Curatorial statement by Tomáš Knoflíček
and Kateřina Štroblová for the Cursor Gallery
The 2025 exhibition programme comprises a quartet of shows, each of which accentuates a different segment of the discursive spectrum framed by the following questions: Why and how do we live in such a fast-paced world, so different from the world envisioned by Enlightenment thinkers? Why has a universalising “sweet reason” not created a world that is subject to our foresight and control?
Of course, we do not regard these questions as a critique of the concept of modernity (at least in the first instance), or even as a mockery of one of its utopias. Instead, we use these questions to think about how we might come to terms with this “dislocation of the modern world” and how – to draw on the work of the British sociologist Anthony Giddens – this dislocation is reflected in our sense of ontological security.
As a rule, the greater the risk to our civilisation, the more counterfactual it becomes. Rather than trying to eliminate the problem, fatalism takes control and suppresses the sense of anxiety, or various kinds of escapism. As Susan Sontag summed up this state of affairs more than three decades ago: “Apocalypse is now a long-running serial: not ‘Apocalypse Now’ but ‘Apocalypse From Now On’.”
We are interested in the space between these poles, in essence between existence on the one hand, and non-existence on the other. But first and foremost, we want to focus on the adaptive responses to this condition, developed on a Giddensian scale from pragmatic acceptance, via sustained or cynical optimism, to radical engagement. At the same time we would like to revise each of these reactions and see them in a light that allows for other interpretations. This is particularly true in the case of radical engagement, which we see not only in mentoring and predominantly collectivist activities aimed at changing the existing paradigm, but also in the simple ability to “walk away” or to say “no”. Too often in our social space we hear that there is no room for other than activist motivated manifestations; time is running out and we cannot afford to waste it on activities that do not contribute to an immediate remedy. But this is not how we want to think. We do not intend to succumb to the dictates of an urgency that is, at least instrumentally, strongly close to the power practices of that which activists identify as the main culprit in the impending catastrophe, i.e. capitalist society. We try to avoid the fetishisation of the outcome, we prefer to be able to see things within different contexts and through different prisms, and so instead of a noisy activism we are more attracted to an attitude of (voluntary) distantiation.
Of the two extremes, we are closer to the “vita contemplativa” than the “vita activa”, and so we understand – or at least are attracted to – Paul Kingsnorth’s glum prescience, present, inter alia, in the following words. “Withdrawing. If you do this, a lot of people will call you a ‘defeatist’ or a ‘doomer’, or claim you are ‘burned out’. They will tell you that you have an obligation to work for climate justice or world peace or the end of bad things everywhere, and that ‘fighting’ is always better than ‘quitting’. Ignore them, and take part in a very ancient practical and spiritual tradition: withdrawing from the fray. Withdraw not with cynicism, but with a questing mind. Withdraw so that you can allow yourself to sit back quietly and feel – intuit – work out what is right for you, and what nature might need from you. Withdraw because refusing to help the machine advance – refusing to tighten the ratchet further – is a deeply moral position. Withdraw because action is not always more effective than inaction. Withdraw to examine your worldview: the cosmology, the paradigm, the assumptions, the direction of travel.”