Fictioning Comfort

ENGLISH

➨ From the scale of living bodies, to landmasses, and even on a planetary one – our world is saturated with processes and relations that are exhausting. This exhaustion is consequential; we glamorise producing but overlook the exhaustion and even fatigue that might follow it. The social and political pressure on maintaining a constant production comes at a price: perpetual work, overproduction, and as a result, consuming precarious bodies and other planetary resources.

➧ In addition to this perpetual exhaustion as a result of (over)productivity, exhaustion comes as a consequence of unjust sociopolitical and economic orders that prioritise it. It is for these reasons that ideas and practices of ‘comfort’ are crucial in imagining a different future world. We feel the need to investigate comfort in a way that goes beyond constructed and capitalist ideas; comfort is more than just the process of rejuvenation for the purpose of maintaining a certain level of productivity. Therefore, imagining other conceptions of comfort means imagining different sociopolitical orders and ways of performing in the world; it is a practice with political urgency.

➠ Both exhaustion and ‘comfort’ can be understood as states, performances, landscapes, and conditions that constantly shape our understandings of the world around us – they all influence the ways in which we inhabit, and make space in it.

➟ Within this world, ‘home’ is a locus of various dimensions of living practices. On the one hand home is a space of production of work, experiencing exhaustion and fatigue, and resting of the (tired) bodies. On the other hand home stands for ideas and forms of inhabiting the world. In short, home can be seen as a landscape where exhaustion and comfort are entangled together.

➞ The collective project Fictioning Comfort includes works that take an urgent socio-political stance by fictioning ideas and practices of ‘comfort’. This is done by way of spatial installation, body performance, historical research, science fiction, image making, resource redistribution, extending kinships, and humor.

➛ ➜ ➔ ➝ ➞ ➟ ➠ ➧ ➨ The offline part of Fictioning Comfort is on view at MAMA's Showroom until 13 September, 2020.

— WORKNOT! / Golnar Abbasi and Arvand Pourabbasi*

*A Note on Working During a Pandemic Crisis

While creating and producing this project, our homes have acted as sites for production, rest, and rethinking comfort. We have sat in our rooms, gradually sinking into the fiction of ‘being at home’ in the world, and attempting to extend beyond it.

The presentation of Fictioning Comfort is in thoughtful correspondence with the circumstances of our world today during the pandemic crisis. Together, we have rethought the urgency of art production and distribution; especially in light of the so-called ‘New Norm’ rising around the world as well as in the Netherlands. And we have experimented with ways of producing a show that attempts to avoid, as much as possible, the exhaustion of bodies, spaces, and resources. We think about comfort as a verb. Fictioning Comfort respects, appreciates and understands slowness, doubt, and precariousness.

NEDERLANDS

➨ Van levende lichamen tot landmassa’s en zelfs op lanetaire schaal: onze wereld is doordrenkt van processen en relaties die uitputten. We aanbidden het produceren, maar zien de uitputting en vermoeidheid die hierop volgt over het hoofd. De sociale en politieke druk om continu productief te zijn heeft een prijs: een nooit aflatende stroom werk én overproductie, met als resultaat de consumptie van gevoelige lichamen en allerlei andere middelen.

➧ Naast deze voortdurende uitputting als gevolg van (over)productiviteit, is uitputting ook een gevolg van onrechtvaardige sociaal-politieke en economische structuren die productiviteit altijd bovenaan plaatsen. Het is om deze redenen dat ideeën en gebruiken rondom ‘comfort’ cruciaal zijn bij het verbeelden van een alternatieve toekomst. Wij voelen de behoefte om het begrip comfort te verkennen op een manier die verder gaat dan kunstmatige (kapitalistische) ideeën; comfort is meer dan alleen een herstelproces met als doel het behouden van een bepaald productiviteitsniveau. Het verbeelden van andere opvattingen over comfort betekent het verbeelden van andere sociopolitieke leefregels en manieren om ons tot de wereld te verhouden; het is een handeling met politieke urgentie.

➠ Zowel uitputting als comfort kunnen begrepen worden als toestanden, performatieve handelingen, landschappen en condities die ons begrip van de wereld voortdurend vormen – ze beïnvloeden de manier waarop we leven en onze leefomgeving vormgeven.

➟ Binnen deze omgeving vormt ‘thuis’ de plek waar verschillende vormen van leven samenkomen. Enerzijds vormt het thuis een ruimte voor de productie van werk en de rust van (vermoeide) lichamen. Aan de andere kant staat thuis voor ideeën en manieren om je tot de wereld te verhouden. Kortom, thuis kan worden gezien als een omgeving waar uitputting en comfort met elkaar vervlochten zijn.

