Editorial
Do (Not) Disturb

Open your phone's settings, and you'll see the familiar crescent moon icon: Do Not Disturb. How often do you activate it? And when you don't, does that mean you want to be disturbed? We all know the feeling of being almost asleep and suddenly hearing the annoying buzzing of a phone on the bedside table — or even right next to our pillow, its vibration softened by the cotton sheets — a message, a notification, a news alert, an update, or a colleague asking whether we can quickly write a "very important" email. Can we resist the urge to reach for the screen and let its blinding light absorb us into the infinite stream of information, requests, and temptations?

A growing number of artists, scholars, and cultural institutions address this state of hyperconnectedness, asking us to slow down and resist the attention economy — a system in which attention is treated as a resource to be captured, monetised, and constantly competed for. Notably, even this year's edition of the Venice Biennale invites "visitors to marvel, meditate, dream, revel, reflect, and commune in realms where time is not corporate property nor at the mercy of relentlessly accelerated productivity." Whether this strategy is effective is up for debate, but it undoubtedly responds to an increasingly pervasive condition of contemporary life.

Our 6th issue, Do (Not) Disturb, also aims to interrogate how art reflects on the constant demand of availability, as well as how we consume and produce art today. The contributing authors explore themes of attention, sleep, rest, and exhaustion under neoliberal conditions, bringing together seven essays by emerging curators, art historians, and artists:

Kat Ripea, in their essay Work-Art-Balance: On the Labour of Attention, Subversion, and Neoliberal Subject Production in Pilvi Takala's The Trainee (2008), examines how Pilvi Takala's performance reveals the often invisible rules that structure contemporary work in post-Fordist capitalism. By engaging only in "brain work" that avoids sociable behaviour and material visibility — such as typing or displaying busyness — Takala disrupts workplace conventions. Drawing on theories of immaterial labour and neoliberal subject formation, Ripea foregrounds attention itself as a regulated form of labour, while reflecting on the entanglement of artistic critique with capitalist production.

Viktoria Rochambeau — herself an exhausted curatorial assistant in the thick of an exhibition installation — examines the political and social conditions of sleep in the 21st century in her essay Geiseln der Schlaflosigkeit. Drawing on two artistic works — Yto Barrada's photographic series Dormeurs and Navild Acosta and Shadow Fannie Sosa's performance Black Power Naps — Rochambeau investigates the act of sleep as a political matter, moving beyond the pictorial tradition of the blissfully resting, languidly sprawling body.

Gerrit Kindler, in Das Erhabene der Leere: Abstraktion als Aufmerksamkeitsexperiment, explores the possibilities of finding enclaves of rest and resistance in the self-reflexive practice of sensory recalibration and reorientation. Departing from Kant's definition of the sublime and taking a neuroscientific lens, he offers a contemplative reading of Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Delcy Morelos, focusing on the relationship between the eyes, the mind, and our constant search for meaning.

Maria Neff, one year before the 2027 Documenta takes place in Kassel, revisits the previous edition from 2022 to examine the artistic programme Chilltan, initiated by artist Saodat Ismailova and the group DAVRA. Neff observes how the different performances and artworks of the Chilltan programme evoke multiple modes of relationality by drawing on customs, rituals, and myths from Central Asia. The essay examines how these acts continuously constitute ways of living that oppose dominant regimes of productivity and acceleration.

Sara Molho, in her essay Lazy! Leisure, Automation and Attention in the Work of Guido Segni, examines questions of authorship, spectatorship, and the conditions of digital labour, focusing on the five-year project Demand Full Laziness (2018–2023), which aimed to delegate the production of artworks to AI. Situating Segni's practice in Italian hacktivism and net art, Molho traces its trajectory from accelerationist optimism and the figure of a post-work artist to disengagement with technology and self-sabotage. She ultimately argues that automation still requires the artist's or worker's agency and productivity, while the desired rest gives way to "digital fatigue" — a new form of exhaustion.

Claire Rüffer, in her essay Sleeping Beauty, interrogates the changing visual narratives of sleep, tracing how it has shifted from a space outside visibility and discipline into a capitalist site of self-optimisation, echoing Rosalind Gill's concept of postfeminist media culture. Rüffer draws a comparison between the motifs of Renaissance sleeping Venuses — where beauty resides in passivity and visual availability — Disney's Sleeping Beauty, in which sleep functions as a means of preserving beauty, and the so-called "morning shed" routine on social media, where beauty can only be achieved through discipline and the consumption of products during the hours meant for rest.

Curator Yasya Minenkova and artist Yanis Proshkinas enter into dialogue in the experimental essay Night Shift: Institutional Dreams, exploring the concept of "oneiric curating." Through an interplay of dream memories, associations, and cultural references, dreams are approached as spaces of unrestricted and unmediated creativity, but also as sites where labour continues into states of rest and where institutional regimes can be reimagined. Drawing on Giorgio Agamben's concept of inoperativity — an activity existing for its own sake — the authors position oneiric curating as a methodological reorientation. In this framework, curatorial thinking persists without the obligation to be productive or generate measurable outcomes.

Clara Thym, Mariia Ostapkevich

Contributions by
Gerrit Kindler
Yasya Minenkova &
Yanis Proshkinas
Sara Molho
Maria Neff
Mariia Ostapkevich
Kat Ripea
Viktoria Rochambeau
Claire Rüffer
Clara Thym

Editors
Lucia Braemer
Zoe Büchtemann
Annalisa Giacinti
Devin Gökdemir
Carolin Greifenstein
Frederieke Henk
Louison Jenkins
Malin Krahn
Noemy Macari
Justine Ney
Mariia Ostapkevich
Johanna Siegler
Antonin Steinke
Clara Thym
Stefanie Unternährer

Cover Image
Navild Acosta &
Shadow Fannie Sosa
Black Power Naps 2019

Design issue #6
Yuliya Spoda

Managing Editors
Stefanie Unternährer
Clara Thym

Coordnation
Janna Erdmann

Copy Editors
Janna Erdmann
Perrin Ford
Carolin Greifenstein
Luise Mörke
Odessa Varen
Krista Woelk

Webdesign
Julia Grüßing
Jérémy Landes

Social Media
Janna Erdmann
Clara Thym

Events
Janna Erdmann
Annalisa Giacinti
Noemy Macari
Clara Thym
Mariia Ostapkevich

Financing
Lucy Braemer
Janna Erdmann

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Editorial Do (Not) Disturb

Editorial
Do (Not) Disturb