An Architecture of Encounters (Home for Lazy Action) was een expositie / GPS-Project, door Das Spectrum, Utrecht.
Read more »2018.SHW: An Architecture of Encounters (Home for Lazy Action)
2018.SHW: An Architecture of Encounters (Home for Lazy Action)
Lange Nieuwstraat 4 // Utrecht
Open // February 8th to February 25th
Thursday to Sunday // 12.00 -18.00h
With contributions by Andreas Arndt (SE), Mitchel Breed (NL), Peter van der Horst (NL), Csilla Klenyánszki (HU), Fiona Mackay (UK), Clemens Reinecke (DE), Eva Spierenburg (NL), Pim Tieland (NL) and Clarinde Wesselink (NL)
^^ Photographic documentation by Joyce Vlaming and the photo's of the finissage by Mariska Kerpel.
>> You can download and listen this GPS-Podcast by Andreas Arndt, Verena Klary, Sanne Pawelzyk en Thomas Schlereth about art and life while browsing through this page.
>> For detailed information about the various contributions, click here.
An Architecture of Encounters - Home for Lazy Action
Welcome to the Home for Lazy Action. An investigation into the possibilities of a temporary open space where those who are engaged in artistic endeavours can meet, work and have the right to act lazy. These are the days of high performance. Both in art and life. Stuck in the rat race of productivity and visibility, you might forget to take some air and remember, fundamentaly, we are all just breathers.
As an attempt to open up space for an approach that defies the pressure to perform, visual artist Mitchel Breed initiated An Architecture of Encounters. A series of events that facilitate meaningful artistic encounters, in opposition to emphasising art as a means to fuel up a spectacle. Its second edition, Home for Lazy Action - initiated in close collaboration with artist Pim Tieland - aims not to present a completed exhibition, but to take a step back, create and reflect on the conditions under which artistic activities can take place. Mirroring present day co-working spaces, this home offers time and space for those who’d like to contribute to an atmosphere where things can grow, where you can reflect and have a dialogue or simply come and have a coffee and be lazy for a moment.
To realise this, a diverse group of artists have been invited to make a contribution and give shape to the space and its activities. Ranging from instructions for a DIY limbo bar, a recorded group conversation on art and life, a wallpaper design based on sculptures made during the 30 minutes naps of the newborn child of an artist-mother, playful animations as online promotion for the project, to a series of experimental drawing sessions in which the act of drawing opens a middle ground between artist and audience.
Lazy Action describes a way to act that is not purposefully productive, and more related to art as a way of living than working. Art means to do, art means action, activity of any kind and at any pace. So take your time, leave your Macbook Air and bring your lazy chair.
The expression ‘Lazy Action’ is derived from the essay ‘Marcel Duchamp and the Refusal of Work’ by Maurizio Lazzarato, in which the author describes Duchamp as celebrating laziness in art. With this he is refusing to submit to the functions, roles and norms of capitalistic society, among which the identification with a profession. “What am I? Do I even know? A human, quite simply, a breather.” Duchamp encourages us to imagine and exercise a ‘refusal of work’, which constitutes an ethical-political principle that goes beyond work, which frees us from the enchanted circle of production, productivity and producers. For the creative process is present in all kinds of activity, it’s the tendency to act, at any pace. He proposes to develop and experiment with all the possibilities that ‘lazy action’ creates in order to carry out a reconversion of subjectivity, to invent new techniques of existence and new ways living time.
The first edition of An Architecture of Encounters in collaboration with visual artist Peter van der Horst, took place at the former Das Spectrum building, and was inspired by the text ‘Exhaustion and Exuberance - Ways to Defy the Pressure to Perform’ by Jan Verwoert.
An Architecture of Encounters - Home for Lazy Action is made possible with the kind support of the Mondrian Fund.
