REST is an ongoing project about the practice of resting. This work discusses resting as an act of self-care, surrender and rebellion. It empowers those who spend a lot of time in bed to raise their voices and reveal perspectives on resting as a cultural and political technology. Therefore I invite people to visit me in my bed and talk about their relationship to rest. The recordings of the bed audiences provide various mind material and build up a dynamic archive of voices. Voices that otherwise wouldn’t be heard. Voices that become political wordings as soon as they leave the private sphere and go public. Stories of struggling, coping, resisting. Stories of celebrating, loving, creating. Captured in a sound installation, liberated inside the mattresses, hearable by lying in bed and surrendering to the horizontal. Or right here…
Spending time in bed, resting, is connected with both – feelings of guilt and pleasure, but the horizontal can also be seen as a change maker in order to overcome the unhealthy glorifications of our times. Resting is an essential human need, that seems to become more and more difficult to realize. While for the ill/sick of us resting has become a curse, because they cannot cope their tasks, for others it has become a task, because they cannot cope their energetic overkill.
