Melankoli (lördag) / Aejvere (laavvadahke) / Melancholy (Saturday)(2019)

As a part of the public program VÅLDET EKOLOGI / RANTAN EKOLOGIJE /ECOLOGY OF VIOLENCE, Tsuchimoto invited people to participate in a collective action Melancholy (Saturday). They traveled together by bus to gather sticks in a forest. Gathering sticks is a harmless activity, yet productive activity on the Sabbath was once regarded as a crime that deserved capital punishment as stated in the Bible. She puts forward the act of gathering sticks as disobedience towards authority, declaring ourselves “legal thieves”. The action questions the concept of violation and the imperative for productivity in relation to resilience and overcoming damage and trauma. Tsuchimoto refers to author Robin James’s definition of melancholy as a way to leave damage and noise as itself, “unproductive”, as a way out from neoliberal discourses of resilience. She suggests gathering sticks as an unproductive activity, the melancholy, for individuals to recover, survive, cope and flourish in ways that don’t support hegemony. She is also reflecting upon the meaning of collecting potential fuel for an unproductive purpose, the relation with ritual and mysticism, and the trend of emotional productivity in the era of automation in manufacturing.

Collective action at VÅLDET EKOLOGI / RANTAN EKOLOGIJE /ECOLOGY OF VIOLENCE, Östersund bus station, Östersund, Sweden: Public Art Agency Sweden's initiative LOCAL ART PROJECTS: Organized by IntraGalactic arts collective

(photo by Sara Norling)