Hold On
|
11.1.20 – 22.2.20 Hold On is an exhibition that addresses the ongoing systematisation of our emotions and behaviours under neoliberalism from a critical angle. The philosopher Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi uses the word “swarm” to define the tendency of individuals to act as a uniform organism whose actions are automatically shaped. Seeking to subvert this condition, the seven international artists whose works constitute this exhibition tackle a series of concerns related to how our subjectivities, relationships, virtual and physical expectations are constituted today, and how this has been tacitly altering our lives and perceptive sensibilities throughout past decades. Hold On is both a reflection on the ethics of the encounter and a critique of language, its mediums, and neoliberal strategies of communication. The acceleration of information exchange and the pressures of semiocapitalism constantly force our actions and attitudes into a punishing cycle of productivity, focused on short term stability, not sustainability. How do we envision our future from within this system? How do we channel our energies and desires into nurturing a healthy social body, rather than perpetuating an individualist fantasy? Aiming to reverse the inherently isolating demands of capitalism, these Generation Y artists and curators explore collaboration as a healing and regenerative process, wherein alternative forms of resistance can flourish. From this specific generational perspective, the viewer is encouraged to join a public dialogue and experience the gaps between the conformation of norms and their reconsideration through various aesthetic, performative, audio, video, and visual interventions in the space.Hold On explores the uses and impact of language, and the assertions which constitute our social exchanges, by unfolding the artists’ works into emotive and political discourses. Finally, through a number of mediums and approaches, the artists featured in this exhibition investigate what impacts the construction of subjectivity, its cultural value, and its political position within current power structures. When even arts spaces are contaminated by neoliberalism, we wonder if there is a way to negotiate the collective automatisation of our society through our art. Can we embrace ways of suspending the capitalist human condition? Hold On and its associated public programme are an open invitation to visitors to question and actively resist the way in which identity, feelings and life expectations are predetermined by unjust socioeconomic systems. |
