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Search for rest

In 1880, the French socialist politician and journalist Paul Lafargue, son-in-law of Karl Marx, wrote the satirical treatise Le doit à la paresse. If he were to return to our world today, with its ever-increasing agitation, he would shake his head in astonishment. What value does our society attach to relaxation, rest, silence, sleep and laziness? Are we not caught up more than ever in the relentlessness of production and consumption? What is more, the same capitalism against which Lafargue went into battle has found all sorts of ways of exploiting our rest, relaxation and laziness. The German author Heiner Müller wrote that what we really need in order to achieve a state of restfulness is a time that ‘frei ist von Konsum’. There is a subversive element to the demand for this sort of time, since it erodes the inexorability of production and consumption.
  
This search for rest is at the heart of EXIT, a performance and a study by the theatre-maker and artist Kris Verdonck and dancer and choreographer Alix Eynaudi, together with Rutger Zuydervelt (Machinefabriek), a creator of music and sound. On the basis of a traditional theatre set-up – a room full of spectators in front of a stage where something is shown – they want to examine what influence the various media the theatre has at its disposal (lighting, sound, movement, language, visuals, set design, etc.) can have on the sensory perceptions and mental attitude of the audience. To what extent are artists capable of playing on the spectator’s consciousness or subconscious when using these theatrical resources?