BREATHING UNDERWATER (III. Museums and Workers)
“And I thought of flight and I thought of drowning and I thought of death.
And while I thought the sea crept higher, till it reached my door.
And I knew, then, there was neither flight, nor death, nor drowning.
That when the sea comes calling, you stop being neighbors,
Well acquainted, friendly-at-a-distance neighbors,
And you give your house for a coral castle,
And you learn to breathe underwater.”
Carol Bieleck. Coral Castles
“These are the only genuine ideas, the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.”
Jose Ortega y Gasset
“Upon reaching absolute zero, 0 K, any process in a physical system stops.
Upon reaching absolute zero, the entropy reaches a minimum and accelerated value.”
Nernst’s Postulate
Douglas Rushkoff recounted in his latest book, Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, that among the ultra-mega-rich, the trend is to create customized escape rooms, shelters reminiscent of Cold War bunkers to survive the impending global collapse, which they are all convinced will happen sooner rather than later. Some, like Elon Musk, think big and build a spaceship to do it on Mars. Others are more discreet, like Peter Thiel of Palantir, who retreated to his refuge in New Zealand. The coolest, like Zuckerberg, prefer a privileged plot secure with views in the virtual metaverse they’ve created. All of this is generating a lucrative business with many zeros. Companies like Rising S Company, based in Texas, construct and install bunkers and shelters ranging from $40,000 for a 2.5 by 3.5-meter emergency hideout to the exclusive Aristocrat series costing $8.3 million, complete with a bowling alley and a swimming pool. Some are even more elitist, like the Czech company Oppidum, which also cares for the mental health of its clients by offering simulations of natural light inside the facilities, along with a wine cellar and other amenities to make the rich feel at home.
We live in societies that have turned the bunker into the solution for all our woes. Security above all. Law and Order. Unfortunately, I must say that I’ve also observed this trend in some museums in Europe since the pandemic debacle. Museums that retract, overprotect, do everything to control the entry of “not a ray of light” without control. Hyper-vigilant, defensive museums. Barrier museums, border museums, customs museums. Blockage museums. Trench museums. Moat museums without drawbridges. Gate museums. Museums succumbing to the paranoia of persecutory mania. Wall museums distance themselves more and more from reality, bothered by reality as a discordant note in their daily score. Bunker museums are many thousands of meters below the surface, even though they can be seen in broad daylight. Museums have decided to submerge their workers, demanding that they hold their breath indefinitely.
And I see them every day when I dive into our Zoom meetings or in some depressive catch-ups. Colleagues on the verge of giving up. Exhausted, tired, fed up. Professionals who have tried to breathe underwater but can’t anymore. They need to come to the surface (quit their jobs) to literally get a breath of air and survive. And we’re not talking about people who give up easily. I know many who have literally given their all, defending their organization every day because they passionately believe in what they do. They’ve been asked to do everything with nothing in return, almost nothing. They’ve been pushed to the limit, considering it normal, the bare minimum. They’ve been asked for what no one should have asked them for. Broken toys for the satisfaction of some. Cannon fodder as a perverse excuse to maintain a farce day after day. And that’s why they’ve realized that it’s vain to hope that things will improve, as vain as believing that you can breathe deeply underwater. I call them the apneists of the Museums. There are many. I was one of them. Some even drowned trying to reach the surface, and their bodies float inflated in the ocean of statistics and annual results reports of some staff.
In this sea, only some well-adapted sharks have survived. Those who take the prey of good ideas offered by some apneists turned consulting castaways and snatch them away without hesitation. I am inside (at the bottom), and you are not. This belongs to me. You have fallen from grace; I am the wheel of fortune. Down here, in the bunker, there’s no room for anyone. Dive back in if you can and join us. They are territorial and transactional. They are only interested in what consolidates them. Everything else does not exist. The only logic is to survive one more day, one more minute, one more second, at any cost. In the bunker. At the price of ending the apneists. At the price of believing in the sirens’ songs that come from here and there: the shortcut to passing on budget cuts to ticket prices will save you; the “service-customer” mantra, auction the museum to the highest bidder; you won’t regret it; the museum belongs to those who can afford, pay it; treat yourself to an exhibition about Barbie or a new community-washing campaign, more vibrant this time, that seems more authentic, that deceives better and more people, see how everything will be back on track. Don’t hold back. The bunker is yours, only yours. They can’t dispute it. Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest fairy of the museum?
