Remember when this used to be fun?
2022

VULKANO Södra Änggården, Gothneburg

Curated by Alexandra Papademetriou and Reyhaneh Mirjahani (co-curator)

Supported by: KulturUngdom

Photos: Philip Liljenberg

When was the last time you saw an artwork that was fun to look at? When was the last time you made something that was fun to make? When was the last time you made something that didn’t have to be approved by a committee of strangers before it could be made? Can an artwork that is pushed through and moulded by a bureaucratic process still be fun? Can it still represent personal, lived human experience? How much can it relate to its viewers, to you and me? If an artwork has to be approved by funding committees and academic juries before it is made, is artistic expression still free? If training in application writing is necessary to make art, is artistic expression still free? Is this art made for bureaucrats? Are the bureaucrats having fun? Within a system that puts intellectualisation, productivity, and efficiency above all else, can fun be subversive?

The aim of this group exhibition was to question and nuance the current shift towards highly academicised, highly bureaucratised art – while at the same time making space for a more spontaneous, more autonomous, more playful mode of art-making. Nine Gothenburg artists, all of whom work with/in artistic research, gathered to create and to present projects they love but which do not otherwise have space to exist within their institutional practices.