Post-Work Worlds
Instructor:
Pouya Ahmadi
Students:
Anya Mitchell ● Daniel Brown ● Emina Hadzic ● Jenii Cyrus ● Jaipei Ke ● Layne Thue-Bludworth ● Mariah Nelesen ● MiKealy Thomas ● Nicole Bowles ● Oscar Solis ● Yiyi Wang
We are overworked and underslept. We are obsessed with the idea of productivity. And now, thanks to the pandemic, it seems as though there’s virtually no beginning and end to a work day. It’s all a blur. This very condition should make us think more critically about the future of work. We are on the cusp of a new world. Remote work and rising unemployment numbers are nothing but old news. But perhaps there is a bit of a sense of urgency to them at this very moment. We still don’t quite understand the long term implications of the pandemic, the rise of machine-learning, and automation on the future of work and employment.
This course is all about what it means to work and the possible worlds within which work consumes different forms, meanings, and in some cases it even completely ceases to exist.
Anya Mitchell
In the Resistance of Bitter Movements:
Explorations in the Documentation of Work & Identity
If I think too hard about the structures of labor in our society, I become angry. If I think too hard about my role in this structure, I become depressed. How does a human, who has far more to express and manifest than our current structures allow, find ways to transcend and continue? This publication explores these thoughts and these feelings. How do I resist becoming a machine while at the same time resist becoming bitter? How do I find ways to define my own identity and values, so that my movements are my own?
Daniel Brown
Identity and Work
Our contributions to society is often valued based on the work we do as individuals. Even though our contributions to the world are more than the work we do in our professional lives, this measurement - imposed or not - forces many people to associate their identity to earning money, achieving, and progressing towards success. This publication explores this conversation by focusing on the emotional labor involved with work.
Emina Hadzic
Zoom fatigue. We are overworked and deprived of rest. There is no beginning and end to a day. Throughout this semester I’ve found myself questioning many of my previous notions of work and the value we've prescribed to it. Through a series of assignments compiled in this one publication, this subject probed and documented. These experiments are one of some ways I evaluated myself as a worker in this society that is driven heavily by remote and digital production.
Jenii Cyrus
i’m ok & other lies: reflections on work
What began as light reflections on daily practices and work routines quickly turned into a heavy, semi-depressing personal rumination on life and humanity. This piece includes considerations on the way we spend our free time, how much of what we do is work, and how that impacts us mentally. It ends with a prompt for introspection and a bleak reminder that no matter what we do in our lives, we are slaves to money until we die.
Jiapei Ke
It is a publication combining six-weeks of work life, non-work life and reading respond. To think about how much we spend and what we do in work and non-work time.
Layne Thue-Bludworth
A Head for Business is publication created over six weeks investigating work in the most specific and broad sense. The five segments of work and leisure are (1) bullshit desk jobs, (2) more work from desk jobs and graduate school, (3) weekend leisure/work, (4) thrifting as an escape from work, and (5) the potential of utopian work (represented by movies). Throughout the work, pattern creation, film imagery, and unusual tools/methods–including a sand rake, carbon paper, frottage, etc.–are used to investigate the repetitive overwhelm of modern day work, in contrast with often more meditative leisure time in which one can breathe.
Mariah Nelesen
Recordings of Work: Scenes of the Past, Present, Utopias and Dystopias
This publication contains a series of ways of looking at our world of work. After spending time reading about work, retreat, rest, and automation, I took time documenting these different work and non-work practices in my own life. Some of these experiences included documenting the shape of my body while working, a weekend of retreat at a remote cabin, and collecting responses from other people about their perspective of my work life.
MiKealy Thomas
Publication: Rarely Idle
A publication that revolves around work and what we as individuals view as work. How this impacts our perception of society and the future as well. Over six weeks we read articles ranging from bullshit jobs to post work “utopias.” These spreads follow my personal journey through these readings and prompts.
Nicole Bowles
'Broad Remedies for Surviving Capitalism' is a publication combining six-weeks of work on Work: exploring the body at work versus rest, surviving bullshit jobs, the sensation of thriving in an escape, and what may become of our world steeped in content on-demand. The text is a combination of anecdotes, confessions, reading responses, and remnants from jobs left behind.
Oscar Solis
Post Work examine the effects of technological mediation through documentation. Understanding the document as a formal ontological object lead to visual experiments in leisure/culture, social constructs of work, bullshit work, non-work, and automation.
Yiyi Wang
Work Worlds & Post-Work Worlds Document represents the meaning of work and non-work through six topics. It explores a variety of visual forms include experimental design, convergence, mixed media, and hybrid.
