This lecture will explore the idea of artistic practice as offering a set of tools to interact with dominant systems of circulation today—what or who provides the means for materials, people, and data to travel? To attempt to dirty up the clean and slick representations of consumer experiences, the bright promises of near futures, is to bring forward the logics and repressions that also flow, the material messes, the ecological demands of corporate control, the invisible labor behind the smart machinery. What are the potential avenues for art to translate these seemingly abstract and distant phenomena into tangible forms and situations, to be understood and reimagined by intimate groups and public encounters?

Benjamin Gerdes is an artist, writer, researcher, and organizer working primarily in video and related public formats. He is interested in intersections of radical politics, knowledge production, and popular imagination. His work focuses on the affective and social consequences of economic and state regimes, investigating methods for art and cultural projects to contribute to social change. His individual and collaborative projects emerge via long-term research processes in dialogue with activists, trade unionists, architects, and geographers, among others. Exhibitions and screenings include: The Centre Pompidou, National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), New Museum (New York), Rotterdam International Film Festival, Museum of the Moving Image (New York), Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Venice Architecture Biennale, and the Tate Modern. After two decades in New York City, he is presently based in Stockholm at the Royal Institute of Art, where he directs the Swedish Research Council-funded artistic research project Ghost Platform: Generating the “Complex Image” of Data, Labour, and Logistics. In addition, he maintains an ongoing research affiliation with the Department of Visual Culture at the Technical University of Vienna.

In addition to the Monday Lecture you are invited to a guided bike trip through the world's longest pedestrian tunnel to the suburb- Fyllingsdalen on Tuesday, the 17th of October. Bring a bike and show up outside Kunsthall 3,14 (Vågsallmenningen 12) at 5 PM. A podcast collage will be produced for you and published on Spotify Kunsthall 3,14 podcast: Dare to Hear. Bring your headphones. The trip takes one hour in total. However, after 30 min you can take the light trail/Bybane back to the city center from Oasen. The event is free, and it will be partly in English and some in Norwegian. Bring a friend, because this is a great opportunity for you to try the new tunnel that international media is so excited about. Yet to be discovered by the locals!

Monday Lectures are a public platform combining invited guest lecturers and professors and researchers of the faculty at KMD. Monday Lectures aim to create a diverse programme of lectures exploring a wide range of disciplines and research topics. Lectures typically take place Mondays 10:00 at the Knut Knaus Auditorium and are free and open to all.

Image: Benjamin Gerdes