Works

FILM / INSTALLATION 

Klotterboken / The Scribble Book


2025
HD video, animation, 4 mins, plexi glass, brass, plywood.
—This book should not be used for any kind of publication within this century.

At the turn of the last century, public toilets in Stockholm were a popular place for people to scribble. The rapidly growing city offered anonymity, something that also public toilets could provide. Under the cover of night, the toilets were transformed into an ideal scene for cruising, where men could anonymously meet and have casual sex. 

During this period, Bengt Claudelin (1879—1939) worked at the Hallwylska Residence in Stockholm, cataloguing all the objects in Countess von Hallwyl’s vast collections. In his spare time, Claudelin collected obscenities in a series of notebooks containing a mixture of scribblings from public toilets, newspaper clippings and stories of a more erotic nature. 
After his death, his papers were donated to the Hallwylska Museum, but the director at the time considered the content of the so-called scribble books too daring and did not allow them to be displayed publicly until the 2000s. 

The first of the five books contains simple line drawings from public toilets. Klotterboken/The Scribble Book reproduces all the erotic images from the first book at a scale of 1:1. The drawings are brought to life here, each body is traced and animated according to its position on the pages of the scribble book. Together they form an abstraction of fleeting bodies, in a feverish chase, in a constant state of disintegration. In Karlsson Lundgren’s animation, the bodies are separated, further illustrating the era’s, the law’s and the judiciary’s view of bodily desire.

Installation view, Sunset/Sunrise, Norrtälje Konsthall, 2025. 
Klotterboken/The Scribble Book, 1 min excerpt (cropped), HD animation 4 mins.
Installation view, Sunset/Sunrise, Norrtälje Konsthall, 2025. In the back Strömgatan 2.


ABOUT Commissioned for the exhibition Sunset/Sunrise at Norrtälje Konsthall. EXHIBITIONS Norrtälje Konsthall, Norrtälje SE.

 ©MMXXV Conny Karlsson Lundgren