It is quite astonishing what kind of false ideas one can make up in one’s head. And what discovering them can then do to you.
For a long time, I had decided to take the Skövde Pride Parade on Fri 18 Sep 2026 as an opportunity to show solidarity, on the one hand, and perhaps to have an interesting experience of being part of a community, on the other. Not with fellow artists, but with people from a community I somehow feel I belong to. People like you and me, who could hardly be more diverse. My experience, however, was a different one. And that is okay, too.
The three of us walked quickly towards the meeting point of the parade, by the barracks. Tomas, the curator of the art museum hosting us here, told Vládmir and me about the history of Pride in Skövde on the way. Since 2015 it has been held regularly, after for several years it had apparently seemed impossible for those involved to show themselves in this way in the local public space. It is good to see that the number of participants has been steadily growing since then.
Strange: the parade is a march.
Almost military, at least in its pace, the mass of flag-bearing people, some dressed in rainbow colours, moved through the streets of the small town centre. Watched by a few passers-by, with the traffic carefully controlled by the police, the procession reached the square in front of the cultural centre after about half an hour.
Our territory.
Konstmuseet on Tour is written on the flag which the three of us took turns waving.
Was the march a walk?
Oh, yes!
After all, it was also about visual perception. About perceiving an inner world. A social landscape.
There we were, right at the front, and yet looking at it all from a distance. Or rather: feeling a strange sense of foreignness.
Towards the mostly very young people marching. Perhaps an age difference clearly felt on both sides. Towards the community itself. Perhaps accompanied by the question of what actually connects us. And then there is the foreignness of a language which, when I read it, does not seem unfamiliar to me, which when spoken has a pleasant, friendly sing-song to it – and which nevertheless remains a barrier.
And so, after a good hour and a half and a few Swedish and English community hits, Pride Skövde quickly dissolved. The songs were performed with great force by a Swedish rock singer on a stage completely oversized for a solo performance.
Groups of friends and individuals scattered from the square before the first recorded song had even finished. Afterparty? I wouldn’t know where that took place.
And so we returned to our inner world. The one inside the art museum. And I take this experience as yet another of the Footnotes for … Skövde — another trace of my artistic practice, Walking as Research.