But sometimes, only sometimes, someone, someone like Julie, Mike, Robert, Diana, or Joscha crosses your path propelled by a warm, unexpected, and strange ascending current, and you see them breathe… underwater. They are exceptional because they manage to do it. They ask you unexpected but immensely liberating questions, such as what a museum is. Or they openly tell you that they never want to do exhibitions again until the last of them can buy basic groceries at the supermarket to support their family dignifiedly. Or they openly question the selection process to fill positions in a museum, positions that inherently make no sense and only reproduce an outdated structure that only distances itself from reality… so that the bunker can remain secure. Or they tell you, I don’t know how to name what is happening in the museum because the existing words are inadequate to express it. Or they look at you with great melancholy that screams for hope and you answer with your best human smile possible. I get it!
I have learned from all of them how to breathe underwater, even to build coral castles that can be an escape route for those still down there in the last breaths. Coral castles, or moving gardens inspired by another who knows how to breathe submerged, the philosopher gardener, Gilles Clément, who, by the way, has not designed gardens for the rich for a long time, nor for Jeff Bezos. Like Clément, who warned us that gardens change, they must walk, and we must let them do so freely and peacefully, museums can also leave the bunker in the same way. Taking care of those who have been taking care of the museum all their lives, every single day of their existence.
That’s why, together with other emergency divers and gardeners who understand that all museums are essentially one interconnected museum through the communities that form them, we are reinventing the concept of philanthropy, inviting foundations and nonprofit entities to participate in an exciting journey where the essential thing is to take care of museum professionals as they deserve, regardless of the time, money, or attention they require. Supporting them, treating them with the respect and dignity they deserve. Honoring their stories by making them feel safe by sharing their vulnerability and trauma. Forgetting, for once, about funds to do the thousand urgent and flashy things as usual, replacing them with the well-being of people. Keeping them in time, the time needed to breathe again. Starting the relationship not with the publication of a call on a website but in front of a cup of coffee, with an entire afternoon ahead and talking about shared values, not budgets, about personal stories, not the next spectacular museum seasonal program. Seeking to build a relationship based on trust and honesty, not on the glamour of galas to raise funds. A collaboration that seeks to become deep and dense over time (inspired by processes in nature as suggestive as the underground Mycelium that is not seen but encompasses everything). A relationship that educates the patient and avoids urgency and immediacy. An experience based on reciprocity where all we learn to read reality through the new lenses of abundance. A team effort that gives a completely different meaning to the word resource, making it understand things like taking care of everything that is part of the Museum without having to choose the following deceptive priorities. Because the Museum is those who make it possible every single day inside and outside, outside and inside no matter their position or “pedigree”. Because it is not possible to force a Museum to fit into a bunker bit it can flow on the ocean.
Utopian? There are already many who have chosen this path, and I sense that many more will soon because they have lost the fear of coming to the surface. After all, what do they have to lose? When someone is considered dead or lost, that’s when the real story begins. Like that of those Japanese Hibakujumoku (bombing trees in Japanese), the trees that were exposed to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and managed to sprout just a few weeks after the attack. Some of the trees were surprisingly close to the bomb’s impact point. The peony of Honkyo-ji temple was only 800 meters away; a holly, 900 meters away; in Hosenbo, a camphor tree, 1,100 meters away. In the same way, some of our apneists just out of the bunker are already back, sprouting and fertilizing everywhere. Do you want to start breathing underwater with us?
