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Kanslibyrådagarna is a conference about irrationality and inefficiency that takes place every second year. In this year’s edition, Kanslibyrån and Konsthall 323 are collaborating to provide an exciting and intensive program, which includes twenty-five artistic actions carried out in public environments. This year’s conference is mobile and will take place in Karlstad, Kristinehamn, Karlskoga, Örebro and Arboga, with a finale in Stockholm!

The final event in Stockholm will take place on Sunday 29 June 16.00-17.00 at Slipvillan, where Kanslibyrån will present the results of the conference and talk about previous activities. Snacks and drinks will be served and you are welcome to hang out in the garden until 20.00

The rest of the conference applies a flexible schedule and a selection of documented program items will be published continuously on Kanslibyrån’s and Konsthall 323’s Instagram accounts.

Kanslibyrån is an activist group and artistic institution consisting of Per-Arne Sträng and John Huntington. The bureau is engaged in a struggle in everyday life where rationality, obedience and efficiency are questioned on both a public and personal level. The agency explores the irrational as an act of resistance, bureaucracy as aesthetics and everyday life as an artistic space. Kanslibyrån’s most extensive project, The Archive of Actions, is a series of works that today consists of 690 artistic actions carried out primarily in public space.

Instagram: @kanslibyrån
Website: kanslibyrån.se

Konsthall 323 is an art institution in a car run by artists Frida Krohn and Ylva Trapp. The agency was founded in 2010. Our most common parking lot is in the Stockholm area, but our views change. We show up where we are needed.

Instagram: @konsthall323
Website: konsthall323.se

Image: Action No. 646: Roll out a red carpet

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A pedagogic and performative lecture about bureaucracy, creativity, and resistance. With the office as a starting point, the event explores the modern human tendency — or even addiction — to systematise everything around them. I will present examples from the long-term project The Twilight Bureaucracy — a collection of events, objects, and interventions that delve into the hidden layers of administration and the alternative realities of office life.

The session will introduce various ritualistic methods — small-scale, practical techniques that can be used in the workplace to combat feelings of powerlessness and frustration.

The event includes a short practical exercise. Each participant is asked to bring one printed, text-based document from their current workplace. Extra standardised papers will be provided for those who come empty-handed.

The event is part of the exhibition “The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems” curated by Roberta Atraste as part of the Riga Photography Biennial—NEXT 2025

When: Thursday 29 May at 18.00
Where: Experimental Art Space “Pilot” of the Art Academy of Latvia, Vāgnera Street 3, Rīga.

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‍More information about the event and how to sign up

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“The exhibition The Bureaucrat Who Secretly Reads Poems looks towards the bureaucratic and administrative processes involved in art. Although these practices existed even before conceptual art, it was in the 1960s that artists began functioning as “managers” and “clerks”. Those in the field of visual art were among the first to entrust the production of their work to others – not in order to completely erase or dematerialise the art object, as is sometimes believed, but rather to engage in such activities as registering, documentation, archiving, listing and indexing. In art history, these practices are sometimes related to the concept of institutional criticism. Yet it is also possible to see them in another light, stressing the often-ignored absurd, poetic, psychological and sometimes even pleasurable aspects of these procedures. The aim of the exhibition is to study and present the aesthetics of bureaucratic and administrative processes in a contemporary context.

The Pilot Gallery is located on the ground floor of an office building, providing an opportunity to reach out not only to the gallery’s visitors but perhaps also to its neighbours.”

The exhibition is part of Riga Photography Biennial – NEXT 2025

Curator: Roberta Atraste (LV)
Participants: John Huntington (SE), Arta Kauliņa (LV), Sara Krøgholt Trier (DK), Katariin Mudist (EE), Evija Pintāne (LV)
Scenographer: Krišjānis Beļavskis (LV)

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April 25 – June 6
Experimental Art Space “Pilot” of the Art Academy of Latvia, Vāgnera Street 3, Rīga.
Opening hours: Tuesday-Saturday 12:00-18:00. Free entrance.

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Do you think that things easily grow too big? That different phenomena in your life consume too much time, energy and resources? That expansion and acceleration are concepts that are uncomfortable?

Then you are most welcome to a practical exercise in shrinking, taking place at Skogen in Gothenburg. As a participant, you will be guided through a small-scale ritual that does not require any prior knowledge.

The drive to constantly expand is deeply embedded in our culture, it is a form of fundamental edict that a positive movement forward always goes hand in hand with an increase in size. It is not only economies that need to grow, but cities and municipalities must become larger, reach and impact must increase, working hours and years must increase. While these larger movements are happening, we are also expected to grow as individuals.

Maybe we should therefore practice shrinking?

The event is in Swedish, free of charge, about 45 minutes long, and afterward soup is served.

