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A performance about longing and waiting.
The work takes place in a place between the categories, an educational session where time has stopped, a spacecraft on an introspective journey. Here, a fractured story is told by three travel guides who also share anecdotes, demonstrate objects, and instruct the audience and participants in simple hands-on experiments that explore the strange predicament, the limbo, that The Office for Indeterminate Conditions represents.

The work takes places at Skogen in Gothenburg 20-21 April 2024
It is 60 minutes long, performed in Swedish with some English elements.

A work by John Huntington
Performed by Abo Wejdan, Farzin Khosravi-Hawrami and Pablo Encinas Alonso.
Music by Arvsmassan

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Drama consultancy: Ulf Mellström and Ann-Carita Evaldsson
Scientific advisory: Katarzyna Wojnicka

The work is inspired by interviews from the research project “Transnational single men”

More information about the project can be found here

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For information and how to book a spot, visit the Skogen website

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For more than fifteen years, Kanslibyrån has waged a small-scale and persistent struggle in everyday life where society’s ideals of rationality, obedience and efficiency are questioned on both a public and personal level.

At Krognoshuset, Kanslibyrån will show a large selection of photographs of documented objects and actions, as well as a brand new sculptural installation. In the basement, you can take part in an interactive work created together with artist Lars Noväng.

“Our upright limbs move compulsively in time, on given drum beats we change direction, take a step forward or raise our hands. We are synchronized to our surroundings and move in clear patterns, where each movement is performed at the right moment in the choreography. This tactful performance of our anatomy is both beautiful and dangerous, we don’t have to worry about how our next movement will be carried out, or that we will make an embarrassing misstep.”

Here, Kanslibyrån believes that important countermeasurer are to carefully nurture the irrational and consciously highlight a curious and naive look at the environment. Small-scale interventions, imaginative sorting or the invention of one’s own symmetries become a form of long-distance mental training. The agency’s alternative structure for everyday life constitutes a ritual safeguard against our current production-oriented paradigm.

Opening 24 February 13.00 – 16.00

At 14:00. on the day of the opening, Kanslibyrån will read from its Program Statement.

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More information on Krognoshusets website

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I am participating with three new video tutorials in the exhibition “NUTOPIA – NEW CITY” at Studio 44 and TEGEN2 in Stockholm.

“NUTOPIA – NEW CITY gathers artists, architects, and researchers to explore the question of constructing a new city for some of the world’s many refugees. A starting point is the realization that flight and migration predate communities and cities.

The utopian, the fictionally imagined place of nowhere, is an important source of energy for political imagination but is also seen as the path towards authoritarian experiments and an overly optimistic ordering of life. Today, when the absence of hopeful, egalitarian, and radical visions is deafening, large-scale investments are still being made – with the relocation of Kiruna and emerging battery cities. Thus, the line between utopianism and pragmatic realism is drawn differently depending on whether commercial or humanitarian driving forces rule.

But suppose the utopian is the escape of thought (and art) from a dystopian reality. In that case, fleeing war and oppression can be seen as both the most necessary and utopian of actions, in the movement towards something unknown, perhaps better. Seen this way, the refugee is an essential community builder.

The exhibition is created through a process involving 12 artists who have created many new works never before showcased. In the exhibition are also booklets created by students in the Master course NUTOPIA: Rethinking Architecture and Migration is a collaboration between KTH Architecture and the Museum of Forgetting.”

Curated by Erik Berggren by Ida Rödén
Participating artists are Muhammad Ali, Heba Y. Amin, Maria Backman, Kalle Brolin, Nils Claesson, Felice Hapetzeder, John Huntington, Jakob Krajcik, Kristina Müntzing, Cecilia Parsberg, Erik Pauser, Paula Urbano & Nina Wedberg Thulin

Opening: Friday 23/2, TEGEN2: 17-20 and Studio 44: 17-22.

The image is a still from my film “How to Liquify the Organization (Alchemy at the workplace – Part 1)”

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More information

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Exhibition with Jaqueline Forzelius and John Huntington that focuses on conflict surfaces and meeting points between individuals and the institutions of society. In her sculptural works, Forzelius focuses on stigmatizing, exclusionary and collective norms, and Huntington investigates the alternative sides of administration and bureaucracy, in various techniques.

The show opens Friday 10th of November 2023, 17.00-20.00 at Galleri Nos, in Tallkrogen in Stockholm, and is up until the 19th of November

The exhibition text is written by culture journalist Jimmy Håkansson, and can be read in full here (In Swedish)

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Read more about Galleri Nos

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In my latest exhibition titled “Report from the Twilight Bureaucracy” I am presenting new video, photo and sculptural works.