➞ Het collectieve project Fictioning Comfort bevat werken die een maatschappijkritische positie innemen door ‘fictioning’ (de handeling van verbeelden en uitbeelden) in relatie te brengen met verschillende gebruiken rondom ‘comfort’. Er wordt gebruik gemaakt van verschillende media, waaronder ruimtelijke installaties, performance, historisch onderzoek, science fiction, beeldproductie, de herverdeling van middelen, het aangaan van nieuwe verwantschappen en humor.

➛ ➜ ➔ ➝ ➞ ➟ ➠ ➧ ➨ Het offline gedeelte van Fictioning Comfort is te bezoeken in MAMA Showroom tot September 13, 2020.

— WORKNOT! / Golnar Abbasi en Arvand Pourabbasi*

*A Note on Working During a Pandemic Crisis

Tijdens de totstandkoming van dit project dienden onze huizen als plekken voor productie, rust en het nadenken over de betekenis van ‘comfort’. We zaten in onze kamers, waar we geleidelijk wegzakten in de fictie van het ‘thuis zijn’ in de wereld terwijl we probeerden naar buiten te reiken.

De presentatie van Fictioning Comfort sluit goed aan bij de actuele situatie van een globale pandemie. Gezamenlijk met kunstenaars hebben we de urgentie van kunstproductie en distributie verkend, vooral in het licht van het zogenaamde ‘nieuwe normaal’ dat zowel in Nederland als daarbuiten in opkomst is. En we hebben geëxperimenteerd met manieren om een tentoonstelling te produceren waarbij zoveel mogelijk wordt voorkomen dat lichamen, ruimtes en middelen uitgeput raken. We beschouwen comfort als een werkwoord. Fictioning Comfort respecteert, waardeert en begrijpt noties van traagheid, twijfel en onzekerheid.

WORKNOT! - Golnar Abbasi

See: programming Fictioning Comfort, anonymous(?) correspondence bike messenger round project roffa, Pocket Book Series

Golnar Abbasi is an artist/architect, researcher, and publisher. Her work consists of a hybrid of practices such as research, writing, curating, organising, independent publishing, teaching, making, and spatial intervention. She is a co=founder and editor at Sarmad, and a co-founder of WORKNOT! Her work is concerned with notion(s) of spatiality, coloniality, practices of resistance, and construction of histories. Her work has been shown in Venice Biennale of Architecture, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Architecture Banal, among others. She holds a Masters degree from The Berlage and has been in residence at Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at Faculty of Architecture and Urban Environment, TU Delft, where she conducts her academic project on politics of domesticity. She teaches at Willem de Kooning Academie (Social Practices), Piet Zwarte Instituut (MIARD), and the Faculty of Architecture at TU Delft.

Website

WORKNOT! is a collective of cognitarians-makers that works on the precarities of everyday life. Since its foundation in between Tehran and Rotterdam in 2012, it has worked in a variety of contexts through a broad range of collaborations, and created workshops, exhibitions, performances, images, writings, lectures and publications. The collective of two Rotterdam-based artist-architects, Arvand Pourabbasi and Golnar Abbasi, develops works through a hybrid of research and theory (via archival and genealogical research, organising events, performance, and publishing), and making of (site-specific) one-to-one spatial interventions, a hands-on approach to craftsmanship, and research through-making. WORKNOT! has exhibited in Sharjah Architecture Triennial (2020), Venice Biennale (2016), Tehran Architecture Biennale (2016), Espacio Odeon (2018), Architecture BANAL (2017), among others.

Website

WORKNOT! - Arvand Pourabbasi

See: programming Fictioning Comfort, anonymous(?) correspondence bike messenger round project roffa, Pocket Book Series

Arvand Pourabbasi is an artist, architect, educator, and maker. He is a co-founder of WORKNOT! Arvand is a co-editor and facilitator in Sarmad, a platform dedicated to politics of image. He is also a co-founder and co-curator of Neverland Cinema, a weekly neighbourhood screening program focused on situated cinematography. His work has been presented in Venice Biennale of Architecture, Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Tehran Architecture Biennale, Showroom MAMA, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Architecture Banal, among more. Arvand holds a Masters degree in Interior Architecture (INSIDE) from Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunst in Den Haag; and he has been a recipient of Talent Development grant from Stimuleringsfonds (2019-2020). Arvand is currently teaching at Willem de Kooning Academie, Rotterdam, and formerly tutored at Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunst, Den Haag.

Website

Maike Hemmers

See: Desire digests what moves it

Maike Hemmers (1987, Germany) is an artist based in Rotterdam. Her research reflects on the affective relation of bodies and inner spaces through drawing, text, and everyday relational art objects. With an interest in feminist architecture, soft resistance and queer directions, her work explores intuitive material relations. She recently finished a research project into the modernist social housing complex De Kiefhoek, Rotterdam, which manifested in a publication of an essay and photographs of drawings made inside the museum house. Hemmers holds a Masters in Art Praxis from the Dutch Art Institute.

