Jenny Odell

"When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as...doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process"--

How to Do Nothing

A radical argument that we are living on the wrong clock, one that tells us time is money, and that embracing a new concept of time can open us up to bold, hopeful possibilities from the New York Times bestselling author of How to Do Nothing. Our daily experience, dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside, is destroying us. It wasn’t built for people, it was built for profit. This is a book that tears open the seams of reality as we know it—the way we experience time itself—and rearranges it, reimagining a world not centered around work, the office clock, or the profit motive. Explaining how we got to the point where time became money, Odell offers us new models to live by--inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological, and geological time--that make a more humane, more hopeful way of living seem possible. In this dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful reframing of time, Jenny Odell takes us on a journey through other temporal habitats. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days, alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding. The stretchy quality of waiting and desire, the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory, the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy, or the time it takes to heal from injuries--physical or emotional. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life, to imagine a life, identity, and source of meaning outside of the world of work and profit, and to understand that the trajectory of our lives--or the life of the planet--is not a foregone conclusion. In that sense, “saving” time—recovering its fundamentally irreducible and inventive nature—could also mean that time saves us.

Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

Saving Time

A hopeful meditation on how periods of inactivity become reimagined as fertile spaces for design and how we might use this strange moment in history. "Hi, everyone. I'm speaking to you from my apartment in Oakland, though I've virtually placed myself in the rose garden nearby." Artist and writer Jenny Odell hadn't originally planned to deliver the Harvard University Graduate School of Design's 2020 Class Day Address from her living room. But on May 25, 2020, there was Jenny, framed by a rose garden in her Zoom background, speaking to an audience she could not see about the role of design in a suspended moment marked by uncertainty in a global pandemic. Odell's message, itself a timely reflection on observation, embraces the standstill and its potential to deepen and expand our individual and collective attention and sensitivity to time, place, and presence--in turn, perhaps, enabling us all, amid our "new" virtual contexts, to better connect with our natural and cultural environments. Odell unspools this hopeful meditation in Inhabiting the Negative Space, where periods of inactivity become reimagined not as wasted time but fertile spaces for a kind of design predicated less on relentless production and more on permitting a deeper, more careful look at what exactly is demanding or tapping our time and attention, and how we might use this strange moment in history to respond.

Inhabiting the Negative Space

Wir leben in einer Welt voller süchtig machender Technologien, die noch in den letzten Winkel unseres Privatlebens vorgedrungen sind. Unser gesellschaftlicher Wert scheint heute nur noch zu steigen, wenn wir auf diversen Social-Media-Kanälen rund um die Uhr präsent sind. In ihrem inspirierenden Leitfaden zeigt uns die Künstlerin und Kritikerin Jenny Odell, wie wir uns dieser destruktiven Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie entziehen und unser Leben zurückgewinnen können. Für Odell ist unsere Aufmerksamkeit die wertvollste, aber auch die überspannteste Ressource, die wir haben. Wir müssen lernen, in unserer Freizeit im besten Sinne nichts zu tun, statt unser Leben auch hier noch willenlos kapitalistischen Verwertungsinteressen zu unterwerfen. Nur so können wir ein sinnvolles und nachhaltiges Verständnis von Glück und Fortschritt entwickeln. Weit entfernt von plumper Technik-Kritik oder der sozialromantischen Vorstellung von der Rückkehr zur Natur entwirft Jenny Odell einen philosophisch wohlüberlegten Aktionsplan, der die kapitalistischen Erzählungen von Effizienz und Technikgläubigkeit überwinden hilft. "Nichts tun" wird die Leserinnen und Leser aufrütteln – ein provokatives, zeitgemäßes und glänzend geschriebenes Buch!