The Twilight Bureaucracy is a collection of events, objects and experimental strategies that explore the undercurrents of administration and the alternative sides of bureaucracy. The project deals with public employees’ struggle with various administrative systems and presents new safety procedures to combat feelings of powerlessness and ethical stress. The Twilight Bureaucracy proposes a counter-movement – a community of acting public officials who invents various methods and techniques to escape frustration, create sanctuaries, and pour warmth into the spaces in between. The works in the exhibition are small-scale, but simultaneously powerful, ceremonial acts presented in an educational format.

The exhibition is open 29 Sep – 29 Oct at Galleri Box in Gothenburg
Opening on Friday 29 Sep at 17-20.

Image up top: Anna Karin, Personnel Manager, University of Gothenburg
Image below: Installation view at Galleri Box, Photo: Hendrik Zeitler

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Information about the exhibition

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The Twilight Bureaucracy is a series of instructional videos where you can follow me into the alternative sides of administration.

In this channel, we will look into the history of public management, and what kind of objects and techniques have been used by office workers of the past. We will look into present-day administration, how it is performed and executed, and how officials and clerks use loopholes in the system to overcome frustration and alienation. We will look into the future and introduce new rituals and strategies that can be applied by employees of different societal institutions and citizens encountering or interacting with these institutions.

You are welcome to subscribe to the Youtube channel @TwilightBureaucracy

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The New New Gothenburg Spirit (Den nya nya Göteborgsandan) is a performance work that is based on Göteborg Konsthalls own administrative everyday routines, and highlights the systems and phenomena that pervade a completely ordinary working day in the service of the municipal residents. Small-scale examples from a silent tug-of-war are presented: a sometimes painful wrestling match between judgment and structure that takes place behind the facades of all municipal institutions around in the city districts. These acrobatic maneuvers are intertwined with the city’s tunnel vision on economic growth and the contemporary manic acceleration rate that perforates us citizens on all levels.

In the performance, alternative methods are sought out, new ceremonial tactics expand from the basements of administration, strange measures are developed and leads up to a gloomy ritual – a joint exorcism of both new and old ghosts of thought.

Ten employees from the City of Gothenburg participated in the ritual: Matias, Henrik, Mikael, Kajsa, Petra, Jenny, Katarina, Fredrik, Niina and Linda. They where dressed in ceremonial outfits made out of discarded paper and cardboard: leftovers from municipal operations. The participants uphold different positions and are working for various departments of the municipality.

The performance took place to the tunes of Arvsmassan.

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More about the event at the website of Göteborg Konsthall

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As part of Art Week Copenhagen 2023, I am participating in Black Metal Art bar, produced by Live Art Denmark, held at Friisland in Copenhagen. Three separate performance occasions with a new version of The Dark Administrator, and then there is an exhibition up until 30th of June.

More information:

Black metal meets public administration meets German beer!

John Huntington (SE) is accompanied by the apocalyptic sounds by Dödsvarg (SE) in THE DARK ADMINISTRATOR, a performance which demonstrates the darkest rituals of the public administration of the welfare state!

Black’n’Grove band ILLA and Claus Haxholm’s Black Metal project Grev Trold play live outside FRIISLAND.

All events are free of charge.

Lots of cheap German beer!

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PROGRAM:

Saturday June 3rd 2023
18:00 The Dark Administrator (limited access)
19:00 ILLA
19:30 The Dark Administrator (limited access)
20:30 Grev Trold

Sunday June 4th 2023
19:00 The Dark Administrator (limited access)

Tickets for The Dark Administrator at https://www.cphstage.dk/shows/the-dark-administrator

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The first version of The Dark Administrator was coproduced together with Skogen in Gothenburg.

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This year’s conference will take place in the five towns of Jönköping, Tranås, Boxholm, Mjölby och Linköping 4-6 May. There are three intensive program items on the agenda, where irrational support structures and an alternative set of measures are being developed.

Welcome to take part in the conference’s activities on Kanslibyråns Instagram account. The conference applies a variable schedule and the program items will be announced gradually. Stay updated on Thursday – Saturday to experience the gathering digitally.

Image: Climb a mountain in shirt and tie (2022)

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Instagram: @kanslibyran

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Kanslibyrån is performing the work “The Phantom Administration – Proposal No. 147: An Inner Journey” at 13festivalen on January 6th 2023. The work is a guided meditation with Kanslibyrån. Participants are taken on a mental journey among the details of everyday life, where our immediate environments are charged with warmth and the workplace becomes a path to enlightenment. The work is in swedish, 20 minutes long and for a maximum of 20 participants.

13festivalen is taking place on Konstepidemin in Gothenburg 5-7 January 2023.

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Here you can read the whole program for the festival

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