Eight Great Ways To Fill Your Existential Void
video performance, HD, 15'26", 2018
Exercises instructed by Hans Christian van Nijkerk and Hiroko Tsuchimoto.
Exercise 1:
Find a stone that perfectly fits your palm
Exercise 2:
Sort moss by color
Exercise 3:
Listen carefully to the wind and respond
Exercise 4:
Count grains of sand
Exercise 5:
Close your eyes and follow your nose
Exercise 6:
Engage in meaningful dialogue with birds
Exercise 7:
Start a jam session
Exercise 8:
Tidy up
"Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work." -Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
The video is presented as a series of exercises to "fill your existential void" – suggestions of how to engage with nature.
The artists are both dressed in minimalist black, do not speak and have a serious expression through the entire video, sitting on their knees on the floor of a white cube space.
The visual aesthetic and musical cues bring to mind the Western trend of mindfulness, meditation and related practices, while the exercises themselves range from the poetic to the absurd.
The video -uploaded to Youtube in the company of many other instructional videos- is tagged in a way to signify the origin and purpose of the exercises: boredom.
Tags such as "meaningfulness", "be bored, not stimulated", "embracing boredom" and "non-entertainment movement" suggest the work can be read as an act of resistance against the neoliberal impetus to be productive, never be lazy and never be bored.
video performance, HD, 15'26", 2018
Exercises instructed by Hans Christian van Nijkerk and Hiroko Tsuchimoto.
Exercise 1:
Find a stone that perfectly fits your palm
Exercise 2:
Sort moss by color
Exercise 3:
Listen carefully to the wind and respond
Exercise 4:
Count grains of sand
Exercise 5:
Close your eyes and follow your nose
Exercise 6:
Engage in meaningful dialogue with birds
Exercise 7:
Start a jam session
Exercise 8:
Tidy up
"Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work." -Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
The video is presented as a series of exercises to "fill your existential void" – suggestions of how to engage with nature.
The artists are both dressed in minimalist black, do not speak and have a serious expression through the entire video, sitting on their knees on the floor of a white cube space.
The visual aesthetic and musical cues bring to mind the Western trend of mindfulness, meditation and related practices, while the exercises themselves range from the poetic to the absurd.
The video -uploaded to Youtube in the company of many other instructional videos- is tagged in a way to signify the origin and purpose of the exercises: boredom.
Tags such as "meaningfulness", "be bored, not stimulated", "embracing boredom" and "non-entertainment movement" suggest the work can be read as an act of resistance against the neoliberal impetus to be productive, never be lazy and never be bored.