{"id":128,"date":"2026-02-13T16:26:24","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T14:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev.wrkshp.fi\/carpa9\/?p=128"},"modified":"2026-03-30T12:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T09:04:18","slug":"how-slow-can-we-go-staging-sustainable-spaces-in-the-age-of-burnout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/how-slow-can-we-go-staging-sustainable-spaces-in-the-age-of-burnout\/","title":{"rendered":"How slow can we go? Staging sustainable spaces in the age of burnout"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the workshare titled \u201cHow Slow Can We Go? Staging Sustainable Spaces in the Age of Burnout\u201d, I questioned existing patterns in art production: artists\u2019 labour, precarity, exhaustion, success, and the visibility of art. This text focuses on the conflicting formats of projects I presented (curated event Y: Slow TV Cinema<\/em> and a collective project, Monika<\/em>) and the format of a conference talk. How can one speak about staging sustainable spaces and slowing down in the framework of a conference, which is, by its nature, the very opposite of the extended, slowed-down, attentive, and speculative approach of the cases I was presenting? The outcome was a 30-minute workshare, in which I lectured, read from books,
played videos while live-translated their subtitles, and asked speculative questions. The following text reflects this condensed time, with a focus on the staging of the conference presentation. Below, I use direct excerpts from my speaker\u2019s notes, citations from the books I read and also provide links to the videos I played.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My travels to Helsinki had been four days long. I took a train from Prague, then a bus, then a train across Poland, then a bus over the Baltic states and finally a ferry to cross the Gulf of Finland. This extended travel time established the framework for my conference preparations. As a curator and artist with a practice stemming from scenography, my initial thoughts were on the space of my workshare. I was curious what room I would get, how the audience would be seated, what technology would be there, and how much time I would have for preparation before talk. In those days, seated in trains and buses, I watched the changing landscape (together with the screen of my laptop) and thought about staging extensively. As Rachel Hann writes in her book Beyond Scenography<\/em>, \u201c[\u2026] scenography is to staging as choreography is to movement, as dramaturgy is to sequencing\u201d (Hann 2018, 8), I understand acts of staging as the major part of my practice. The way space is organized helps me navigate the situation \u2013 to understand roles (who is the audience, who is the performer, who witnesses, who acts), to narrate emotion, to navigate time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the August of 28th<\/sup>, I entered the Theatre Academy Helsinki building with three versions of my presentation ready: one made in a VJ software called Resolume, one as a simple power-point presentation, and the last one as a few files to be printed and videos to be played. At 4:15 PM, I stood behind a speakers table in Studio 4 with the screen on my right. At that moment, along with my nerves, I had a plan: to use simple language, to speak always from a designer’s perspective, and to always acknowledge the focus on finding a solution, the aim to try, to test, to explore, to prototype.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I started my talk, using just the notes I printed a few hours before:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hello. My name is Anna Chrtkov\u00e1. I work as a curator, artist, and academic. I am a trained scenographer. As an artist, I work within a collective called Monika. As a curator, I curate a performance art event series in Prague\u2019s Divadlo X10 called Y Events. For the last three years, I have also been involved in academia \u2013 through my doctoral studies, I became involved in artistic research and teaching.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my practice, making is the first thing I do. Then I revise the practice, search for patterns, and add discursive thinking. Labour, tiredness, and rest-hunting in between all three of my jobs (practices) is a significant field that I really have to deal with practically every day. And not only me. I see many exhausted individuals working in culture and the arts, producing at a vicious tempo. And what about when the support system reveals its fragility, as is now happening in Slovakia, where it is the Ministry of Culture that is destroying the cultural infrastructure \u2013 from the biggest institutions to the DIY spots? Being part of the suddenly (or was it always like this?) not-so-evident art scene, I have to constantly ask: Why do we work so much? (And with that: Why do I work so much?) Why do we feel that we cannot just pause? (And with that: Why do I feel that I cannot just pause?)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sitting in a train, watching the flat landscape of the Polish countryside, and then later, in buses, across Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, I had plenty of time to read. I took two physical books with me: Toward a Transindividual Self<\/em> by Serbian dramaturgs and scholars Ana Vujanovi\u0107 and Bojana Cveji\u0107 and Mobile Autonomy: Exercises in Artists\u2019 Self-Organisation<\/em> edited by Nico Dockx and Pascal Gielen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Studio 4 at Theatre Academy Helsinki, I placed a chair in front of the speaker\u2019s table and put both books on the seat. After my simple introduction, I stepped out from behind the speaker\u2019s table, sat down on a chair and started reading an excerpt from the essay How to Radicalize a Mouse? Notes on Radical Opportunism <\/em>by the Polish curator and scholar Kuba Szreder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWho is a Projectarian? Projectarians are people who own nothing but their potential to enter into projects (or do have only their own projects). In this sense, they are both similar and distinct from proletarians, who are defined by their lack of property. Similarly to proletarians, who need to sell their labour in order to survive, projectarians are forced to chase temporary possibilities for employment, provided by projects or jobs structured as if they were projects (i.e. temporary and task-oriented assignments). On the other hand though, projectarians resemble micro-enterpreneurs (or to use Foucault’s term \u2013 entrepreneurs of the self), because projects enable them to capitalize their innate capacities, social connections and experiences in exchange for monetary or reputational gains. They are owners of their own biopolitical means of production. What they lack and compete for is access to networks in which they are able to actualise their potential in order to build their trajectories and ensure survival.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n(Szreder 2015, 198.)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Then I took the second book, Toward a Transindividual Self<\/em>. I proceeded with shorter claims:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201c[…] it is the artist not the artwork that accumulates the potential as an exchange value.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n(Vujanovi\u0107 & Cveji\u0107 2022, 43.)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201c[…] [I]t is in fact the artist, not their work, that is being produced, marketed, curated and sold.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n(Vujanovi\u0107 & Cveji\u0107 2022, 43.)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cWorking hard is felt as one\u2019s own choice.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n(Vujanovi\u0107 & Cveji\u0107 2022, 43.)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cCreativity typifies here the measure of one\u2019s performability: it is the word that captures the conversion of subject into project.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n(Vujanovi\u0107 & Cveji\u0107 2022, 45.)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These excerpts provided some contextual grounding for my further words. But more importantly, the act of leaving the speaker\u2019s table, sitting down on the chair, taking the book, and reading from it grounded me in my temporary role (conference speaker) in the situation (workshare as part of CARPA9). Changing my position allowed me to see the audience in Studio 4. If I was there to speak about slowing down, I also needed to allow myself to attune to the atmosphere in the room, to shift the focus from the accuracy of my speech to the people, their comfort or nerves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stood up, went back to a speaker\u2019s table, opened the video file on my laptop and hit play. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Three
Still from video by collective Monika (Anna Chrtkov\u00e1, Karol\u00edna Sch\u00f6n, Maty\u00e1\u0161 Grimmich)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

