THIS IS A PLACE OF REST
Presented as part of
Metropolis Performing Landscapes, September 2023, May 2024
And Resting Labs vol. 1, March 2023
Research and development of art-activist manifestations of rest as resistance in places overtaken by production, consumption and growth.
THIS
IS
A
PLACE
OF
REST
An artivistic workshop-performance guiding the participants through resting with the past, the present and the potential futures of Refshaleøen, an old industrial site turned hip cultural venue and soon to be developed as part of the ongoing growth and expansion of Copenhagen.
The workshop explores how we can sink into a place, its material layers and stories and rest as a way to connect ourselves physically and mentally with them.
We rest in places shaped by logics of production, consumption and growth and with our resting bodies we open other ways of being in and with these places, hoping to
create a gentle revolution gathering people and places in resisting growth and consumption.
Our planet's resources and creatures are exhausted. Rather than producing a new, grueling spectacle, we use our artistic and human abilities and experiences to focus on rest as the most effective resistance in a world that celebrates productivity, exploitation and growth. Through workshops and smaller actions, a toolbox of practices is developed, and at the same time simple and effective stagings and tools are prepared that create strong images, help the participants to find rest in controversial places and make the actions moving to witness, also for those who do not participate themselves.
So exhausted
by the state of the world.
Getting lost, losing myself in it.
Waiting. Almost holding my breath. Almost without noticing.
Waiting for the anxious veils of my hungry gaze to wither.
Waiting for the chorus of tinnitus, ambition and consumption/production frenzy to dissipate.
So I can see and hear
Waiting for a collapse to align and re-calibrate these accelerated stories.
For toxic dust to settle into sediments amongst the ruins. For something to find nourishment and new ways of growing, undisturbed, in the course of a couple of centuries.
I long, I plead, I stop
Stop drilling. Stop cutting.
Stop accessing, acquiring, achieving, breaching, blasting, bleaching, bombing, broadcasting, carving, cultivating, controlling, cracking, directing, dominating, dragging, driving, drying, developing, dealing, exploiting, extracting, excavating, erecting, energizing, endangering, engineering, fuelling, fracking, funneling, farming, flying, growthing, gearing, grabbing, heaving, hurrying, harnessing, hacking, inventing, invading, jeopardizing, judging, killing, moving, manipulating, networking, orchestrating, ordering, organizing, producing, preparing, pouring, peddling, pushing, promoting, progressing, quickening, quacking, refining, rigging, readying, slitting, straining, storing, sampling, skimming, topping, trapping, trawling, tearing, ushering, urging, vying, violating, willing, wringing, warming, yanking, yes’ing, yearning.
just. fucking. stop.
And wait for the world to come to a grinding halt. So we can follow the traces of our guts, spilled too thinly over the global floor, and find our way back to the womb/tomb of our beginnings and ends. From here starts another cycle.
Die, shed, rest
Abstaining from the (hu)man made universal law of constant growth, expansion, production. Abstaining from believing that is our only right to exist.
Resting, restoring. As an antidote to extractivist modes of production, consumption.
I need rest. The world needs rest. This is a place of rest.