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1st episode – In the Tentacles of the Murmur (The literature of crisis): Merchants of Sadness

The Institute of Anxiety creates a space for the study of anxiety, which is spreading throughout society and manifests itself through insomnia, stress, alienation, loss of empathy, inequalities, and violence. It is suppressed without success by products of the pharmaceutical industry and intensified by growing social and economic uncertainty. The institute aims to be a platform where anxiety communicates and opens itself to a potential solution and turns into a force that is capable of radicalizing and forcing structural changes in the current state of affairs.

In the Tentacles of the Murmur (The literature of crisis)
1st episode of podcast by Jan Bělíček

Merchants of Sadness

In the Tentacles of the Murmur (The literature of crisis)

Fluidity, volatility, chaos, confusion, fragmentation, uncertainty, anxiety, crisis, polarization – these words are often used to describe the modern world. And even though we often find them inadequate, we feel subconsciously that they capture feelings we have that can’t be described in any other way. When I looked for a word that best captures our present era, out of nowhere came the strange expression “murmur”. I’m not even sure I know what precisely it means in Czech. Perhaps this is exactly why I like it so much. We can understand it as a sort of animal growl, an unarticulated dissatisfaction, an expression of disagreement or frustration that we can’t force into words. A dissatisfied hum without a form has pushed its way into the light of day and has influenced societies across the world and nobody knows what to do with it.

Literature offers an untraditional antidote to uncertainty, chaos, and confusion. It’s one option for protecting ourselves from the disorder. The act of writing creates a different mode of thought and self-expression: when we write or read, time slows down and we try to give some sort of form to our fluid, disorganized thought – or, together with the author, we observe the movement of their complicated, branching thinking. What does our world look like when viewed through contemporary literature? And how can we break free from the tentacles of the Murmur?

Author: Jan Bělíček 
Translation: Guy Tabachnick
Voice: Michael Pitthan and Rebecca Rose Riisness
Sound postproduction: Jonáš Richter 
Music and sound desing: Ondřej Bělíček

Made by Institute of Anxiety.
2019

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1st episode – In the Tentacles of the Murmur (The literature of crisis): Merchants of Sadness

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