Die Kunst, sich der Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie zu entziehen

Nichts tun

En un mundo en el que nuestro valor está determinado por la productividad y el rendimiento, la acción de no hacer nada puede ser nuestra mayor forma de protesta. Así lo argumenta en esta obra Jenny Odell, quien cuestiona de manera radical la capitalización de nuestro tiempo, la rentabilización de nuestra atención y el estado de impaciencia y ansiedad en el que vivimos. Marcados por la lógica invasiva de las redes sociales y el culto a la marca personal, hemos olvidado lo que significa la inactividad. Desde esta perspectiva, «no hacer nada» es ganar tiempo para nosotros mismos, ser contemplativos y ejercitar la percepción, recuperar el nexo con la realidad física y encontrar modos de relacionarnos de los que no se beneficien ni las empresas ni los algoritmos. Lejos de la antitecnología, Cómo no hacer nada es un manifiesto contra el discurso de la eficiencia y el tecnodeterminismo, un ensayo original en el que recuperar nuestro espacio alejados de un ritmo vertiginoso constituye un acto de resistencia política.

Resistirse a la economía de la atención

Cómo no hacer nada

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The visionary author of How to Do Nothing returns to challenge the notion that ‘time is money.’ . . . Expect to feel changed by this radical way of seeing.”—Esquire “One of the most important books I’ve read in my life.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Harper’s Bazaar, Esquire, Chicago Public Library, Electric Lit In her first book, How to Do Nothing, Jenny Odell wrote about the importance of disconnecting from the “attention economy” to spend time in quiet contemplation. But what if you don’t have time to spend? In order to answer this seemingly simple question, Odell took a deep dive into the fundamental structure of our society and found that the clock we live by was built for profit, not people. This is why our lives, even in leisure, have come to seem like a series of moments to be bought, sold, and processed ever more efficiently. Odell shows us how our painful relationship to time is inextricably connected not only to persisting social inequities but to the climate crisis, existential dread, and a lethal fatalism. This dazzling, subversive, and deeply hopeful book offers us different ways to experience time—inspired by pre-industrial cultures, ecological cues, and geological timescales—that can bring within reach a more humane, responsive way of living. As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days alongside gardens growing, birds migrating, and cliffs eroding; the stretchy quality of waiting and desire; the way the present may suddenly feel marbled with childhood memory; the slow but sure procession of a pregnancy; the time it takes to heal from injuries. Odell urges us to become stewards of these different rhythms of life in which time is not reducible to standardized units and instead forms the very medium of possibility. Saving Time tugs at the seams of reality as we know it—the way we experience time itself—and rearranges it, imagining a world not centered on work, the office clock, or the profit motive. If we can “save” time by imagining a life, identity, and source of meaning outside these things, time might also save us.

Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture

This book accompanies "The Bureau of Suspended Objects" installation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, opening January 28.

The Bureau of Suspended Objects at the Contemporary Jewish Museum

We're living on the wrong clock. And it's destroying us. 'To read it is ... to experience how freedom might feel' Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks Our life is dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside. It wasn't devised for people, but for profit. We need to embrace a whole new concept of time: one that gives us and our planet a brighter future. In Saving Time, Jenny Odell, bestselling author of How to Do Nothing, examines how we got to the point where time became money. Taking inspiration from the pre-industrial, ecological and geological rhythms of our world, she offers us radical new models to live by that make a more humane, more hopeful existence seem possible. Now is our moment to rethink. And if we do, time might just save us. 'An inimitable gift' Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror 'One of the most important books I've read in my life' Ed Yong, author of An Immense World

Oder die Kunst, sich der Aufmerksamkeitsökonomie zu entziehen

This book accompanies "The Bureau of Suspended Objects" installation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, opening January 28. The objects in this book correspond to the second section of the display: objects that belong to me or that I grew up with at my parents’ house. They come from bookshelves, desks, attics, and shoeboxes, and have been owned long enough to have acquired some emotional value – thus becoming more than an anonymous product at the store. However, it’s possible that this aura of meaning is visible only to their owners.

The Bureau of Suspended Objects: Objects in Use

Rób NIC i uwolnij się od nałogu COŚRÓBSTWA Otaczają cię rzeczy nierzeczywiste: wizualizacje produktów, idealne zdjęcia w mediach społecznościowych, zbawienne aplikacje, dzięki którym zaoszczędzisz mnóstwo czasu. Bo przecież czas to pieniądz, a jest jeszcze tyle do zrobienia! Już kładąc się do snu, w głowie pojawia się myśl: „Jutro muszę…”. Jeśli nie wykażesz się produktywnością, to… …świat się nie zawali. Wręcz przeciwnie – zrobisz mu przysługę. W czasach, kiedy tracenie czasu jest powszechnie potępiane i uznawane za najgorsze z możliwych marnotrawstw, Jenny Odell zachęca, aby swoją uwagę skierować na świat rzeczywisty – pełen różnorodności i inspiracji. Przekonuje, że tylko zmniejszając lawinę wymagań i rozpraszaczy, możesz dostrzec jego prawdziwe piękno, a także problemy i realne rozwiązania.

