For this public talk, Conny Karlsson Lundgren, who is currently an ISCP artist in residence from Sweden, will be interviewed by guest speaker Macon Reed, who is a US-based artist. Their discussion will center on two of Lundgren’s recent projects, which center on queer realities of the past and alternative sanctuaries for desires. A Q&A with the audience will follow.
They will talk about Lundgren’s performance work, We Feel a Desire for Caresses by Men (The Gothenburg Affair), currently on view at the Göteborg Konsthall, Sweden, based on an infamous trial in the late 1930s against a circle of homosexual men. The legal proceedings are deeply influenced by the criminology and forensic psychology of the time. The performance includes excerpts from the interrogations, delivered by a performer in a choreographed dialogue with a collection of erotic photos found in the home of one of the men on trial.
They will also discuss the video installation, Our Trip to France (Mont des Tantes), which follows a travel diary filled with joyful and anxious encounters written by four young Swedish gay men in search of utopia when they attended an international liberation camp in the South of France in the late 1970s.
Both of these works become a place for meeting across generational boundaries, where the experiences and desires of different eras, memories of the past and fantasies for the future, are woven together.
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Conny Karlsson Lundgren works with film, text, image, and archival documents – as both carrier of information and a mechanism of control – to explore themes around social, political, and individual identities. The artist employs interdisciplinary methods to present alternative realities and social agreements reimagined through experiences, contrapositions, desires, and secret codes.
Conny Karlsson Lundgren has exhibited work at Moderna Museet Malmö; Gothenburg Konsthall; and Extra City Kunsthal, Antwerp, among others. His work is in collections of Moderna Museet Stockholm, and Gothenburg Art Museum. He was awarded the 2020 Erna & Victor Hasselblad Foundation Research Fellowship.
Macon Reed’s work draws from years of participating in queer, punk, and off-the-grid communities around the world. These inform her approaches to collaboration, developing trust with participants, and relating beyond normative culture. Like the “Commons” of times past, she believes radical imagination must be protected and embraced through exuberant collective use. With all of these elements, she uses her artistic practice to challenge the stories we are told about the world and who gets to tell them.
Reed works in sculpture, installation, video, radio documentary, painting, and participatory projects. Her work has been exhibited in New York at venues such as PULSE NYC Special Projects, BRIC Media Arts, ABC No Rio, The Kitchen, Columbia University, Kate Werble Gallery, Recess Gallery, Spring Break Art Fair, Knockdown Center, A.I.R. Gallery, Columbia University, and Abrons Art Center.
This program is supported, in part, by IASPIS – The Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Programme for Visual Artists; Hartfield Foundation; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council; New York City Council District 34; New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature; Nordic Culture Fund; Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF); The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation; Teiger Foundation; Willem de Kooning Foundation; and William Talbott Hillman Foundation.
