"A collection of diary entries from 1977 written by four young Swedish gay men from the Gothenburg area forms the starting point of the installation Our Trip to France (Mont des Tantes). The group belonged to the socialist association Röda Bögar [Red Faggots], and the journal depicts their stay at an international gay liberation camp in southern France.
Over 40 years later, Conny Karlsson Lundgren visited the farm where the camp took place and filmed the empty buildings along with the garden and surrounding landscape. The artist has created a montage of the filmed still images from the site accompanied by archival photographs, saturated summer sounds, and recordings of the diary fragments describing the art of the camp community. We meet the activists during some intense weeks of both joyful and anxious encounters in the heat of the southern European summer. They reflect on relationships, sexuality, politics and the possibility of using drag and female-coded expressions as a playful weapon against the patriarchy.
By letting a younger group of activists voice the diary entries, the installation becomes a place where dreams, desires and memories of different times can meet across historical and generational boundaries." -CKL
Credits :
Director, Camera and Editing: Conny Karlsson Lundgren.
Archive Photo: Eric de Keizer.
Voices: Zafira Vrba Woodski, Olov Kriström, Eddie Mio Larsson, Finn Hellman.
Script: Conny Karlsson Lundgren (based on the travel journals of T, S, B and H from Röda Bögars Diskussionshäfte [Red Faggots' Discussion Folder] No 8/1977).
Script Edit: Clara Diesen.
Grading: Ulf Lundén.
Sound: Jesper Norda.
Translation: Tomas Hemstad and Benny Nemer.
Assistant: Mike Karlsson Lundgren.
Our Trip to France (Mont des Tantes) was commissioned for and produced in collaboration with The Ghost Ship and the Sea Change, the 11th edition of Gothenburg International Biennial of Contemporary Art (GIBCA) in 2021, curated by Lisa Rosendahl.
Exhibitions:
Göteborg Konsthall, Gothenburg SE.
ISCP, New York City US.
Moderna Museet, Stockholm SE.
Ystad Art Museum, Ystad SE.
Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm SE.
Örebro Konsthall, Örebro SE.
Biography
With the help of film, text, image, installation and performance, Conny Karlsson Lundgren's work traverses the boundaries between social, political, and private identities. Turning to interdisciplinary methods, countercultures and social agreements are reimagined through experiences, desires, and secret codes. The ephemeral, accidental traces and moments that challenge existing narratives are a reoccurring fascination, with attention to the archive as both carrier of information and a mechanism of control.
Conny Karlsson Lundgren (b. 1974, Västervik, Sweden) shares his time between Stockholm and Hoby Mosse in the South of Sweden (at times, other places). He participated in the Studio Research Program at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, The Netherlands (2014-2015) and received his MFA from Valand Academy of Fine Arts in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Karlsson Lundgren have been exhibited widely, both in Sweden and internationally. He is represented in the collections of the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Gothenburg Art Museum and Malmö Art Museum, among others and he was the Swedish Arts Grants Committee’s International Program (IASPIS) studio grantholder at ISCP in New York City for 2020—2022. In spring 2024 he had a major mid-career solo exhibition at Bonniers Konsthall in Stockholm and has created Gläntan/The Glade, Sweden’s first LGBTQI+ monument, which was inaugurated in Gothenburg in 2023.