Take a Deep Breath
Curated by Kunstverein/Maxine Kopsa

She’s reading The Cut, on Deciem CEO Brandon Truaxe’s psychotic breakdowns posted live on his Instagram feed just days before his passing and in the next browser has New York’s Sex Diaries open. But that’s not all, she’s also looking for corrective bikinis, new glasses and a not too boutiquish Spanish hotel, a cheap flight to Dubai, where she can get her new face cleanser, cheaper and at How To Get The Most Out Of Your Next Coaching Session. She’s got Nora Turato’s script the good, the bad and the viscose open and is switching back and forth between it and her browsers…. About halfway into the script of she reads: she prefers thank you over sorry. She stops all searches there.

Imagine that. Consistently choosing thank you instead of using sorry – what would it entail? She promises herself to contemplate that later while she pulls out Bret Easton Ellis’s novel Glamorama from her shelves, lays it on her glass desk and then decides to google it instead of go through the actual book. And even though she has to admit that her bedside table now holds very different literature (The Seven Spiritual Laws Of Success by Deepak Chopra, The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey, 21 Lessons For The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari), she thinks about Victor, poor Victor who finds himself in the quake of his hazardous media-centred life unable to stop the rush of the transitory where pseudo-famous looks and acts the same as famous. And maybe that’s the difference between 1998 and 2019: there IS no difference anymore between pseudo and non-pseudo, there is no need for capitulation. We can swim through it. To speak with Harari: we’re beyond the ‘global stories’ we’re in the ‘Trump moment’ hand in hand with the ‘Brexit period’.

But still…. She says:
Take a deep breath.

Take the day as a remedy, a retreat, a parachute drop out of this frippery and these pseudo-fame trappings. Take this day as a day of experiences, involvements, encounters, occurrences, friendship, digital avoidances, first person accounts, parallel perceptions, alternative languages and song. ‘In waves and ribbons, and transitions, accompanied by silences and lights. A stroll’ with Alice Chauchat and Raimundas Malašauskas. Listening to time travel with Rosalind Nashashibi. Encountering ‘a misdirected weeping angel within a close proximity communication method’ hosted by Austin Redman. Dancing, swaying and being involved in the occasion of Isabel Lewis. Topped emotionally with a ballad sung to you by Mark Buckeridge.

Participants: Mark Buckeridge, Alice Chauchat, Dario Dezfuli, Isabel Lewis, Raimundas Malašauskas, Heleen Mineur, Rosalind Nashashibi, Austin Redman