Design Map · Eindhoven
Union of the Tired
Graduation project by Sonia Jaśkiewicz at Design Academy Eindhoven, 2026. Shown during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven on Design Map, location F5.
‘Union of the Tired’ explores what forms of resistance remain possible when exhaustion has become a permanent condition. It imagines a fictional yet operational labour union for people too tired to organise: anyone who is exhausted is already a member.
Based on the designer’s experience of balancing full-time study with multiple jobs, the project was developed through autoethnographic research, conversations and everyday acts of refusal. It questions the cultures of productivity that turn rest into something to be earned. The installation resembles a union office, complete with bureaucratic protocols, micro-protests, protest-inspired banners and a public membership platform. Mirroring the administrative systems it critiques, the project highlights the absurdity of contemporary work culture and reframes burnout as the basis for collective solidarity rather than personal inadequacy.