Seven Deadly Sins: Sloth
‘Sloth’, part of seven different exhibitions in the Aarhus 2017 series ‘Seven Deadly Sins’, aims to challenge perceptions of laziness
Aarhus, Denmark was the designated cultural capital for 2017 and as part of the celebrations seven regional museums agreed to split the seven dead sins as thematics for their corresponding exhibitions during the season. The Museum in Ebeltoft blind-picked 'Sloth' and had already chosen us to be the solo exhibition for this event. This is the artist statement we submitted.
The savior will be late because he is sloth; we could atone for our hubris with humility, but sloth is much more realistic. We are here to ask you to embrace the gospel of sloth, for the pleasure of it, for the mindfulness of it, but more importantly, because it could well save the planet! On a recent report it is speculated that in just 20 years 40% of the jobs in the US could be lost to robotics and AI, obviously the solution is to spread the work by working less and the adoption of universal income. But we have been so indoctrinated in the false savior of work ethic- how did we come to place work as a measure of our human dignaty? above and at a sacrifice of all other activities that make us human? Furthermore there is the sheer immorality in the premise that you deserve more of the worlds finite resources (not to mention divine salvation) just because you work hard, clearly doing much less will please the gods. It is also good to consider that we were not always so work obsessed, to quote Aristotle: “we are unleisurely in order to have leisure”. It is only in the machinations of the industrial revolution that we see such tremendous human effort exerted without slavery- the work ethic doctrine became the hallmark of modern ethics.
In 1947 German philosopher Joseph Pilper wrote “Leisure the basis of culture” a manifesto for reclaiming human dignity in a culture of workaholism: “But nowadays the whole field of intellectual activity, not exepting the province of philosophical culture, has been overwhelmed by modern ideal of work and is at the mercy of its totalitarian claims”.
“In leisure the truly human values are saved and preserved because leisure is the means whereby the sphere of the ‘specifically human’ can, over and again be left behind-not as a result of any violent effort to escape, but as in ecstasy”
As artists we feel that contemporary art has also been constrained by the utilitarian demands of the productivity, we now expect art to have a logical argument, to be political, to be “smart” and unfutunatelly predictable. This makes for condescending and downright boring viewing. We must transend to the unquantitive, to the poetic and the mysterious for a very strange future awaits us!
Glass Museum Ebeltoft
The Glass Museum Ebeltoft was established in 1985 in the former Toldbod in the more than 700-year-old market town of Ebeltoft, located at Ebeltoft Vig. The museum was created on the initiative of the Danish glass artist Finn Lynggaard and realized in close collaboration with former director of Kvadrat, Erling Rasmussen and state-authorized public accountant, Bent Fredberg.
Einar and Jamex De La Torre: The Seven Deadly Sins: ‘Sloth’
February 3, 2017 - May 28, 2017
Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Strandvejen 8, Ebeltoft, Denmark 8400
Glasmuseet.dk