See video on Google Drive<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The video has Czech subtitles. I was live-translating them into the conference mic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Age: 25. Artist, production manager, pedagogue, projectionist. She follows her inner activism to seek the meaning and aim in every activity of hers. She seeks ways to contribute to positive change in the world. In fact, she is just tired. Tired and apathetic, she really needs a break. To stop and gain some energy. She probably is burned out.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Age: 28. Artist, group facilitator. He skips between artwork and work with groups and tries to connect them, because each of them makes no sense without the other for him. At night, he wakes up nervous, wondering if he has messed something up. Yet most of the time, he is just tired.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Age: 29. Artist, scenographer, curator. She has a powerful, determined, yet distracted attitude to life. Most of the time, she is trying to just do what she likes. That means she\u2019s working a lot. Institutions, system, academia. It\u2019s just about knowing the right language. And she is very good at learning. Most of the time, she is just tired.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All three set off on their journey today. Maybe they are heading to work. But no one has a stable workplace. Their bodies have already decided. They are going to go on strike. Inner unions will take their right to rest back. A little sensual tension that does not stop. Fatigue as proof of our shared existence.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We lay down and imagine what it is like to rest; to postpone one\u2019s potential; to break down gradually. Bit by bit. Idleness that brings the absence of movement and thoughts. Muted time.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This topic is not my business.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trying to fit my words into the nervous rhythm of the video, I realised I actually was<\/em> performing. Standing at the speaker\u2019s table in Studio 4 at Theatre Academy Helsinki didn\u2019t make me nervous anymore. My role was clear: I performed a conference speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This video was the first one we filmed when I and my friends and colleagues, Karol\u00edna Sch\u00f6n and Maty\u00e1\u0161 Grimmich, agreed to become a collective.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We booked the cheapest spa hotel through some discount website and went there for three nights to help Karol\u00edna make her diploma project for Prague\u2019s Academy of Fine Arts.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Near the pool, we met someone who told us later he directs commercials and, over one night, we filmed the material which then became this.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We only took the camera \u201cjust in case.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This coincidence helped us to create the entire collective with the main collective-persona we call Monika (she is all of the masked characters).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had no particular art piece in our heads when we set off for this little vacation.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But when we were lying near the pool, just chilling,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

this German director, Stefan, approached us with a conversation, and this particular moment unlocked the whole process of making the art piece I showed you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It speaks about fatigue, workload, precarisation \u2013 but it also speculates about what happens if we just surrender to the overwhelming fatigue<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

