This is an essay examining an artistic production mode revolving around text.

Within the essay, the reader will find the manuscript Suicide Aesthetics, outlining the theoretical concept with the same name. The concept encapsulates a particular yet wide ranging, highly commodified, late-capitalist formula of aesthetics coupled with perpetual intensification. The aesthetics thrive in their constant transformation towards something better. Something prettier; stronger; sexier; bigger; smaller, glitterier; hotter, cooler, shinier, slicker, more expensive, cheaper, glossier. More often than not, these aesthetics are detrimental to the subjects that desire or enjoy them. Suicide aesthetics are also distinctive in that they lead to their own collapse. As this essay will explore, the need for constant intensification or acceleration, and the paradoxical elements inherent to this drive, is what precipitates the collapse. 

The manuscript is followed by reflections on performative respectively academic writing, as well as on my artistic practice in general and my MFA thesis exhibition, Trouble Looking For a Place to Happen, in particular (Galleri Mejan, Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, 2024). I touch upon references which have been crucial to my writing as well as to the flesh of suidide aesthetics; cute accelerationism by Amy Ireland and Maya B. Kronic, necropolitics by Achille Mbembe and cruel optimism by Lauren Berlant. By discussing my own true fandom of the True Blood character Sookie Stackhouse, I further on relate suicide aesthetics to fandom, and examine fandom as it has shaped the material output in Trouble Looking For a Place to Happen, and generated a collection of readymade and semi-ready made merch objects.

Trouble Looking for a Place to Happen was the title of my MFA thesis exhibition. It was on at Galleri Mejan in Stockholm between 22nd of Novemer – 1 of December 2024. The exhibition was a monument of obsession to the hottest Sookie Stackhouse – the protagonist of the TV series True Blood. Sculptures, pictures, merch, dust and readymades of the installation were all placed in the space to tell the story of a fan’s true love of the 25 year old telepath and waitress.