Shifts and disruptions within (self-)institutionalized structures entail instability, uncertainty, and doubt—what I term artistic anxieties. Anxiety, as a deeply personal unease, acts as a signal rather than a defined emotion. Though subjective, it points to shared incapacities within artistic labor. In his essay “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You,” Timothy Gould interprets Emily Dickinson’s poem “Hope is the thing with feathers”, comparing hope’s symptoms to post-traumatic stress disorder, with the crucial difference that hope’s absent cause lies in the future, not the past. Similarly, engaging with artistic anxieties became a form of hope for collective resistance.
To explore these concepts, I repurposed take-away materials from exhibitions and art events I attended over the years. These ephemeral objects became references and catalysts for speech performances and publications, and they were developed collectively within the program of a.pass in Brussels.