KAH residencies: My soul knows my meat is doing bad things
A collaborative curatorial project between Paulina Drėgvaitė and Nick Wood
Tuesday 8 May, 6pm
Whither, oh wither do I direct my steps
To flee from the vortex of the whirlwind of loathing
To escape from the abyss that lies before me?
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso
The second event of the series addresses boredom, the unforgivable failure of not being excited, unpicking notions of productivity and societal blackmail on private time. It explores the realm of the eponymous Noontide Demon and its contemporary incarnations, judged as inevitable and feared by Medieval monks. Boredom, as unproductive time, is a strong signifier of pleasurable failure – hours wasted in the abyss, an undercurrent of history, consisting of moments and lives that do not fit within the grand narrative of History.
The event looks at the manifestations of boredom on YouTube, from seemingly mundane late night live-streams to family trips to the supermarket and other activities, posing questions of communal experience and the reasons for sharing glimpses of inactivity, stasis and boredom.
“The struggle is real
Don’t worry!
Your not the only one who gets bored :)”
film curation and contemporary art this new project hopes to explore interests within counter cultures, defining anti-productivity and alternative modes of archiving. Viewing YouTube as an archive of everyday micro-histories, this project aims to locate alternatives to the notions of success and productivity that dominate societal discourse.
By exploring the underbelly of YouTube we discover the people sharing their individual knowledge and experiences to an audience that is indefinable yet omnipresent to them. These videos explore everything from shopping trips to family birthdays, hair dying to local ferries; and they seemingly sit perfectly alongside music videos, archivefootage and live streams from the UN. By positioning these videos on a horizontalplateau YouTube allows us to effortlesslyjump between a multiplicity of moments, experiences and ideas. This enables
us to extract new meaning from the familiar and safely experience the unfamiliar, offering an intersection between the public and the private. This platform is an enchanting archive of secret wishes, confessions and failures both public and private.
‘My soul knows my meat is doing bad things’ invites you to a YouTube party like no other. Abandon watching those tutorials and never-ending cat videos in private – curate, explore and join Paulina and Nick.
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All events are free of charge.
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