breathe@livingwithimages.info
@thereisonlyparadise

Living With Images (LWI) is the interdependent design and research practice of Johnny Chang, working with concepts, identities, books & publications, illustration, exhibitions, websites, writing, and artistic research, cultivating and reimagining visual and material cultures with collaborators and communities.

LWI is interested in the sense making (and breaking)—or poetics—of visual language, weaving concepts and expressions in relation to social-historical conditions toward nourishing collective, resilient capacities for sensing, feeling, and being.

*Living With Images borrows its name from a public talk titled, “Living without images” given by Jiddu Krishnamurti in Saanen, Switzerland, 19 July 1981. Krishnamurti speaks about how images, image-concepts our minds create to form relations, is a source of conflict, and that it is necessary to try to live without a single image. If language is already image-forming, our relationships between each other and things informed by images, if perceiving and thinking is to already form images, then what are the tools needed to live among and with these images and our image-forming habits?

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Johnny Chang (b.1988, US-TW/SE) is an interdisciplinary designer, artist, and researcher based in Stockholm. Chang’s design practice often works through workshop, dialogue, and research led processes, poetically weaving across critical discourse, theory, and practice in relation to the visual politics and aesthetics of specific contexts, conditions, and communities, crafting open, affective worlds.

He maintains an artistic practice, occasionally participating in artist residencies, and contributing to exhibitions, conferences, and publications. Chang also continues a teaching practice, and has lectured, held workshops, and served as an opponent and examiner at design and art programs including  Konstfack Visual Communication BA/MFA and Fine Art BA/MFA, Konstfack Research Week, Stockholm University Curating Art MA, and TACK Communities of Tacit Knowledge: Architecture and its Ways of Knowing PhD program.

He is a part of the artist collective Grounding Future(s), co-organizes the platforms Munnen and Gathering Against, organizes the publishing collective Wake Up, and was a member of Brown Island.

In 2019, he received an MFA in Visual Communication from Konstfack, and previously graduated from ArtCenter College of Design in Graphic Design. He holds a breadth of experience working independently with various studios, agencies, and communities in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, and Stockholm.

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Collaborations with

Valeria Montti Colque
Failing Nearby: A performance which questions (its own) (failing) language, with Munish Wadhia and Afrang Nordlöf Malekian
Gathering Against, with Jenny Richards
Munnen, with Sara Kaaman, Tony Karlsson Savci, and Michael Bekele
water is (non-life), with mirko nikolić
Louise Khadjeh-Nassiri
Wake Up, with Shaon Chakraborty, Makda Embaie, Sara Kaaman, Tony Karlsson Savci, Louise Khadjeh-Nassiri and
Jenny Richards

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Current and Upcoming

Gathering Notes (Language Is Also A Place Of Struggle)
Organizing?!, OEI

Feeling the “and”s, Wake Up
Organizing?!, OEI

The Art of Conviviality
MSA Nordic Biannual Conference
Malmö University
Installation and Reading, and a
Panel Discussion on Community Archives
organized with Macarena Dusant and René Leon Rosales
October 2024

Samlande tankar/Collecting Thoughts
Artist in Residence
Grafikens Hus, 2022–24

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Selected Clients

Luleåbiennalen 2024
Konstfrämjändet Norrbotten
Grafikens Hus
Noncitizen
Botkyrka Konsthall
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Moderna Dance Teatern
Ian Kaler
Stina Nyberg
Urgent Pedagogies, IASPIS
IASPIS
NonStop Timeless & Nordic Co-productions
TACK Communities of Tacit Knowledge
Cyklopen
Kultwatch.se
Story AB
Astra Magazine
Uppsala kommun
Red Bull Music Academy Radio
Kasthall
Amnesty International