urged the visitor to consider how they themselves might prepare for, contribute to and be affected by war coming to Sweden in the future. As feminist researchers based in the Nordics, this exhibition spoke to our curiosity, leading us to question how affective and embodied experience is curated by and through the Tänk Om exhibition? And what role do ideas of ‘coming/ returning’ and ‘home’ play in these experiences of the exhibition? Examining these questions, we seek to make visible the mechanisms through which militarisation and martial logics become reframed as acts of peace, as well as the political curation of embodiment, anxiety and ‘home’.