Manifest przeciw kultowi produktywności

Jak robić nic

Ne rien faire... Et s’il s’agissait là du seul véritable acte révolutionnaire contemporain, celui qui nous soustrait enfin à la tyrannie du temps libre passé sur écran. Dans un monde accro à des technologies conçues pour monnayer notre attention, où nous sommes sans cesse évalués à l’aune d’une productivité numérique dévorante, quel sens donner au temps libre ? Car ces moments accordés à nos vies digitales sont-ils autre chose qu’un temps libre de consommer ? Ou de devenir nous-même un produit pour ceux qui monétisent notre temps de cerveau disponible ? Ce sont les questions que pose Jenny Odell dans cet essai lumineux qui interroge notre rapport à l’attention, notre place dans le monde et notre lien à la nature. Loin des recettes de détox numérique, ce texte invite le lecteur à un cheminement philosophique, poétique et érudit, entre essai et manifeste de résistance. Les thèses de Jenny Odell, à l’origine d’un phénomène viral outre-atlantique, sont rassemblées dans ce livre devenu un best-seller américain et considéré par Barack Obama comme une lecture indispensable.

Ne rien faire au 21e siècle

Pour une résistance oisive

This book accompanies "The Bureau of Suspended Objects" installation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, opening January 28. The objects in this book correspond to the first section of the display: new items recently purchased from large stores such as Walmart, Target, Big Lots, and Hobby Lobby. These objects function as blank receptacles, waiting to be invested with meaning. One can perhaps imagine a child growing up with one of these items resting on the mantle, and the ineffable nostalgic quality the object would later take on for that person. Some of these objects are in fact designed preemptively for nostalgia, with faux-antique finishes and references to older products.

The Bureau of Suspended Objects at CJM: New Objects

This is a catalog of the objects archived by the Bureau of Suspended Objects while it operated at the Palo Alto Art Center in the summer of 2016. Visitors contributed "pre-trash" (unwanted items they meant to eventually get rid of anyway) and filled out detailed questionnaires about their objects. This book combines that information with the Bureau's customary research into manufacturing origins, materials, etc.

The Bureau of Suspended Objects at the Palo Alto Art Center

The Bureau of Suspended Objects is a one-person organization and archive that investigates discarded and unwanted objects. These objects are “suspended” in several senses: The B.S.O. has suspended them from their trajectory to the dump or landfill, but additionally, they are items whose meaning and value are also in flux after the act of discarding.Simply put, this book repeatedly asks the question: what accounts for the existence of this object?Research at the B.S.O. stems from the assumption that we are estranged even from those objects closest to us, or that their inner workings and past lives are too often experienced as opaque and inaccessible. As such, the B.S.O. endeavors to learn how to read and understand an object on its own terms – to understand why and how it came into being. More specifically, the mission of the B.S.O. is to:- Photograph, research, and archive as many discarded objects as is reasonably possible.- Reframe the objects not as items in a static and irreversible category (trash) but as 1) inflection points in an ongoing flow of material and 2) specific products of constantly changing economic contingencies.- Use photography and research to embody an attitude toward objects that is at once fascinated, sorrowful, and diagnostic.- Articulate the role of images in manufacturing our desire for objects, explore the interchangeability of objects with their images, and use the archival function of photography – its protest against “time’s relentless melt” (Sontag) – ironically, given that nothing discarded ever truly goes away.This project was made possible through a residency at Recology SF, the waste-processing facility for San Francisco. Since then, the B.S.O. archive continues to suspend objects from dumpsters, sidewalks, and anywhere that unwanted objects may be found. The archive is online at www.suspended-objects.org.

Jenny Odell

About

Books

Join the club