Book at spot here

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RITE is a research platform that, in practice and theory, is dedicated to transition and sustainable social formation.

RITE is trying to respond to the societal transformation we are all now experiencing and the great transformation we have ahead of us, based on our conviction that this process involves very profound changes in our cultural fabric, our beliefs and social institutions.

RITE therefore approaches – in theory and practice – the underlying thought systems and invisible ritual behaviors that have governed our institutions and our social fabric through modernity: Thought models and practices that are also often the very root of the problems we are now trying to get the same institutions to solve.

This happens in interaction with what we call the ritual spaces of society: the space of learning, the space of law, the space of urban planning, the space of economics, the space of politics, etc. Spaces that are all interconnected, but at the same time also carry their own rites and stories. In our work, we seek out these different social spaces in order – together with those who work there – to uncover and make visible the underlying operating systems of the spaces and explore how these can be changed, opened up or put into play.

The Rite Development Group is part of RITE and focuses on the ability of rites and rituals to touch and create tangibility. We also test how new rites can be introduced in different contexts in society, in ways that open up other spaces of thought, interruptions, ways out and possibilities for action.

The group is Lars Noväng, Johan Forsman, Sara Granér, Ludvig Lindelöf and John Huntington.

More info at: www.rite.agency

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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 is performed at Skogen in Gothenburg 30 Nov and 1 Dec 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

Watch the trailer:

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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” and financed by Vetenskapsrådet

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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An exhibition at Köttinspektionen in Uppsala presenting experimental strategies from the alternative sides of bureaucracy and the undercurrents of administration. The show deals with the struggle that public servants have with different administrative systems. New protective measures are presented: various attempts to ward off feelings of powerlessness and ethical stress.

The title of the exhibition is borrowed from the Swedish Riksbank: the motto “Hinc robur et securitas”, is a form of incantation intended to guarantee the value of the Swedish krona. In this and other ways, institutions and companies use words of power to fortify themselves, embody and summon themselves into our everyday life. Sometimes in unpleasant forms.

A counter-movement is proposed here – a twilight bureaucratic community of acting officials and clerks who invent various techniques to escape frustration, create safe spaces, take over the words of power and pour warmth into the institutional operations.

The works in the exhibition are small-scale, nonetheless powerful, ceremonial acts presented in an educational format.

The opening of the show is 5th of October and it is up until the 20th
Artist talk 19 Oct at 16.00

In the exhibition there is a video describing the construction of light blue lumps for guidance, here is the link to the PDF with instructions:
Making Your Own Lump for Guidance – The complete manual

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More information about the show at Köttinspektionens website

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Based on Jan Watteu’s art collection, the artists Henrik Ekesiöö and Mikael Goralski have made a selection of mostly dead artists from the collection. These artists have then been brought together with contemporary living artists and organized according to the Deadly Sins in the expanded field. This strict division has since been abandoned for a more organic approach.

Kanslibyrån (Per-Arne Sträng & John Huntington) is participating with two works in the exhibition “KOSMISK KASTRERING # 4711 – En likkista snickrad inifrån” at Norrtälje Konsthall opening on Saturday October 5th 2024. The exhibition is up 5 October – 23 November.

Participating artists:
Max Book – Lova Hamilton – Alfredo Jaar – Mark Hampson – Armand Rosander – Eric M. Nilsson – Gunnar Hallström – Leif Eriksson – Ture Sjölander – Joakim Stampe – Pierre Olofsson – Georg Olofsson – Carl Fredrik Reuterswärd – Gun Key Åberg – Karin Wikström – Ida-Johanna Lundqvist – Petr Davydtchenko – Monica von Rosen – Lotta Melin – Margareta Renberg – Peter Geschwind – Lars Hillersberg – Bo Trankell – Peter Kinny Buster Hollingworth – Stig Sjölund – Mattias Hellberg – Karl Olov Björk – Hans Hermansson – Ida Idaida – Isak Sundström – Marianne Vlaschits – Alfonso del Moral – Alisa Grifo – KIOSK New York – Lennart Rodhe – Björn Stampes – Albert Contreras – Bror Hjorth – Viktor Rosdahl – Henrik Ekesiöö – Stefan Karrer – Peter Johansson Åke Nordlander – Pug Karlsson – Juri Markkula – Theresa Traore Dahlberg – Josefine Östberg Olsson – Hans Hatwig Klas Barbrosson – Sigvard Olsson – Lage Lindell – Randi Fisher – Lars Olof Loeld – Freddie Wadling – Sofia Viol – Mark Frygell – Lars Kleen – Daniel Johnston – Sandra Isacsson – Mikael Goralski – Jiri Geller – Louise Adelborg – Björn Larsson – Ester Cavallin – Lars Vilks – Lars Andersson – Leif Eriksson – Sam Westerholm – Ulf Olsson – Alberto Frigo – Paul McCarthy – Markus Öhrn – Pablo Picasso – Sture Nilsson – Tal R – David Åberg – Thomas Hansson Folke Fermelin – Sture Nilsson – Lennart Andersson – Ulla Wiggen – Christer Chytraéus – Benedict Drew – Gunnar Hallström – Kanslibyrån – Tova Mozard – Jan Håfström – Birgit Ståhl – Nyberg – Åke Pallarp – Roger Risberg – Sture Johannesson – Karl Grandin – Karl Grandin/A Formal Apology – Joakim Forsgren – Simon Sjöström – Leon Harmon/Ken Knowlton – Gunnar Löberg – Alf Olsson – David Finn – David Engström – Karl Marin – Michael Johansson – Petter Zennström

