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.

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.

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.

DESPRE AUDIOBOOKAtenția noastră a ajuns monedă de schimb într-o lume în care valoarea unui individ se măsoară în funcție de cât este de productiv. Ne sacrificăm libertatea, forța de gândire, sănătatea fizică și pe cea mintală pentru a satisface o piață capitalistă care nu ține cont de nevoile noastre.În cartea de față, câștigătoare a numeroase premii și una dintre preferatele fostului președinte Barack Obama, autoarea ne arată unde greșim în această tranzacție. Ea nu promovează retragerea din societate, asemenea filozofiilor din vechime, ci mai degrabă o schimbare a perspectivei. Astfel, o atenție sporită acordată lucrurilor care chiar contează poate duce la acțiuni politice, sociale și economice semnificative și la o înțelegere mai profundă asupra sinelui.„Cum să nu faci nimic” a fost declarată cartea anului de publicații precum Time, The New Yorker, GQ, Elle, Fortune, Boing Boing și The Irish TimesDESPRE AUTOAREJenny Odell este artistă multidisciplinară, scriitoare și profesoară la Stanford University din 2013, unde predă arta pe internet și design digital și fizic. Locuiește în Oakland, California. Are o diplomă în literatura engleză și una în design și tehnologie. E pasionată de observarea păsărilor, de colecționarea capturilor de ecran și de observarea felului în care atenția (sau lipsa ei) duce la schimbări semnificative de percepție în viața de zi cu zi. Multe dintre operele sale au fost expuse în centre importante precum The Contemporary Jewish Museum, The New York Public Library, The Marjorie Barrick Museum (Las Vegas), Les Rencontres D’Arles, Fotomuseum Antwerpen, Fotomuseum Winterthur, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), Lishui Photography Festival (China) și apexart (NY).Traducere de Oana Pascu

Von morgens bis abends ist unser Leben Jeder einzelne Moment wird erfasst, optimiert oder als ökonomische Ressource vereinnahmt – und das macht uns kaputt. Jenny Odell, die Autorin des New-York-Times-Bestsellers «Nichts tun», erkundet in Ihrem scharfsinnigen neuen Buch, welche falschen Vorstellungen unser modernes, kapitalistisches Zeitverständnis prägen und wie fernab davon ein menschlicheres, freieres Leben aussehen könnte.Was tun, wenn die Zeit immer zu knapp scheint? Um diese scheinbar einfache Frage zu beantworten, taucht Odell tief in die Geschichte der Menschheit ein. Sie rekonstruiert, wie es zur Einteilung des Tages in 24 gleichförmige, austauschbare Zeiteinheiten kommen konnte. Sie führt uns zur Entstehung der "Zeit ist Geld"-Mentalität an den Fließbändern der tayloristischen Fabrik. Und sie problematisiert die Vermarktung von Entschleunigung als leicht konsumierbare Freizeiterfahrung in Yoga- und Achtsamkeitsretreats. Dabei entlarvt Odell die kapitalistischen und kolonialistischen Wurzeln unserer Zeiterfahrung und zeigt, wie diese untrennbar mit der Zerstörung unserer natürlichen Umwelt verbunden sind. Jenny Odells schillerndes, unkonventionelles Buch ist kein weiterer Ratgeber für effizientere Zeit- und Selbstoptimierung. Es ist das kluge und zutiefst hoffnungsvolle Plädoyer für ein Leben jenseits der tickenden Uhr, das mehr Raum für zwischenmenschliche Nähe, gesellschaftliche Teilhabe und Klimagerechtigkeit bietet. von Rebecca Solnit und Naomi Klein