but<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

as an artist, I do not really feel I can change much with my artworks. I also feel I cannot really change much by writing about the problems of our burning world.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a scenographer, it was always crucial to understand my tools \u2013 to know how I can help myself with a specific task, situation, challenge. Bruno Latour writes about the knowledge of using the right tools for the specific job in the essay \u201cAn Attempt at a Compositionist Manifesto.\u201d I had it printed, so I continued by reading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cIt is really a mundane question of having the right tools for the right job. With a hammer (or a sledge hammer) in hand you can do a lot of things: break down walls, destroy idols, ridicule prejudices, but you cannot repair, take care, assemble, reassemble, stitch together. It is no more possible to compose with the paraphernalia of critique than it is to cook with a seesaw. Its limitations are greater still, for the hammer of critique can only prevail if, behind the slowly dismantled wall of appearances, is finally revealed the netherworld of reality. But when there is nothing real to be seen behind this destroyed wall, critique suddenly looks like another call to nihilism. What is the use of poking holes in delusions, if nothing more true is revealed beneath?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n(Latour 2010, 475.)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The excerpt also emphasises an active potential for choice: what kind of reality do we want to build and by what means? It gave me agency to speak from the perspective of a designer and to play with my tools even in the small format of a conference talk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can design a scene. A moment of encounter, an open situation. I designed it with Maty\u00e1\u0161 when we decided to help Karol\u00edna with her Academy of Fine Art diploma piece by going to the spa complex together, instead of sitting in a studio and conceptualising the reality around the table. And I have been doing these intangible designs for five years in my curatorial position at Y Events.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a curator, I need to ask \u201cHow can we work less?\u201d and \u201cHow can we feel able to pause?\u201d instead of \u201cWhy do we work so much?\u201d and \u201cWhy do we feel we cannot just pause?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of these roles. A conference speaker, an artist, a scenographer, a curator. Each of them has a different position, agency and responsibility. Each of them uses different tools and language, addresses the audience differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Y Events, we play with our context. We most often present visual art and visual artists in a venue that is used as a theatre. We like to play with the format of an event in a theatre \u2013 what should it look like? Like an art opening? A public gathering? A party? A sleepover cinema?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

the production apparatus of theater, the production apparatus of art,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

the perform-ability of artists,<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

the project polyrhythm?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

all of the procedures, protocols, wishes and aims that shape the moments of an art event.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conference format demands full attention. The audience is hungry for new knowledge, innovative methods, a diversity of research strategies. With all the struggles over my slow travels, having plenty of time to develop various scenarios, I always knew how I wanted to end my workshare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I opened the second video, titled \u201cChess Garden,\u201d by the artist Denis Ba\u0161tuga. It is a 60-minute long of a frog on an iron plate, an apple, a lamp, and a round aquarium with a plant placed on a chess table accompanied by the sound of dripping water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will play an artwork we commissioned for a format we call Slow TV Cinema. A temporary sleepover cinema built within a performance-art space, it screens slow TV-inspired films we had commissioned from artists with different backgrounds.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We not only asked the artists to produce a one-hour film\/video inspired by the Slow TV genre, we also asked them to think about their usual production process and inner criteria of a \u201cgood artwork.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we understand the Slow TV format as attention-unraveling (rather than attention-capturing), it might disrupt the usual inner patterns of putting hard work into one\u2019s art piece.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hit play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Still from video by: Denis Ba\u0161tuga<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

See video on YouTube<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was August the 28th, 4:40 PM and I was about to leave the role of conference speaker. The video had already been on for a few minutes. I took the square pieces of paper I had cut just before I entered Studio 4 and used the conference mic for the last time:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we slow down the tempo of cultural production?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we break the spell of artistic excellence, aesthetic innovation and cultural production?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we slow down the artwork?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we learn to value such slow art?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we create spaces where we work less?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does non-work look like?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we make our labour pay off?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much labour do we really have to put into every artpiece?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How much can we cheat by using AI and other aids?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To what extent can we use all the money we are getting from funding to really feed ourselves, instead of funding the global industries?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we schedule less?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we value acts of spectating as a labour similar to artistic work?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we burnout safely?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Hann, Rachel. 2018. Beyond Scenography<\/em>. Routledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Latour, Bruno. 2010. \u201cAn Attempt at a \u2018Compositionist Manifesto\u2019.\u201d New Literary History<\/em> 41(3): 471\u2013490. JSTOR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Szreder, Kuba. 2015. \u201cHow to Radicalise a Mouse? Notes on Radical Opportunism.\u201d In Mobile Autonomy. Exercises in Artists\u2019 Self-Organization<\/em>. Valiz\/Antennae Series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vujanovi\u0107, Ana, and Bojana Cveji\u0107. 2022. Toward a Transindividual Self: A Study in Social Dramaturgy<\/em>. Oslo National Academy of the Arts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the workshare titled \u201cHow Slow Can We Go? Staging Sustainable Spaces in the Age […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-strand-i-ecological-design-practices"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1459,"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions\/1459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nivel.teak.fi\/carpa9\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}