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Valentina Curandi

See: Desire digests what moves it

Valentina Curandi (1980, Italy) is a practitioner with an experimental approach to text-based research, bodily and scripted performativity. She develops performative acts focusing on the material-symbolic setup of the sexed and contracted willful subject.

Her theoretical and artistic research on feminist and post feminist analysis of contract theory inquire the effect of legal regulations and devices on the everyday management of gendered reproductive bonds and obligations. She tries to balance her solo practice with shared endeavors and forms of collaborations that are based on affinity and friendship.

Valentina received her Master in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute. More recently she showed her work and created commissioned projects for, among others, Marwan (NL), The Physics Room (NZ), and the 16ma Quadriennale di Roma (I).

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Baha Görkem Yalım

See: Desire digests what moves it

Baha Görkem Yalım (1987, Izmir) is a visual artist. After having worked as an engineer, Yalım completed their BA in Fine Arts at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, receiving the award in the Thesis category. Additionally, they completed an Honours Degree in Art and Research at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and the University of Amsterdam followed by an MA degree in Art Praxis at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI).

Yalım’s exploration, not only of contents but also of the use of artistic media, is in a constant flux - refusing to crystallise media in a particular form and radically allowing things to appear as themselves. Yalım employs video, sculpture, and performance sometimes in variations and always as folds of the one and same practice. Their practice at times crosses the borders of a writer, educator, and curator. Although the range of subjects that they touch upon is varied, some notions appear with recurrent energy, such as the poetically charged vertical/horizontal allegory, which functions as an oblique critique on modernity and patriarchy. Objecthood and history -with a particular interest in the concept of keepsake- are also often thematised. Their work is often accompanied by texts that cross over poetry, fiction, and academic reflection.

They are currently working around questions of ritual, landscape, and rhythm through the lens of labour and gender. These open questions come together over a desire to diminish art and artist as unified ontological categories.

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Alireza Abbasy

See: Eyn Eyn Eyn Stories, Toilet-paper-head, Pocket Book Series

Alireza Abbasy born in Tehran, Iran, is a Rotterdam-based artist, writer, engineer and the co-founder and editor of Sarmad Platform. He holds an MA in Fine Art from St. Joost Breda (2019) and a PhD in Technology Management from Delft University of Technology (2012). After an extensive educational and working background in engineering Alireza focused on his creative and autonomous practice working as an artist in The Netherlands, Germany and Iran.

Alireza’s autonomous practice involves seemingly very different media and activities, from writing and performing theater plays in total darkness, to independent publishing, writing fantastical stories, and making podcasts and video works. His practice deals with notions of non-normativity, otherness (and thus, whiteness), precarity, exhaustion and non-Western frames of thinking.

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Ying Liu

See: Toilet-paper-head, Pocket Book Series

Ying Liu is exploring the connection between performance and Chan and her research focuses on the in between state of something and nothing. She defines herself as time killer, gazer and composer.

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Pazhooh / Hossein Danesh

See: Toilet-paper-head, Pocket Book Series

If you see a man walking barefoot in the street saying hi to people, or if you are in your car behind a red light and see a man walking like a snail waving at you, that might be me.

I want to ask you to lessen your speed, and take a look at your surroundings anew. To feel the bliss and joy when the wind comes into your car, to enjoy the warmth of the sun and listen to a bird singing on a tree. As a nod in an endless web of existence, I see myself as a reminder of inner peace. In my life, I use meditative practice such as drawing, writing and meditation.
Just like the sun and the birds, my performances in the street are meant to be for free and for everyone, regardless of whether or not “art” is present in their lives. Away from anxiety, away from depression, let’s dance Here and Now, with our feelings.

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Behzad Abbasi

See: Eyn Eyn Eyn Stories

Behzad Abbasi is a medical doctor who experiments with sound and music.

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TO BE DETERMINED (TBD) - Suzin Kwon

See: Comfort People Safety Curtain

Suzin Kwon is a graphic designer based in Seoul, South Korea. And She is a member of the project group GAEGAEIN. She is interested in visual languages beyond borders and strives to be a designer who can handle a diverse range of media.

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TO BE DETERMINED (TBD) is an undocumented organization that has  recently migrated to Rotterdam from Parañaque City. It is curious about models of non-extractive research, radical administration, rehabilitating the body public, and the agency of the secretariat. TBD is still in a laborious process of determining how it must operate within a foreign landscape. At the moment, TBD can confirm it is (still) comprised of sleeper cells and yet-to-be- determined networks that activate and deactivate in response o external factors: abundance to be distributed, urgencies to  be addressed, or leisure to be.