Curator-in-Residence | Anabelle Lacroix: On sleeplessness and listening in (to yourself) | 23.1. 17:00

Lämpimästi tervetuloa Titanikille torstaina 23.1. klo 17! Osana lyhyttä kuraattoriresidenssiään Titanikilla kuraattori ja kirjoittaja Anabelle Lacroix (FR) pitää esityksen unen ja unettomuuden poliittisuudesta. Esitys on englanninkielinen.

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Varmt välkommen på Titanik på torsdag den 23e januari kl 17! Som del av sin korta residensperiod på Titanik, curator och skribent Anabelle Lacroix (FR) håller en presentation kring politiken av sömn och sömnlöshet. Presentationen sker på engelska.

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Join us at Titanik on Thursday the 23rd of January at 5pm! As part of her short residency at Titanik, independent curator Anabelle Lacroix will give a talk on the politics of sleep and sleeplessness.  

Sayings such as ‘sleep hygiene’ and ‘social jetlag’ are testimonies of the cultural syndrome around sleep and insomnia. Our time asleep has shrunk since the industrial revolution, and artists saw sleep and rest as a sign of resistance to the increasing pressure to ‘perform’. Here we might think of Andy Warhol’s Sleep (1964), or Mladen Stilinović’s Artist at Work (1978) picturing the artist asleep. As such, these works embody the idea developed by theorist Jonathan Crary that sleep is the last barrier to capitalism in a 24-hour society. 

However, tounderstand sleep and its cultural implications, we need to consider its twin brother: sleeplessness. While insomnia is commonly seen as a disorder and threat to productivity, it has ties to knowledge and philosophical awakening. At night, some awaken to create many forms of countercultures that challenge the established order and its dichotomies, across genres and genders. But for many of us, trouble with sleeping is connected to stress, anxiety and playbour time spend on screens that are effects of cognitive capitalism.

During this talk and discussion, we will consider ideas of desynchronization between the body and society, to understand contemporary aspects of sleep and sleeplessness. By introducing notions of sounding and listening, we will also consider insomnia as generative andperhaps, as a more effective form of dissent to homogenizing and globalizing forces. 

Anabelle Lacroix is curator and writer based in Paris. She was recently working as a curator for public programs at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne, Australia. At ACCA, her work focused on performance, discursive programs, as well as exploring new forms of writing and criticism. She is associate of Liquid Architecture, an independent organisation focused on sound and listening, where she worked between 2014 and 2017 as program manager, general manager and curator on projects nationally in Australia and Taiwan. In 2018 she co-edited ’An Act of Showing: Rethinking artist run initiatives through place’ with Maria Miranda (published by Unlikely). Anabelle regularly contributes to public forums and contemporary art publications such as Art and Australia, Un Magazine, Bureau, 4A Papers, Museums Australia Magazine and others.




Image: Poster for the exhibition Andy Warhol at the Whitney Museum of American Art 2018-2019.