30. Jun. 2020
27. Sep. 2020

impromptu exhibition

Critical work.

For life and how we live it


Brief summary

“Systemic Importance” seems to be the measure of things during the Covid-19 pandemic. But what would a society look like where everything non-systemically important is dwindling away?

The term “systemic importance” originates from financial policy. Under the impact of the pandemic, its meaning expanded to all those sectors and professional groups that ensure the supply of essential goods and services to the communities, for example in the areas of food, health, public safety, logistics or energy.

This has created quite a problematic criterion for differentiation, which contains the potential to constitute a valuation and to evoke social divisions. For “systemic importance” always implies its downside: “systemic un-importance”, that is to say everything that is considered dispensable. But what would a society look like if everything “systemically un-important” – stories and humour, fashion, sports shows and favourite playlists, questions of existence and broadening one’s horizon – was dwindling away?

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The “systemically important” professions ensure that we live. How we live is being decided elsewhere … Critical work. is an improvised exhibition with art from the late Middle Ages to the present day and current statements on the topic of crisis: isolated works meet isolated viewers – here the “social distancing” requirements translate to the museum presentation.