The factory talks project was initiated by the artist duo FACTORY WORKERS UNITE in an attempt to create different forms of knowledge sharing and collective image making, but also really to search for new ways of simply hanging out and being together, in a realm of individualising, competitive precarity and the impossibility of unionisation. ‘Factory talks’ is really a collaborative work method, where colleagues and friends are invited to think and do together, in a work environment that moves away from the normal situations of knowledge exchange and artistic or theoretical categorisation. The factory talks always revolve around a third component, situation or obstacle that aim at evening out habitual knowledge or skill-set hierarchies. Factory Talk at Joy Forum brings together two of these factory talks.

Lights Out Factory, 2022
‘Lights-out manufacturing’ refers to a completely robotic production that, by virtue of its independence from human intervention, can take place in darkened factory premises. Around the world, several so-called ‘dark factories’ breathe daily life into the wet dream of the worker without needs, demands and senses. A dream of a sustainable future, where the workers’ time is freed up, work accidents averted, overproduction eliminated and, of course, energy saved in the dark. However, the robotic society, where manual labor has been made unnecessary, risks creating a divided society between the cognitive worker and the service worker, blind to the citizen for whom welfare and security largely depend on a place in the labor market. ‘Lights-out manufacturing’ thereby balances between a future that promises unprecedented possibilities and at the same time seems blind to the need to rethink, redistribute and abandon certain established structures. This delicate balance is the focal point of Lights Out Factory, in which a darkened factory floor were created, where artists and thinkers were invited to explore ideas about collective production, lighting of dark machinery and the potential of blindness, whilst labouring in the dark on a production of ceramic coffee cups. Now the factory floor is abandoned - only the echo of workers in conversation take up the space. Yet in the dim light work is still taking place.
(With: Signe Leth Gammelgaard, Eskild Halberg, Molly Haslund, Liv Nimand Duvå, Hannah Anbert, Tais Terletskaja, Ask Katzeff, Malte Starck, Søren Thilo Funder and Tina Helen.)

Children’s Games (Puzzled), 2019
The attempt to make a 4000 piece puzzle depicting the classic painting Children’s Games (1560) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, forms the focal point of a meeting that explores how, and if, the repetitive and playful pastime activity of jigsaw puzzles might serve as a productive terrain for the construction of a community, where knowledge sharing can take shape through conversation. Filmed from a bird’s-eye view, over the course of a week, it records the artists in the company of several groups of invited artists, art workers, thinkers and their children, gathered around the slow creation of the jigsaw puzzle. Bruegel’s painting is overwhelming in terms of detail and completely unique in its choice of playful children as the central motif. Albeit never completed in Children’s Games (Puzzled), the image becomes a springboard for discussions and musings among the many voices, hands and heads taking part; from conversations about play and knowledge, the city, and the role of art in society, to the role of children in urban space and the potentiality of art processes that fail. Through an open-ended and self-reflective approach to collaborative investigation and ‘learning by doing’, questions of what might be termed participation, creation and knowledge production within the context of contemporary art are raised.
(With Michala Paludan, Vito, Rolf Nowotny, Uma, Frans Jacobi, Line Ellegaard, Karl August, Henrik, Chulu, Katrine Malinovsky, Kristoffer Ørum, Otto, Jakob Jakobsen, Thilo, Johanne Løgstrup, Fargo, Sylvester Roepstorff, Uma, James Day, Ingimar, Åse Eg, Pia Rönicke, Anu Ramdas, Kasper Opstrup, Johanne Østervang, Malik, Solvind, Misja Thirslund Krenchel, Vester, Rasmus Brink Pedersen, Søren Thilo Funder and Tina Helen.)

FACTORY WORKERS UNITE is a collaborative factory space for working and thinking shared by Tina Helen and Søren Thilo Funder. It forms an ongoing investigation of the physical, cultural, cognitive and social factory, comprising factory floors of warehouses, archives, assembly lines, artist studios, museum spaces, reading rooms, shopping malls, lecture halls, sports arenas, political assemblies, nature experiences, holiday retreats, family structures, media platforms, game systems, cybernetic networks, playgrounds, love lifes, unions and friendships.