In the era of digital capitalism, Jenny Sunesson borrows the title for the solo show
"Staying with the trouble", and work (Verkstad Konsthall, Norrköping 2023) from Donna Haraway's book of 2016.
Staying with the trouble is Sunesson's personal and playful take on Haraway's future call-out of how to "make with" and not against, whilst exploring ways to modify, “endure” and “irresist”, within the current system.
The exhibition shows two works that Sunesson created 20 years apart; the new installation "Staying with the trouble" (2023) and the video work "A perfect white pet" (2008). In the new work, the child character portrayed in "A perfect white pet" has become 20 years older.
The works explore the far-reaching effects of digital capitalism on human and more-than-human relationships. How can we deal with the instinct to "give up" when the situation feels overwhelming and find new ways to participate by "enduring" and "modifying" the system from the inside?
This kind of speculative “endurance test” occupies Sunesson through-out her career, and her current Modernity series, where she is recording, mapping, and playing around with the digital traces we let into the public sphere and leave behind.
2008
video loop, sound 9’40
The video work, “A perfect white pet”, is an auto-ethnographic investigation that relates to the time Sunesson spent as a housewife in England. The work is part of the trilogy ”The white suite” which consists of three pieces about ”The City, Home and the Human”which Sunesson worked with between 2004 and 2008.