robin faymonville


© Bo Vloors

I deliver a performed lecture centered on the dead-end road sign. I present it at SB34–Clovis in Brussels. I approach this symbol through semiotic and historical perspectives. I mobilize references such as Hegel, T.S. Eliot, Jacques Lacan, and Hartmut Rosa.

I read the dead-end as an affective figure. I relate it to social acceleration and the anticipation of collapse. I connect it to forms of anxiety, stagnation, and temporal blockage.

I question the term “eco-anxiety.” I shift it from an individual condition to a structural symptom. I examine how naming such affects can contribute to their depoliticization. I point to the displacement of systemic issues—such as global warming—onto individual responsibility.

Notes on the Dead-End was presented at SB34–Clovis (Brussels), during the Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence’s exhibition “Fruit anxiety, desire and method”, curated by Pauline Hatzigeorgiou.