Class fatigue

Under so many opposing constraints, the individual comes apart.

 The social discrepancy of inequalities is added to the internal discrepancy

 between needs and aspirations to make this society one that is 

increasingly at odds with itself, disunited, suffering from a 'malaise'. 

Fatigue will then be interpreted as a response on the part of modern man - 

a response in the form of a passive refusal - to his conditions of existence. 

 

For fatigue is a concealed form of protest, which turns round against oneself 

and 'grows into' one's own body because, in certain conditions, 

that is the only thing on which the dispossessed individual 

can take out his frustration.

 

(Jean Baudrillard "The consumer society”)

 

Class` Fatigue

 

The multimedia interactive performance “Class` Fatigue” explores such a symptom of modern society as fatigue.

Following the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, we see fatigue as a hidden form of protest against the existing social order with its focus on success and productivity, and alienation of individuals bereft of choice.

 

“Political 'indifference', that catatonia of the modern citizen, is the indifference of the individual deprived of any decision-making powers and left only with the sop of universal suffrage,” - as he stated in his “The consumer society.”

 

In our classes, we invite participants to reexamine the phenomenon of fatigue in their lives and to push the situation that generates fatigue to its limits, metaphorically, through a ritualistic act of breaking through, thus finding and reappropriating their unique voices.

 

To not be stuck in an anthropocentric obsession with human subject that dominated the 20th century, but also to not reject the importance of an individual in the collective, (the results of such rejection we have also seen in Gulag, for instance) - the collective needs exactly that - unique voices in the orchestra, - we explored the phenomena of fatigue through a much broader perspective than that of just humans. Our interactive laboratory also examined material fatigue from a scientific angle.  Why, when, and how different materials experience exhaustion, or what is called fatigue in the engineering discipline "Strength of Materials”, which is also sometimes called “Resistance of materials”, and that fact carries for us a significant symbolism. 

 

During our interactive performance the participants were invited for their investigatory inquiry, accompanied and structured by the information and various materials  prepared by us in advance: diagrams, schemes, formulas and demonstration of the process of fatigue in metal, wood, plastic, and so on, so that they would see how stress, tension and inappropriate usage lead to the breaking point, but also, to reflect and reevaluate the fatigue and its reasons in their lives by answering a corresponding questionnaire. With this gesture, besides other things, we were aiming to underline the interconnectedness of human and non-human actors, a sort of alchemical procedure we all are going through, but also, with a modest but courageous sign - a tiny dash, to define a so-called surplus value for the class struggle in a post-Marxian sense. We say "class` fatigue", meaning all the oppressed, both humans and nonhumans.

 

In this respect, our orchestra is posthuman. 

 

But how our orchestra came into existence, one might ask. Well, it came out as  Baudrillard ordered - through soft resistance.

 

“Fatigue is an activity, a latent, endemic revolt, unconscious of itself.”

 

The participants in our lab were asked to make this revolt conscious and to force through ritualistically by breaking the stick in the form of a plastic pipe on their tables. At the moment of this breaking, a singing voice emerged from the monitor, closest to their seat, signifying liberation from oppression and the reappropriation of their actorship, uniqueness, and choice. Each broken stick added a voice to the choir, creating a rich polyphonic multichannel composition.

 

This entire process can be perceived by the spectator/participant as a psychotherapeutic act of dismantling certain internal attitudes that prevent them from fully expressing themselves, but also can be read as a political statement.

 

(Btw, fun (not) fact: this performance went through a scandal within a Russian institution and was permitted to be performed in Tumen’s theatre only after kind words and defence by some of our respected mentors and without mentioning in the statement such words as “protest and political”. So, we smuggled them)

 

Technically that was made with the open-source electronic prototyping platform Arduino, 4 video projections revealing the topic of material fatigue from a scientific perspective - diagrams, graphs, images of fractures and cracks, gallium metal pulsing like a human heart, etc. as well as spatial four-channel audio installation with the pre-recorded soundscape and sounds, produced by participants during their communication with our mechanisms and protocols.

 

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Snezhana Reizen - a conceptual framework, research, sound, composition, text, images.

 

Maria Sviridova - a conceptual framework, research, engineering, technical production, photo and video.

 

Anna Gavrilova - video art, video projections, management and assistance during a performance.