Slavisa Drobnjakovic

Burn Out

Museum of Voluntary Surrender

Burn Out is a transdisciplinary exhibition that undertakes a critical exploration of exhaustion, dehumanization, and social alienation in contemporary society. This work brings together multimedia installations, live performative actions, and experimental audio research, grounded in discourses from anthropology and new humanism. It is committed to provoking urgent reflection on the systemic social dynamics that shape our time. Drawing on expertise in anthropology and visual production design, the exhibition constructs immersive environments that catalyse both participation and public dialogue, with a strong commitment to fostering connection and collective storytelling within Amsterdam’s New West.

“Burnout is not an individual dilemma

but a collective symptom”

Thematic and Conceptual Framework

Burn Out – Museum of Voluntary Surrender examines the phenomenon of burnout as a pressing socio-cultural and public health crisis, particularly pronounced in Western societies. The project traces the evolution of “burnout” from its early conceptualization as 19th-century neurasthenia to its current status as a widespread affliction exacerbated by increasing productivity demands, social isolation, and the relentless acceleration of modern life. Burnout is not merely an individual dilemma but a complex symptom of economic, cultural, and psychological forces profoundly influencing identity and well-being today.

Exhibition Architecture

Displaying living people, machines, and symbols as museum artifacts, the exhibition is presented as a spatial journey through a series of interconnected, immersive nodes that dissolve the boundaries between installation, performance, history, and collective memory:

Tapestry of Voices transforms hundreds of local voices and testimonies, collected from interviews and community engagement, into a continually shifting vocal soundscape. Layered with the spectral singing of a soprano evoking the archaic and the pastoral, this sound curtain envelops visitors and threads through the entire visual dramaturgy. The work weaves in the experience of burnout, reflecting voices from Amsterdam’s New West who share fragments of lived experience, and the collective struggle with overwhelm and resilience. This element of the exhibition is firmly anchored in place and time, drawing together personal and communal stories of both hardship and hope.

Entropy: The Second Law of Thermodynamics materializes through a living installation that combines a vintage wool machine with a human figure encased in winding yarn. Exhausted and kneeling, the figure's relentless, mechanical actions generate a visual and sonic meditation on repetition, loss of agency, and the depletion of self, referencing both industrial history and cycles of fatigue.

Our Ancestors Site-specific spatial installation with video projection assemble archival scenes from early 20th-century factories, Depression-era dance marathons, and the 'Tentoonstelling Oost & West Indie' human zoo in Arnhem in 1928, among others. Introducing the discourse of burnout into this network of existing signifiers, these archival footage offer a new contextualization, both of historical events and, retrospectively, of burnout itself in its various incarnations. In dialogue with the rest of the exhibition, these cinematic fragments destabilize distinctions between collective trauma, historical memory, and present exhaustion, allowing ghosts of the past to surface through the texture of the present.

Abandoned Future (A Monodrama)

A tableau vivant of a working man in a Zorb ball and a plaster mixer. Inside the rotating drum of the mixer, a brick spins around. It falls unpredictably inside the drum, producing a distinct, sombre sound. Facing the machine, a man leans silently on a shovel in the sand, transfixed.

Walking further through the exhibition space, adjacent benches under minimal lighting provide an introspective listening zone, inviting visitors to put on headphones and experience personal audio stories in immersive detail:

Heroes of Contemporary Labor anchors the participatory element of the exhibition, presenting an Olympic-style winners’ podium on which the

figures of the Nurse, Frontline Manager, and Influencer stand. Through a flashlight-illuminated encounter and the intimacy of isolated headphone audio, visitors access raw confessions that reveal the hidden struggles and aspirations beneath professional personas. 1) The Manager exposes the irony of internalized corporate propaganda and self-exploitation. 2) The Nurse recounts pandemic-era burnout, economic precarity, and dreams deferred bycrisis. 3) The Influencer voices the emptiness and relentless performance of digital labour, with fame just out of reach. He moves between different outfits for work, from pyjamas to surfing outfits.

I Am Not a Robot The project culminates in a dramatic crescendo, where the absurdity of burnout as job-related exhaustion reaches its paroxysm: on the screen, framed in gold, we witness the harrowing confession of a professional soldier prosecuted at the Hague Tribunal for the genocide in Srebrenica. After hours of killing innocent civilians who arrived in buses as captives, his finger begins to hurt. He suffers from mental and physical exhaustion caused by chronic work-related stress. He refuses to continue the killings, saying, "I am not a robot, I can't go on anymore." When asked by the judge how many people he believes he killed before he could no longer continue, the soldier replies, "I think around 1,200."

Community Engagement: Tapestry of Voices

At the core of Burn Out is a robust participatory process designed to honour collective authorship and communal narrative. Guided by composer Constantine Koukias, the project deploys a multi-stage program of workshops, story circles, and field recording sessions encompassing a wide cross-section of neighbourhood residents. Activities emphasize accessibility, skill-building, and open exchange, culminating in collaborative soundscapes that are integrated into the installation itself. Regular feedback gatherings and iterative creative sessions ensure that community perspectives shape the evolving sound design.

“To stand still is an act of repair”

Impact and Legacy

Burn Out positions itself at the intersection of critical theory, social practice, and visual experiment. By engaging audiences in immersive, multisensory experiences and inviting them to witness and share stories of fatigue and surrender, the project generates space for compassion, critical reflection, and new forms of solidarity. This exhibition challenges normative narratives of productivity and resilience, proposing instead a language of care, vulnerability, and mutual support. The assembled works call for a broader reckoning with the boundaries of personal endurance and the possibilities of healing in the wake of collective depletion.

slavisadrobnjakovic@gmail.com