Cabinet 29: Sloth

One of the seven deadly sins, sloth has long been reviled in the Christian world. But as capitalism appropriated the Christian tradition of work and recast it as the ethical imperative of its own secular new world order, laziness was revaluated by philosophers, writers and artists as a means of resisting the prevalent social order and its gospel of profit-driven hard work. The ambiguous status of the "couch potato" today is a symptom of the complex history of this notion. Cabinet 29 examines this history through a variety of essays, interviews and artist projects, including Brian Dillon on writing, illness and procrastination, Thomas Zummer on the fourth-century priest who cast sloth as one of the seven deadly sins, Marina van Zuylen on modern fatigue, Daniel Rosenberg on nineteenth-century children's books and the pedagogy of time management, Christopher Turner on vasectomies and other medical cures for sloth, and artist Mladen Stilinovic's manifesto for laziness. Mark Morrison on the history of gingerbread houses, Caroline de la Pena on Gustaf Zander's "medical gymnastics," Paul La Farge on Cao Dai, Marina Warner on Roger Caillois' rock collection, Andrew McKie on the history of obituaries and a pull-out poster by artist Dan Perjovschi.