Boredom Is Not a Luxury (2021)
Curated by Seray Ozdemir 
31st August-4th September 2021 @ Craft Central London

Working to optimize for and invest in the future has become our mode of being, yet the constant precarity and insecurity we are being subjected to by market forces mean that we can’t even begin to see what’s two steps ahead of us. Digital diversions ensure that we are never present in the present either. We are so used to being simultaneously stimulated by various types of media to the point where not multitasking feels unnatural. To most, the idea of actually doing nothing sounds foreign if not completely implausible or even anxiety-inducing, as maybe we started finding comfort in exhausting our receptors too much to leave space for self-reflection.

 

Audre Lorde teaches us* that if the revelation and distillation of experience and feelings have become a luxury, then we have given up our power and we have given up the future of our worlds. If today, our perpetual state of severe ennui and mental fatigue makes achieving self-awareness a luxury; then we propose embracing boredom as a resistance technique. Inviting boredom into our lives collectively would mean rejecting the neoliberal achievement-obsessed mentality and disengaging ourselves from the ethos of never-ending productivity. Borrowing from Lorde, we acknowledge boredom as a tool for tangible action and change; therefore, a route to freedom.

 

In this exhibition, boredom takes diverse forms including 3D avatars having an existential crisis, a Lady Gaga look-alike questioning neoliberalism, singing as a way to enter the virtual realm, a never-ending car journey into the night, daydreaming about human-slipper hybrids, self-strangulation with a plastic bag, a stroll along the Thames, doing laundry, baking banana bread, and more. 

 

Let us affirm together: Boredom is not a luxury.

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*Audre Lorde, Poetry Is Not a Luxury, 1977. Further Sources of Inspiration Include: A Philosophy of Boredom by Lars Svensen, The Plenitude of Distraction by Marina van Zuylen, and Work, Body, Leisure.

 

Organized by Anna Kolosova and Melissa Vipritskaya Topal

 

Participating Artists: Ana Blumenkron, Anna Kolosova, Apple Tart & K Anthony, Blake Hart-Wilson, Brigit Kovax, Charlotte Yao, Clare Haxby, Daniel Freaker, Dawn Parsonage, Ellen Ball, Fritz Polzer, Jakob Buraczewski, Joe Goldman, Kate McDonnell, Melissa Vipritskaya Topal, Nadia J. Armstrong, Patrick O’Donnell, Polam Chan, Romina Belda, Ruyi Ding, Simon Pike, Seray Ozdemir, Virginie Tan, Woo Jin Joo