“This notion of rest, it’s attractive to her, but I don’t think she would like it. They are all like that, these women. Waiting for ease, the space that need not be filled with anything other than the drift of their own thoughts. But they wouldn’t like it. They are busy and thinking of ways to be busier because such a space of nothing pressing to do would knock them down.” — Toni Morrison, Jazz (1992), p.16

Nocturnalities: Bargaining Beyond Rest is a long-term artistic research project that examines the politics of rest, exhaustion, anxiety, and precarity within the context of cultural labour. Spanning multiple formats—including exhibitions, public interventions, a publication, a public programme, and an online REST Archive—the project proposes new ways to think about labour, rest, and sustainability in the age of 24/7 capitalism.
Initially inspired by Jonathan Crary’s 24/7: Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep (2013) and Yann Moulier-Boutang’s Cognitive Capitalism (2004), the project interrogates the psychic and cultural implications of cognitive labour and the commodification of sleep. It explores rest not only as a physiological need but also as a political act, a form of resistance, and a cultural construct embedded in capitalist narratives of productivity and value.
Rest becomes a lens through which to examine performative labour, institutional fatigue, and the mythologies that shape our perception of time, care, and certainty. The project raises questions such as:
– How can rest become a site of resistance in late capitalism?
– What is the biopolitical function of sleep deprivation?
– How is our desire for certainty entangled with the mythologisation of productivity?
– What speculative care systems might we propose for a more sustainable future?
The first iteration of the project, titled From Dusk Till Dawn, was piloted by Andrea Knezović in 2022 at ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana (SI), within the exhibition and initiative Discussion on Labour: Work in Progress. Reflections on Communities Beyond Capitalism. The programme featured panel discussions, screenings, performances, and a public reading room in collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Arts SCCA-Ljubljana and its CEE Art Catalogue Archive.
Contributors included prominent voices such as Jonathan Crary (art critic and Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia University) and Katja Praznik (author of Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism and professor at SUNY Buffalo). The event culminated in a long-durational collective performative reading of Crary’s 24/7, continuing until sunrise.
Building on this initial iteration, the project expanded into a broader research and publishing initiative. In collaboration with editor Agata Bar and designer Miquel Hervás Gómez, Knezović developed a campaign and an umbrella project that included:
– A book titled Nocturnalities: Bargaining Beyond Rest, published by Onomatopee Publishing
– A public poster action across Amsterdam with phrases like “Are you selling your sleep for your dreams?” and “Did you buy your rest credit yet?”
– The creation of the REST Archive, an online open-access platform for public dialogue and knowledge exchange on the politics of sleep, care, and 24/7 cultural labour
Over time, Nocturnalities has been presented in exhibitions, collections, symposiums, and biennials, growing into an ongoing body of work that continues to evolve across different platforms and communities. It remains a central node in Knezović’s broader inquiry into care, labour, and the mythologies that govern our relation to time and rest.

 Please do not fall asleep tonight.