CURRENT CONDITION

“According to a recent study, ‘stress’ is the word most commonly used by today’s forty-somethings. What is this stress about? What do we want?
Current Condition is a photo-novel in four chapters, on how to navigate adult life.
Current Condition consists of four photo novels examining generation x. According to many studies, the word ‘stress’ has been much-used by this age group, and I want to examine what this stress is about. Through four different novels—summer, fall, winter and spring—I wish to compare my generation to the previous one, the Baby Boomers, and also look at the coming one.
Those who came before us took part in a political and social revolution, and amongst the young ones today we find environmentalists such as Greta Thunberg. My theory is that Generation X somehow failed to keep up the fight. Our generation never dared to take a stand on important political issues and we somehow felt as if everything had already been done.
Using these themes, the novels reflect humorously on certain questions, such as what has our generation done to help each other? Is it true that we never dared to be political, hiding our opinions in quotation marks when we wanted to say something? Did political engagement skip a generation?
They also reflect on how women after forty are considered in our society. Why are there so many men represented in ancient sculptures while there are so few women? And how can one change the fact that male artists are called artists while female always have their gender mentioned?
And finally, being middle-aged inevitably calls for an evaluation of one’s work. Two of the photo novels look at how artists work with this feeling that everything has already been made? How is it to work as an artist when one is no longer ‘upcoming’? And how do Generation X artists relate to the new political art scene?”
Nina Strand