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More information about the exhibition

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This year Frihetsförmedlingen (The Swedish Public Freedom Service) celebrates its 10th anniversary, and at the same time has the possibility of inaugurating a permanent office in Boden. This is celebrated together with freedom seekers on site in the new self-service office, housed in Havremagasinet Konsthall.

The initiators Lars Noväng and John Huntington are present to describe Frihetsförmedlingen’s activities and discuss the connection between the development of freedom and the art of quitting.

At Frihetsförmedlingen’s self-service office in Boden, everyone is free to issue their own freedom permits, or give such a permit to others; to apply for other freedom meassures at the digital workstation, and of course to take advantage of the agency’s forms and other information that can be helpful when expanding your freedom. The office can also be used for structured inactivity and other forms of non-doing.

A warm welcome to the opening on Thursday 5 September at 17.00-18.00 at Havremagasinet in Boden

Opening speech and official inauguration at 17:30

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For more information see Havremagasinet website

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Kanslibyrån participates in the annual group exhibition at Årstad Konsthall, where the bureau had the opportunity to activate the former dairy owners home and office. Using everyday objects, the bureau shaped ritual symmetries on site in the different rooms.

Other participants in the exhibition are: Anita Wohlén, Caroline Mårtensson, Elin Wikström, Falkenberg Art School, Joel Stuart Beck, Johan Zetterquist, Josefine Östberg Olsson, Kanslibyrån, MASU, Mikael Ericsson, Nils Ramhøj and Peter Johansson.

The exhibition is open 13 – 28 July 2024, for more information see: Konst och Motor 2024

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A secret society of civil servants, administrators and public officials, initiated in May 2024

The Swedish word “Undercentral” (roughly translated to a “Sub-centre”) is the name for a room/facility in a building that, from its location in the basement, distributes heat to the entire house.

Undercentralen deals with the both complex and rigid reality found within administrative, bureaucratic professions and highlights how ritual methods and artistic expression can constitute a form of distributed art activity: Where an extensive network of officials becomes the creators of a simultaneously secretive and fully visible work of art that can be found all over the country.

The participants belong to professional groups that have clear functions aimed at all of us citizens: employees in both public and private institutions that provide different societal services and where everyday work is characterized by administration. It can be about everything from pre-school placements to bank matters, from social insurance handling to family counseling, internet delivery to tax reporting. Here are professional groups that shape large parts of our reality, handle all official matters, interpret the texts of public directives, and decipher the politics. Groups that have significant underlying power, a power that makes an ordinary working day full of highly existential matters and depth.

Regardless of the content of an activity, there are certain common psychological phenomena within many administrative professions, and Undercentralen highlights two of these: professional stress over being responsible for the well-being of other people and powerlessness in regard to the system design of one’s own work. The project therefore initiates a movement, a community of acting officials, who in various individual ways try to invent strategies and techniques to escape the frustration that these phenomena give rise to.

The network is populated by those who feel that something is missing on an existential level. The group provides a low-intensity activity at Sweden’s office workplaces and in its home offices. Presenting a tug of war between freedom and structure, between one’s own judgment and regulations, and between emotions and logic. The tension between these poles is charged with energy: and concepts that at first glance can be seen as opposites are instead brought together. Bureaucracy and art become synonyms, giving rise to new ways of expressing oneself.

How do I join?

It is still possible to join the network and become a member of Undercentralen, a network of civil servants from different parts of the country who design and share small-scale works of art in their workplaces.

Anyone who is employed and has a job that is largely characterized by administration is welcome to participate. Practically, it is structured as a digital exchange, where small “exercises” are provided such as creative tasks, simple questions, and suggestions for interventions or observations. The documentation of these activities then gives rise to new exercises and workplace experiments.

Participation will be on a simple and playful level. If you want to participate or are curious and want to know more, send an e-mail to undercentralen1@gmail.com

The communication will be in Swedish. Participation can be either open or anonymous.

The project has financial support from Göteborg Stad, the title of the project was inspired by artist Lars Noväng

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