A pedagogic and performative lecture about bureaucracy, creativity and resistance. With the office as a starting point, the event deals with contemporary human beings’ profound addiction to systematising everything surrounding them. John Huntington will show examples from his long-term project “The Twilight Bureaucracy” – a collection of events, objects and interventions exploring the undercurrents of administration and the alternative sides to office life. Different ritualistic methods are presented: small-scale practical techniques that can be used in the workplace to battle feelings of powerlessness and frustration.

The event includes a short practical exercise; for this, each participant is asked to bring one printed text-based document from their current workplace (There will be extra standardised papers in case anyone forgets).

John Huntington (SE) is an independent visual artist working in a conceptual tradition expressed through performance, sculpture, photography, text and installations. With interventions of various forms, his art questions notions we take for granted: in everyday life, work environments, public institutions and political spaces. In his various projects Huntington examines the borderland between everyday life and art, between individual and institution, between citizen and society. He is particularly interested in how we as citizens encounter and interact with larger institutions and enterprises, and how to open up new spaces of reflection through cautious norm violations and deviations from standard practices, most notably by using strategies commonly found in bureaucratic and administrative environments.

Huntington lives in Gothenburg and is educated at the Umeå Academy of Fine Arts and at Konstfack in Stockholm. The event is 60 minutes long. Language: English

The event will be in English. Duration – 60 minutes.

Participant: John Huntington (SE)
Curator: Roberta Atraste (LV)
Image: John Huntington, “Protective Figures,” installation/sculptures, 2021—2022