Manifesto
- 2017
A textual declaration developed within Doing Nothing Lab, reclaiming non-productivity as a collective and political gesture
The Manifesto for doing nothing is a performative text questioning labour-centred societies and the increasing identification of human value with productivity, acceleration, and permanent activity.
Written as a poetic and political declaration, the manifesto combines humour, contradiction, exhaustion, refusal, and performative language to advocate for alternative relationships to time, usefulness, leisure, and collective existence. Positioned between artistic statement, political provocation, and speculative exercise, the text proposes “not doing” as a serious and conscious practice capable of interrupting dominant structures of overproduction and self-optimization.
Rather than functioning solely as a written document, the manifesto operates through public reading, collective listening, circulation, and performative activation.
Forms
Manifesto text: a poetic and political declaration structured through short performative statements and repetitions
Public readings and performances: live activations of the manifesto within exhibition and performative contexts
Printed and online circulation: textual distribution as part of the broader research environment of Doing Nothing Lab.
Performative speech act: the manifesto functioning simultaneously as text, declaration, instruction, and collective provocation
Context
The work was presented within the group exhibition As Slow as Possible at Embarrat and later performed at Hans & Fritz Contemporary in May 2017.
As one of the textual articulations of The Laboratory of Doing Nothing, the manifesto condenses many of the central concerns of the broader research project: labour, exhaustion, refusal, slowness, non-productivity, and alternative experiences of time.
Credits
Concept and text: Christina Schultz Collaboration with: Mar Merino
Back to main project[Doing Nothing Lab]((https://www.christinaschultz.com/works/LaboratoryDoingNothingMAIN/)
Manifesto of Doing Nothing Please contact the artist for the English version
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