Capitalist Melancholia

The degree of individual and collective, spiritual, ecological, and economic exhaustion and burnout we are experiencing today has led to a unique sort of 21st century melancholy. This is the result of an inability to differentiate between economics and politics. Eliminating the public sector, deregulating markets, and significant cuts in social security have been seen as economic panaceas for decades. And when markets are deregulated, life is deregulated as well. An economy of desires running on empty serves as the motor leading to an exhaustion of life and squandering of resources. The exploitation of the earth, warming of the atmosphere, overpopulation, and the far-reaching consequences of the "New World Disorder", such as hunger, poverty, waves of refugees, civil wars, and terrorism, are manifestly unstoppable. While the present continues to hyperventilate, shaping the future and the course of history has become something inconceivable.

For Sigmund Freud, the "deep and painful malaise" of melancholy is characterized by a "withdrawal of interest in the external world" and "loss of the capacity to love." During the Romantic period, the pensive wistfulness and exuberant idealism of the melancholic were still seen as a divine madness common in people doing creative work. The artworks on display at the exhibition and the symposium/performance "A Government of Times" invite us to pause for a moment, reorient ourselves, and reflect on new perspectives, raising questions about political fantasy and a different form of acceleration - an experimental, navigational process where we can discover a universe of possibilities.