State of Things

On Monday 15th of October 13.00 pm (Lecture Hall S4), the artist duo Pernilla Karlsson Sjödin and Tobias Karlsson will be holding a lecture about their project State of Things. The work is based on documentation of malls and other commersial spaces with a blurred border between the private and public space and their agencies. A large number of photos work both as a documantation of a specific time and as a visual investigation of our urge for consuming and the structures that lays behind it.

"The culture of shopping formed in the modern arenas of consumption has an unstable status. From various positions within political, cultural and social life, the culture of consumption is criticised for seducing, blinding, and stupefying its passive participants. But how does this actually work? What roles do media play in the processes of consumption? Are there better, sharper arguments to support the critiques? Or are there perhaps important and valuable social and cultural relationships being developed behind the facade of commercialisation? What are the meanings of those acts that appear irrational, aimless or economically wasteful? Are they perhaps goal-oriented and satisfying, even productive? What tensions are concealed within the communicative acts and encounters that form this central aspect of contemporary daily life?"

This text is describing the research project Popular Passages: Media in the Modern Consumption Space. You can read more about this. See Links.