R.S.O.L.
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Room for the Study Of Loneliness : space for contemporary art
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Study and support group Radical Softness as Resistance:
"Only when it's dark enough can you see the stars"
Metaphorically, the world seems to be getting darker. The globalisation of the Western economic model has created an environmental and climate crisis with all kinds of socio-economic and -political consequences. Globally, politics seems to be moving more and more towards the radical right. Right-wing government leaders are presently pursuing autocracy and are waging wars on various levels. Instead of the soft, healing forces of conversion, transformation, conservation and protection, the chosen way forward seems to be harshness, violence, exploitation and exclusion.
The study and support group Radical Softness as Resistance wants to reflect on these issues from the perspective of philosophers' critical theory - and support each other in a radical resistance of kindness, understanding, care and transformation. The study and support group is aimed at all those who in one way or another are groaning under the darkness of the present era, and who feel involved or are interested in contemporary art. We will meet once a month in R.S.O.L. and when unable to attend, we will use e-mail and snail-mail as channels of exchange. The reading text forms the basis of the exchange. From our mutual understanding and appreciation of it, we work towards an individual, critical application or integration in our own places, with our mutual help and support.
American poet and writer Lora Mathis created the phrase: ‘Radical softness as a weapon’ in 2015. This began with a series of photographs with letter beads on magazine pictures of flowers. Following Mathis' aphorism, Brooklyn-based artist and writer Be Oakley's GenderFail Press produced a 2021 publication: “Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance”. Following her defeat in the 2024 US elections, Kamala Harris said in her 7 November speech at Howard University in Washington: ‘Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars’. Together with the title of the GenderFail publication, this maxim forms the title and motto for the study and support group that R.S.O.L. wants to form.
The first text for the study and support group is: ‘The One-Dimensional Society’ by Herbert Marcuse, part 1 of ‘One-Dimensional Man’.
We need each other! Join:
The study and support group Radical Softness as Resistance wants to reflect on these issues from the perspective of philosophers' critical theory - and support each other in a radical resistance of kindness, understanding, care and transformation. The study and support group is aimed at all those who in one way or another are groaning under the darkness of the present era, and who feel involved or are interested in contemporary art. We will meet once a month in R.S.O.L. and when unable to attend, we will use e-mail and snail-mail as channels of exchange. The reading text forms the basis of the exchange. From our mutual understanding and appreciation of it, we work towards an individual, critical application or integration in our own places, with our mutual help and support.
American poet and writer Lora Mathis created the phrase: ‘Radical softness as a weapon’ in 2015. This began with a series of photographs with letter beads on magazine pictures of flowers. Following Mathis' aphorism, Brooklyn-based artist and writer Be Oakley's GenderFail Press produced a 2021 publication: “Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance”. Following her defeat in the 2024 US elections, Kamala Harris said in her 7 November speech at Howard University in Washington: ‘Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars’. Together with the title of the GenderFail publication, this maxim forms the title and motto for the study and support group that R.S.O.L. wants to form.
The first text for the study and support group is: ‘The One-Dimensional Society’ by Herbert Marcuse, part 1 of ‘One-Dimensional Man’.
We need each other! Join:
Currently, the study and support group consists of seven people from the Deventer, Zwolle, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Vlissingen and Bergen NO region, ranging from twenty-somethings to sixty-somethings.