Doris Denekamp: Sleeping as an act of non-cooperation in neoliberal times

Mentor: Doreen Mende

Independent reviewer: Inês Moreira

Arnhem, June 2011


Sleeping, as an enclosed state in which we do not take part in the cycle of production and consumption, is a subversive act in the context of capitalist economy.Our society, identity and urban environment are formed by the neoliberal ideology which has developed world wide in the past forty years. The power of the market has created a reality in which there is a constant demand to perform - a demand to be productive. Therefore nonperformance seems a relevant and potent way of resisting the neoliberal hegemony, which accumulates wealth benefitting a very small upper layer of the population through the dispossession of many.


The thesis formulates a theme with pertinence in contemporary political theory (strategies of resistance and withdrawal from neo-liberal systems) and it is an exercise with significance to the field of visual arts / performance, as it relates a diversity of facts and concerns, formulating it as a search for a critical art production. The argument is the search for a personal position and tries to articulate the global political condition, with a position within the cultural politics and finances, with the aesthetic production by several authors. The student presents knowledge on a diversity of theoretical authors, domain over media news and images, and on well known artists, exploring works dispersed in media (video, performance, installation), in time (from the 70 ́s to the 90 ́s) and in aesthetical production (from individual artist ́s or citizen ́s bodies, to large scale inhabitable installation). The text relates and articulates with clarity and with depth the several authors and fields involved. The aspect that could be further developed is the practical dimension of this work (beyond theoretical research), if the introduction refers briefly to the student ́s own practical work; the text could include this experience (and images) and reflect on it, as a new contribute to the field. Other aspect to consider is that the image selection, the legends and overall graphic design could be more elaborate.

Ines Moreira is an architect, researcher and curator, based in Oporto. In her practice she has been experimenting collaborations between architecture, contemporary art and speculative/oblique research on contemporary culture. She is currently completing her PhD at Goldsmiths College London.