Can You Wait in Line? — Site-specific performance “La Peste”, Festival delle Arti Guidecca Sacca Fisola. Venice 2014.

No one likes to wait in line. Standing in a queue can be one of the hardest activities one has ever experienced. It is well known that standing in line for long periods of time leads to depression, suicidal thoughts, and mass hysteria.

My conclusion is that we, early 21st-century humans, are a very resilient species because we wait a lot. We wait most of our time. We wait so much that we have invented jokes and different strategies for different places of waiting.

Have you ever noticed that people wait in banks in silence, that no one speaks, but everyone stares into their phones or does something else to kill time? While people in public administration queues complain to everyone, conspire with anyone, exchange recipes, and show photos of their children and pets.

How strange, yet natural.

Is there a hidden paradox?

In public queues, it almost feels like being in a public square in ancient Greece, without technological distractions.

And when I think about it, I can imagine the community around bureaucracy filling that space. This leads me to return to the social norms of bank buildings and ask why we pretend to be alone in the bank queue and ignore the rest of the world?

Does it have anything to do with the money?

Really?

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Can You Wait in Line?