Lewis Henderson, “No One Is Bored, Everything Is Boring,” at Galleri Mejan, Stockholm.

“No One Is Bored, Everything Is Boring” by Lewis Henderson, at Galleri Mejan, Stockholm, 25/10/2024 – 02/11/2024.

Exhibition Text:
I remember a time before the commodification of design of the portable telephone. Now every phone looks the same; it’s become a completely ubiquitous design, so much so, that anything other than a shiny black rectangle seems completely novel and absurd. Before this standardization, we had huge swathes of devices, each with a completely individual and often quite bizarre take on the mobile phone. It was a fun, exciting class of technology that seemed to be moving forward at breakneck speed, completely reinventing itself every few months or years. There was a specificity of design. Different countries, times, cities, social groups, and professions all asked for different things from this new technology. Having something different was seen as a cool thing, and in this moment it seemed anything imaginable was feasible.

Now, all that has been forgotten. We have moved away from the anarchists’ dream of technological fecundity and embraced a monopolized idea of what this thing is. BUT—it seems we have forgotten that technology is something that we make, and just as easily could make differently. This show looks at this idea of technological fecundity and asks the question: if we were to embrace a different way of looking at technological production, could we bring about a new way of being in the world driven by the technology we have created ourselves, and thus pave the way for a radically different tomorrow?