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A rejection of the status quo

In 2015 Tina M.Campt, Saidiya Hartman, Denise Ferreira da Silva and other Black feminist artists and scholars created the Practising Refusal Collective (PR Collective) to engage with the question: How do we write, think, perform, practice, visualize, engage, theorize, story, or enact a practice of refusal? PR Collective worked on a series of public events and collectively created a glossary of terms. In the context of Black Visuality, they produced this definition of refusal: ‘a rejection of the status quo as livable and the creation of possibility in the face of negation i.e. a refusal to recognize a system that renders you fundamentally illegible and unintelligible; the decision to reject the terms of diminished subjecthood with which one is presented, using negation as a generative and creative source of disorderly power to embrace the possibility of living otherwise.’ 2

Recognising a system, rejecting its terms, and feeling empowered by the possibility to live otherwise is demonstrated by the manifesto: Rest is Resistance (2022) by Tricia Hersey. Reflecting on her exhausted state, and the not-so-invisible systems of ableism, capitalism, patriarchy and white supremacy, that have led to it, she commits to another way of being which is rooted in rest. She resolves to slow-down, to self-preserve, to rest, and to return to a space of possibility.

Hersey contextualises this as a call from her ancestors, to reclaim rest where they couldn’t and she calls for an end to grind culture where self-worth is tied to how much you are getting done. This becomes a collective exercise in her project The Nap Ministry where people gather to sleep and dream together in space that she holds open for this purpose. Hersey came to the idea of rest-as-resistance when she was at graduate school studying, working and parenting. Momentum for the project built quickly as others who felt the ramifications of their own depletion gathered to collectively occupy what Hersey labels a ‘DreamSpace’ of potential. Her book has since become mainstream; she travels and talks to spread its message, it’s a very public declaration of refusal that brings histories of exploitation to light. 

Evading physical and mental capture 

The authors of The Undercommons, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, note the ongoingness of this process when they illuminate refusal with the idea of fugitivity. They discuss Harriet Tubman’s escape noting that escape is never a finished event. Having been enslaved, as Tubman runs, she is not running towards citizenship and a compromised subjectivity, it is away from the entire system that produces her as an object. Embracing fugitivity instead means a committed refusal that’s less publicly performed, but nonetheless gains momentum and creates space for community i.e., an undercommons. Ideas that are lived, in bell hooks terms: ‘when our lived experience of theorizing is fundamentally linked to processes of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice. Indeed, what such experience makes more evident is the bond between the two – that ultimately reciprocal process wherein one enables the other.’

The creation of: ‘disorderly power’ noted in the PR collective’s definition of refusal, sounds like it holds the potential to disrupt but if the same inhumane day to day conditions persist, I wonder what structures refusals continuance relies on? What could a networked response which takes fugitive form create?

In China, ‘Tan Ping’ (躺平) or ‘lying flat’ has given form and image to the quiet bubbling of a generation’s collective rejection of rat-race conditions in education and employment which often involve the ‘996’ work week (9am til 9pm, 6 days a week). Structurally this refusal relies on the possibility of contributing to (online) discussion, posting anonymously and maintaining an oblique approach that mutates as it is censored. In meme form, fat cats stretching out and the metaphor of chives (‘Chives are difficult to cut when lying down’) give variation to the image of reclined young people. Tan Ping relates to Bartleby’s refusal of work, the Nap Ministry’s anti-grind stance and all could refer to the bodily limits described that symptomise rising global levels of Burnout.

Desire

There are plenty of everyday examples of refusal where collective persistence can have a cumulative effect, such as boycotting products, maintaining minority languages, tending to sacred land, and refusing the interpellation of being a productive and complicit (cultural) worker.  Refusal emerges in the face of oppression and a multitude of global crises, yet it holds onto potential and a sense of unfinishedness which doesn’t have to have it all worked out. This is part of the appeal, you start from where you are, or perhaps return to what you feel, especially when the status quo has told you to think (and feel) differently.

I see an inspiring refusal reflected in the work of artist duo WORKNOT! Who make a conscious step against the status quo of deeply entrenched neoliberalism that leads to precarious living conditions towards other support structures like mutual aid. WORKNOT!, who were recently nominated for the Dolf Henkes Prize, will distribute solidarity packages by bike courier for their contribution to the nomination exhibition at TENT. This year, the prize is dedicated to social practices with nominees who are committed to self-organization, solidarity, and the power of collective narratives. 

Whereas Rest Is Resistant makes the collective imagination of the daily rut visible, WORKNOT! chooses a more fleeting form. Their work goes further than rest as a means to continue capitalist productivity. It points towards circulation, care and interdependence without fully pinning itself down. It touches upon a tension that often returns in practices of refusal: how to show something that does not want to be fully visible, archivable or documentable. The collection of processed waybills and the logbook of the bicycle courier was in the exhibition at TENT, made visible for the public, online as well as offline. But the non-archivable and non-documentable proces is at odds with the economy of exhibiting, in which visibility often determines how labor and resources are valued. 

A similar tension between visibility, care and collectivity can be felt at Metro54 in Amsterdam in the current exhibition: Practising Freedom and Refusal The works are described as offerings. The exhibition is part of the bigger project Sustaining the Otherwise, which focusses on creating a dialogue between artists, activist, scientists and writers. dat zich richt op het creëren van een dialoog tussen kunstenaars, activisten, wetenschappers en schrijvers. I stumbled upon it during a workshop about ‘Chosen Family’ which is neither noted nor open to the public. That almost-seclusion seem meaningful: refusal here appears not as a big gesture, but as a carefully demarcated space in which relations can be protected. 

At another similarly almost-private convene at Rotterdam project space Available and the Rat under the title: BORDERBORDER we read banned books, and the moment for collective study is framed as a way of keeping knowledge alive through reading together in the name of collective liberation. Refusal opens to pockets of community where possibility is engaged with with the support of others and again, without a necessary conclusion – within uncertainty space is created for an unforeseen imaginary to emerge.

Some of these examples exist within art spaces, others are enacted in everyday life. I sense that it’s in the less visible gatherings, where a commitment to values sparks or is strengthened. Without conclusive linear endings, refusal makes a return, building on structures already rooted in contemporary practices. It shows that refusal is not necessarily meant to directly change something, but to create space for an alternative that is not yet fully visible, nameable or finished.