Only if we're able to disentangle the future (the perception and conception of the future, and the very production of it) from the traps of growth and investment, will we find and escape from the vicious subjugation of life, wealth and pleasure to the financial abstraction of semio-capital.
The key to this disentanglement may be found in a new form of wisdom which harmonises with exhaustion. Exhaustion is a cursed word in the frame of modern culture, which is based on the cult of energy and the cult of male aggressively. But energy is fading in the postmodern world, for many reasons that are easy to detect.
Energy is fading because of the demographic trend: [human]kind is growing old, as a whole, because the prolongation of life expectancy, and because of the decreasing birth rate. A sense of exhaustion results from this process of general ageing, and what has been considered a blessing – the prolonged life expectancy–may prove to be a misfortune, if the myth of energy is not restrained and replaced with a myth of solidarity and great compassion. Energy is also fading because basic physical resources like oil are doomed to extinction or dramatic reduction. Finally, energy is fading because competition is stupid in the age of the general intellect. The general intellect is not based on juvenile impetus and male aggressively––infighting, winning, and appropriation. It is based on cooperation and sharing.
This is why the future is over, and we are living in a space that is beyond the future. If we are able to come to terms with this postfuturistic condition, we'll renounce accumulation and growth, and will be happy sharing the wealth from our past of industrial labor and from our present of collective intelligence. If we are not able to do this, we will be doomed to a century of violence, misery, and war.
Last year I took stock a bit. I turned 30. I've wondered about my practice of art making and institutional exhibition making. I've also wondered who my people are, and where this has led me. I don't know. But I know there's a lot to do.
(Sorry about this photo, I saw it in office works yesterday and thought it was pretty wrong on a lot of levels. )