In The Accursed Share (1949) Georges Bataille opposes restricted economies, which ostensibly aim for utility and efficiency, to a broader all-encompassing General Economy of exuberance and wastage derivative on the sun’s senseless expenditure of energy, and to which all restricted economies, ultimately, are immanent.
The relationship of human civilization to General Economy is intriguing in its ambivalence. Modern societies extol economic productivity, but incorporate an unacknowledged tendency to explode into displays of senseless excess, in religion, eroticism, war, intoxication, and cultural expression.
From ‘primitive’ societies that periodically burn off the excess resources they have accumulated in ceremonial sacrifice to the sun, to advanced capitalism’s rampant consumerism and juddering landslide of ever more entirely unnecessary commodities that pass between our fingers and beneath our delighted gazes on their way to the garbage incinerator, the rule is: submission to General Economy, no exceptions. But when will mankind be man enough to man up and give in?
Set at the end of history (now), Terminal Crush (She’s So) presents a dialogue between Man, who, at the end of history, after a lifetime of half-measures and prevarication, has finally clocked that he’s always been in love with General Economy, that what he desired all along was to abandon all pretence of sense and utility and submit fully to Her Royal Hotness. In spite of her sunny disposition, however, she’s not going to forgive him after all his pathetic hot-and-cold softboi bullshit, at least not before she’s toyed with him for a bit.
First performed at Display Gallery, Prague, July 2025 as part of the exhibition Gravity of the Useless
Additional music by Sila Aydin