This thesis explores the relationship of burn-out syndrome to neoliberal forms of cultural production in the context of artist residencies. While focusing primarily on the so-called burnout syndrome as a syndrome related to work conditions, I initially attempt to briefly lay down a short history about its neighboring term “exhaustion” -which has a wide spectrum of application- with the use of critical and post marxist theory and some elements of speculative creative writing inspired by on-site research to elaborate on these relations. Consequently, within the framework of the current high-performance culture that calls for hyper productivity and in which work becomes a continuous performing, I lay out the current ways in which burnout is manifested and the reasons why this is also a phenomenon of the artistic field. I underline the role of artist residencies in the current phenomenon of burnout by briefly addressing their evolution and uncovering the main modes in which they partake in performance culture. Finally, I investigate and question the validity and capacity of artist

residencies as “counter-places of exhaustion"; places of “retreat,” where one does not just break from everyday life and the precarious living of the artist. In my thesis I seek for ways in which this complex relationship could be challenged, and for modes of function in artist residencies that can turn them into spaces for "positively negative retreat.” Could we experience exhaustion collectively, and would this allow for a place between “doing” and “not doing” to open up, as a space of resistance and actualised care?

Author: Zoi Moutsokou