The Production Unit
2005—2008
Artist Collective.The Production Unit was a collective of artists engaged in a discussion on the intersection of politics and aesthetics. The collective arranged events such as Slowly learning to Survive the Desire to Simplify—A Symposium On Critical Documents, 2006 (supported by NIFCA & IASPIS), Chto Delat/What’s to Be Done?—A Debate On The Avant-Garde as part of the Documenta 12 Magazine project 2007, exhibitions such as The Long Distance Runner—The Production Unit Archive at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen, 2007 and the performative reading group Toward Evening Brecht Found Me in the Garden Reading Capital during 5th Berlin Biennale.
Members over the years includes: Kajsa Dahlberg, Runo Lagomarsino, Conny Karlsson Lundgren, Petra Bauer, Ditte Lyngkaer Pedersen, Nanna Debois-Buhl, Sara Jordenö, Johanna Gustafson, Ylva Westerlund and Tova Mozard.
Slowly Learning to Survive the Desire to Simplify
2006
Symposium at IASPIS, Stockholm, Sweden.In light of today’s political and cultural climate, there is once again a need to raise questions about how stories are constructed and what effects they have. What are the possibilities and the risks of using art as a way to satisfy a need for “critical documents”? What are the rights and responsibilities of the storyteller? Participants from various fields such as art, film, media criticism and political theory will discuss the structure of narratives and the construction of history. What stories are not given space in today’s society and what alternative strategies exist for the production of images? One of the aims is to discuss the media’s increasingly monopolized representation of reality, and its correlation to the art world’s present interest in the political.
The symposium Slowly Learning to Survive the Desire to Simplify was produced in collaboration with NIFCA and IASPIS. Apart from the symposium in Stockholm, it also consisted of a reader and a screening program shown at different locations such as UKS in Oslo, Circulationscentralen in Malmö, Gallery Box in Göteborg and the Goethe institute in Stockholm. The symposium took place in a installation by Olivia Plender.
Slowly learning to Survive the Desire to Simplify, poster for the symposium, 2006.Slowly learning to Survive the Desire to Simplify—a Symposium on Critical Documents, supported by IASPIS and NIFCA, Stockholm, 2006.
The Long Distance Runner
2007
Exhibition at Den frie Udstillingsbygning,
Copenhagen, Denmark.The Long Distance Runner—The Production Unit Archive is an archive which in various ways discuss current political and cultural issues as well as historical events. The different parts constitute a series of discussions related to communities and publics with emphasis on questions concerning nationality, identity and language. The material varies in form covering video installations, poster projects, sound-based work, photography and various publications produced by the members of the group (Petra Bauer, Nanna Debois Buhl, Kajsa Dahlberg, Sara Jordenö, Conny Karlsson, Runo Lagomarsino and Ditte Lyngkjær Pedersen) and artists as Josh McPhee, Carlos Motta, Jenny Perlin, Hito Steyerl and Ylva Westerlund.
The Long Distance Runner—The Production Unit Archive at Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen, 2007.Installation view, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen, 2007.The Long Distance Runner—The Production Unit Archive, detail of archive label.Peter Watkins’s La Commune, workshop, Den Frie Udstillingsbygning, Copenhagen, 2007.
Towards Evening Brecht Found Me in the Garden Reading Capital
2008
A reading group of Das Kapital at 5th Berlin Biennale, Kunst-Werke, Berlin, Germany.For several years, the geographer David Harvey has offered a seminar on Marx’s Capital at the Graduate Center in New York. These lectures have now been documented by a group of anthropologists in order to be made available to the public. With Harvey’s lectures as a starting point, The Production Unit used the framework of the 5th Berlin Biennial to launch a reading group of Capital in Berlin. Our hope was to generate a broad discussion on issues of capital in relation to a critical practice today, as well as to generate the possibility for a new collective to be formed. Philipp Kleinmichel, PhD candidate at the philosophy department at University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe/ZKM, were the discussion leader for the reading group that held meetings every Monday for 14 weeks during the summer at the Montgomery Gallery in Berlin.
Toward Evening Brecht Found Me in the Garden Reading Capital, a performative reading group during 5th Berlin Biennale at KW, Kunst-Werke.Toward Evening Brecht Found Me in the Garden Reading Capital, alternative book cover for Marx’s Capital.
Publications (PDF): Long Distance Runner No 93: Slowly Learning to Survive the Desire to Simplify, A Reader. Long Distance Runner No 72: Documentary Uncertainty, Hito Steyerl. Long Distance Runner No 100: Capital, Volume One, An Audioplay.
©MMXIV Conny Karlsson Lundgren