Spa Entrepreneurship: Conceptual Art for Pausing the Apocalypse and Remediating the Commons, by Cassie Thornton

A rumor is haunting the halls of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza—the rumor of a spa opening on the Danish island of Møn. Spa entrepreneur/artist Cassie Thornton of The Feminist Economics Department (the FED) will be the one to give voice to this rumor through a performance titled Unsettled Spa, which will be followed by a conversation with Uriel Fogué.  

The gimmick of the spa is that everyone is escaping violence on some level, but some more than others. What isn't said directly, but is implied, is that the people who survive extreme violence (distributed by warlords and corporations, on behalf of empire) are the ones who have key knowledge about how to heal and how to survive the most blunt challenges to life today. Unsettled Spa runs on the assumption that the violence imparted on people, places and habitats that are not seen as powerful by the faces of capital, is coming for all of us. With this assumption, even those of us who are currently privileged and protected by whiteness, waterproofing, money and fortress Europe will soon need the wisdom of healing and survival already well understood by those who have already lived through the apocalypse. These survivors are the people who the spa would mythically bring to Denmark, grant asylum to, and hire as professional healing arts technicians at Unsettled Spa. 

With nuance and humor this performance/branding campaign will lay out a beautiful story of cooperation and commoning, by telling the story about how a piece of land in Denmark is being sacrificed for the collective needs of immigration in a world filled with violence. By its very existence this campaign highlights how shallow and absurd the general responses to emergency needs for resettlement due to war and climate change are by most European countries. This satirical exploration on ideas of commonality will tackle the notion of Convivial Conservation, one of research lines of the independent study program Organismo | Art in Applied Critical Ecologies, in which this activity is framed.