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Jan Verwoert - Yes, No And Other Options

Where do you want to go today? Possibilities are offered everywhere. But in the end there are always only menues with preset options to choose from. Are you for us or against us? This is the question of the political. But can we really speak of choice when the options to choose from are imposed by those in power? Do we even want to have choices? Just-in-production, the new prevalent mode of labour, not just in the cultural field, it seems, is all about pushing things to the point where all options are exhausted and the only thing you can do is to do what it takes to meet the deadline. Under the conditions of just-in-time production labour is less and less work and more and more performance. You perform to proof yourself. And to do so you have to be ready anytime.

How do we want to live with these new standards of choice and agency? There has to be a better solution than paranoia. What modes and models of art and thinking can we develop to move beyond the preset option menues and defy the pressure to perform? How can we redefine the terms of choice and reinvent the pleasure (not) to perform?

 

Jan Verwoert


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