Anna Lundh Miss Clock (into the groove)
Solo exhibition
Curator: Anna-Karin Wulgué
Takvåningen, Färgfabriken
The exhibition Miss Clock (into the groove) explores time through the lens of digitalization and society, while examining questions of sex and gender in connection with technology—particularly ”speaking technologies.” The work investigates how our relationship to the human voice, and its role as marker of identity and interpersonal trust, is being radically transformed.
Anna Lundh traces the origins of these speaking machines all the way back to 1934 when the groundbreaking time-telling service ”Fröken Ur” (Miss Clock) was introduced in Sweden, making it possible for the first time to find out the time by dialing a phone number at any time of the day (whereupon a female voice automatically announced the time). ”She” still exists, with updated voice and technology; audio files controlled by an algorithm, monitored by the Swedish Research Institute. ”Miss Clock” can be considered one of the first automated voice assistants and is an early example of when existing technology is described as a blend of human and machine. ”She” also represents a prediction that someone we recognize by voice might actually turn out to be a machine.
Through a series of works in the form of video, sound, photography, and performance, the exhibition examines the particular state that this societal phenomenon represents – a hybrid between human and machine, between analog and digital time, between past and future. Among other things, Lundh has worked with a series of analog and digital processes to recreate optical sound and with simulations of ”Miss Clock”’s specific technology through human bodies and voices. A central part of the exhibition consists of a newly produced lecture performance.
A Clockwork Brunette – A performance of Anna Lundh
On January 22 2025, in connection with the opening of the exhibition, Anna Lundh invites the audience to a performance – A Clockwork Brunette.
In this new lecture performance, artist Anna Lundh investigates the gendered history of speaking technologies, tracing its connections to time, technology, and the evolving role of the human voice in society.
Read more about the performance here.
About the artist
Anna Lundh is a visual artist based in Stockholm, and is also a PhD candidate at Konstfack and the Royal Institute of Technology. Lundh’s transdisciplinary artistic practice often reworks and reactivates historical phenomena and artistic visions and manifests in video, sound, installation, web-based works, text, and lecture performance.
Her work has been exhibited in Sweden at venues including the Modern Museum, Bonniers Konsthall, Moderna Malmö, Tensta Konsthall, and the GIBCA biennial, and internationally at institutions such as the New Museum, The Kitchen, and Performa in New York; the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, MMCA, in Seoul, Korea; as well as in the Netherlands, Norway, Finland, and Denmark.
The project ”Miss Clock” is part of Lundh’s PhD project at Konstfack and the Royal Institute of Technology, which explores themes such as time and temporality, as well as our increasingly complex and entangled relationship with technology.
Open Studio
This exhibition is part of Färgfabrikens Open Studio. Färgfabriken’s Open Studio helps to give exposure to creative thinking at a time when it’s still in flux, by inviting various fascinating creators to take over a project space for a short period of time.