When we think about time, we often look at a clock. We measure it in units that are all equal, neutral, fungible. According to this vision, each of us has 24 hours available in the day. But everyone has a different experience. Who keeps time? Who suffers it? And is it possible to live in a more just world, where time is not money? Jenny Odell, multidisciplinary artist, teacher at Stanford thinks so. And in his Save time. Discovering life beyond the clock (NR editions, translated by Raffaella Menichini), New York Times bestseller, revolutionizes order. And, using a new language, he makes us reimagine it. «I wrote it to combat the sense of alienation that comes from our notion of time. People and things are alive when we become alive to each other.”
The concept of time as money originates in the eighteenth century, when slaves worked on plantations and owners timed them.
«The shape of time is determined by power and reflects hierarchies of sex, ethnicity, social class. Its value is not measured only by salary, but by who has to adapt to that of others. Women spend quite a bit of time caring for children and not pursuing other goals. And if they work they are paid less. And even when they are paid the same they are expected to have different tasks, which rarely lead to promotions. Women’s time is devalued and so are Black workers. Years ago, a study on diversity within Amazon highlighted that people of color occupied the lowest positions in the hierarchy.”
We thought technology would free up time.
«It was Taylorism that broke down tasks on the assembly line, programming people’s gestures. Today this concept of work is implemented by sophisticated systems that squeeze employees’ time. Emily Guendelsberger described it to us, who worked in Amazon warehouses with a scanner equipped with GPS that recorded movements and dictated the minutes to complete a certain operation. People are forced to act in robotic ways in preparation for full automation. It’s hard to compete with robots: they don’t get sick, they don’t take breaks and they don’t ask for more dignified working conditions.”
Beauty
Four days in a longevity clinic. Hunger, herbal teas, therapies… The tragicomic story of a writer
by Chiara Barzini
We are taught since we were children that time is linked to performance. In fact today the most popular drugs at school and university are those that accelerate like Ritalin.
«I teach students who come from non-artistic disciplines, engineering and product design, and it is a challenge to remind them that there are things that must be done slowly. They tell me: “I would like to slow down but it’s not easy”. The university should create an atmosphere that makes this possible. Instead it is up to them to calculate the risk of being left behind. My artist friends have to decide to what extent they participate in this culture of frenetic activity, in order to get jobs. They want to oppose the system, but they live within it and ask themselves every day: how can I get away with it?”.
During Covid she told students to notice what they saw from the window. What did they learn?
«Time was dilated. We noticed things we wouldn’t have noticed otherwise, like birds. But I live near a large hospital and I was aware that for healthcare workers time was speeding up instead.”
Once upon a time we looked to social media to free up time, but in that free time there is little that is free.
«Social media fragments and accelerates time. It’s like getting a constant electric shock, an unhealthy habit that we are morbidly fascinated by. Instagram in particular has become a huge shopping mall where we buy products and experiences to photograph and post in our “free time”. Time has a very particular flavor when we manage to completely enter the moment and then get out of it. And social media robs us of this experience.”
She used the When I will die app to make better use of her time.
«Yes, but there is a nicer way to do it. My mentor lives in Berkeley in front of a redwood that is the same age as him, 70 years old. She will surely live longer than him but every time he looks at her she reminds him what it means to be alive, that is, that you can also die. He thinks about the mortality of the tree and his, something they have in common. And it’s better than looking at an app.”
We sell our time to an employer. But there are other ways to experience it. She talks about beans.
«It is a more effective metaphor than money and it came out of a conversation with a friend who grows beans, found about twenty years ago, which she gives to friends who multiply and redistribute them. The beans that grow contain the past, but also an idea of the future. The image shows a common increase, the opposite of what happens in our culture where many are left behind. In the book I talk about a working mother who says that for her self-help to save time doesn’t work, it was more useful to get together with six mothers so that each of them cooks for everyone only once a week. Each frees up time for the others: collective actions are important.”
What does nature tell us about time?
«I live in Oakland in an urban landscape with many parks. There is an iris, the Douglas, that you can’t help but notice when it blooms. Once it happened early and I thought it was too early. Then I realized that the iris doesn’t know it’s January, it senses the water and the temperature, it blooms when the weather is right. The truth is that time is only change and all our grids are abstractly imposed on reality. The iris reminded me that even when I am racing against time and feel static, without a past or future, I am actually living in the same time as the plants and birds. They are constantly changing and that means being alive.”
#Scholar #Jenny #Odell #Womens #time #devalued #Heres #dictatorship #clock
– 2024-03-30 12:06:22
