Anaesthetics

Degradation, decay and death are thoughts that are hard to navigate in our everyday life, in the world of harsh objective sciences. Thus we create systems and surfaces that deter us from our own mortality salience, into constant growth as an anxiety buffer.

The thesis Anasthetics dissects the global north’s predominant fascination with smooth and optimised aesthetics, an approach that is a result of the secular dread of modernity. In times of accelerated change and masked despair we might find an unexpected calm in the worn and the raw.

The scene is a medical waiting room, a place where vulnerability and hope puts us into a state of suspense. While the never-thought-of lingers and pushes us into a numbing but safe uncertainty, a game in the corner invites us for a minute to regress and reflect on our personal and collective agency towards identity and matter. As neither is free of change.