Confusion, exhaustion, boredom and often bitterness

It’s hard to know what we institute when we don’t institute but we do know what it feels like.
—Stefano Harney and Fred Moten

Confusion, exhaustion, boredom and often bitterness is a two-part conversation with Alkisti Efthymiou looking at the affective reality of work in precarious (almost) institutions. The evening, set around an artificial campfire, started with Alkisti sharing her experience and thoughts on her long-running involvement with the Athens Biennale. In this first part, Alkisti attempted to express the inherent contradictions associated with, on one hand, a commitment to keep on believing in such an institution’s critical creative potential while at the same time struggling with frustratingly unstable conditions of work. These thoughts set the framework for a conversation around issues of precarity in a present of ‘crisis’ as ordinary and inscribed in the everyday; about why it feels so difficult to ‘institute’ when there is no way to know that – or what – we are instituting.

The evening is part of Mixed Feelings, hosted and curated by anorak, in collaboration with Palermo Galerie and Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. Taking the form of a dinner, a screening, a conversation and an exhibition, Mixed Feelings is centred around daily experiences and routines as ways of relating to a shared social sphere – the everyday as an atmosphere.