Exhaustion as Collective Condition: Art's Role in a Tired Society

82% of Germans perceive the pace of change as too fast, personal optimism is declining, and trust in politics and the economy is eroding, according to the current Ipsos Global Trends study. The article argues that exhaustion has shifted from an individual problem to a collective condition. It examines three possible roles for creative culture: as a mirror, exemplified by the Whitney Biennial 2026, which opened with a white oversized horse sculpture laden with fragile wood and metal constructions, explicitly addressing exhaustion, political tension, and historical overload; as a counter-design, where practices like handcraft, non-streaming-optimized music, and seasonless fashion bet on slowness as substance; and as a symptom, where the art market, fashion industry, and content economy have built the exhaustion machine through platforms demanding permanent self-optimization and algorithms rewarding attention over depth. The article concludes that the most convincing contemporary works do not aim to heal exhaustion but endure it, taking it as material, and that a tired society needs less optimism gestures and more diagnostic readiness, less empowerment aesthetics and more structural thinking.