Remedies - Lullaby Nest at The Showroom
In a world where everything we do has been commodified, any and every experience can suddenly be rendered devoid of pleasure. In contrast to the idyll of romanticising one's life (in order to make the humdrum monotony feel meaningful) that we see on social media on a daily basis (see: 'Get Ready With Me', 'A Day in the Life...', 'What I Ate in a Day'), once we have a moment to actually generate and register our own emotions, we fail to ask ourselves what we find genuinely enjoyable. Now that we are being surveilled and policed by the algorithm, do we actually know how to enjoy our lives?
Finnish artist duo Sasha Huber and Petri Saarikko have taken over The Showroom gallery for the latest instalment of their Remedies project. This iteration is subtitled Lullaby Nest, with a focus on relaxing, switching off from external factors and forces, and succumbing to relaxation. Using the pan-cultural tradition of lullabies for soothing children, the audience is invited to take the space they want and need in the gallery to sit and immerse themselves in the soundtrack and within the comfortable setting. This in itself feels so delightfully novel; the artists giving their audience permission to do nothing, see nothing, and feel nothing, feels utterly luxurious.
The gallery is situated off the busy Edgware Road in north-west London, which is known to be a cultural hub for a wide array of cultures, including Arabic and North African communities, who first settled there in the nineteenth century. The Showroom itself is a bold space of creativity and respite, with its current exterior hosting a mural by French-born Moroccan artist Nassim Azarzar. As part of the commission, the artist has combined a bright and joyous palette with an oral history sound piece, telling stories of migration through the voices of people in the community. Both painting and sound pieces do not wait for people to be emboldened enough to walk through the doors of the gallery; they come to the passers-by, and this is ultimately how it's done.
Once inside The Showroom, a rounded awning brings a huge amount of aesthetic warmth to the space, and upon seeing the room filled with soft furnishings, the viewer will have immediate associations of comfort and the domestic environment, producing a calming effect. We are then invited to listen to the accompanying soundtrack, and do exactly nothing.
Rest and relaxation in this way, especially outside of the home, brings up a lot of questions. Yes, this interrogation is counter to the very act of rest, but of course this is not something we can honestly say we are either used to, or comfortable with. We have been conditioned to believe that excessive rest is inherently bad, that it stops us from 'living our lives', being productive, making money. Where our working and leisure lives have been exploited and commodified under late-stage capitalism, the prospect of rest is almost frightening. There is a degree of peril involved: what should I be doing? If these systems need us to hustle and grind as much as possible, and we are fully cognisant of this, what happens to our minds when we choose active rest?
A converse line of questioning comes from a book the artists cite as inspiration in their practice, Jonathan Crary's 24/7: Late Capitalism and the End of Sleep. In its opening pages, Crary outlines the US Defence Department's ongoing research into the white-crowned sparrow, a bird that is able to stay awake for up to seven days during migration season. This vested interest is, naturally, not as benign and adorable as it may have been were it coming from an ecological department. Its objective is to biologically extend this skill to US soldiers, employing the pharmaceutical industry to permit them to stay awake for upwards of seven days at a time, whilst eliminating "deleterious cognitive and psychic deficits". An always-on soldier functioning at full capacity for seven days with no rest appears to be much closer to the likes of drone and AI activity than anything the human mind and body would generally desire, but of course, in warfare, human desire and instincts have no place in the wider strategy.
As much as I will continue to read and be fascinated by Crary's book, these lines of active thinking and learning are at odds with the immediate endeavour of relaxation. While the artists share their research and inspirations at the start of the exhibition, the show pleasingly repudiates over-stimulation. While the exhibition is in itself an installation, the particular fittings and furnishings are not the primary focus. The Showroom have curated a show that celebrates doing nothing, and showcases a soundtrack which is a compilation of lullabies sung by people in the local community from different cultures around the world, produced by composer Matshidiso. The soundscape is available independently on Matshidiso's Soundcloud, and there is a real pleasure in not only being able to listen back at such a soothing score, but also to have in one's ear as a constant reminder to prioritise relaxation when needed. Yes, lullabies are for infants and children by design, but there is no shame in needing one in times of hostility and stress. Here, we enter a sonic intimate space of being sung to; we do not know where the various lullabies come from, instead we melt into the soundscape and our soft surroundings within the gallery space.
Ultimately, depending on the state of the viewer's mindset, actively surrendering to rest, especially outside of the home, can feel liberating, disarming, or unnerving. Perhaps all three in tandem. This is surely a response to the fast-paced functionality of our world, along with our own personal traumas and experiences, but as the artists are keen to highlight, the "hostile and violent" systems that we all exist within, in one form or another, play an integral role. We have to understand the context in which we individually and collectively live, and unfortunately this means rethinking what it means to relax. Ottessa Moshfegh's popular 2018 novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, is a compelling, if polarising, example of what relaxation does not look like to most of us. The protagonist is falsely prescribed strong insomnia medication in order to help her sleep for days on end, but her desire to sleep without end is not marred by any responsibilities, not even paying rent. Interestingly, the story is not particularly about depression, but has flavours of what it can look like to those with neither financial nor caregiving responsibilities. Although this is a very different message to that which is evident in the exhibition, Moshfegh highlights the barriers for shorter spells of relaxation by their very omission.
Sitting back in The Showroom, I cannot even allow myself to close my eyes while the therapeutic soundscape swirls around me. There is nothing that the gallery, its curator, nor the artists could have done to make that environment any more restful. Absolutely nothing. Yet, the demands of the day and our whole lifespan are laid out in front of us. The issues that rage through our communities, our world, and indeed ourselves, are inescapable. If it's not happening to us at this very moment, it's happening to our neighbour, our comrade. How might we even think about resting? The strain on mental and material life under late-stage capitalism is making rest increasingly implausible. Remedies - Lullaby Nest provides the perfect respite to these conditions. We are not white-crowned sparrows, we have no choice but to rest.
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