The couch as symbol of both idleness and exhaustion intersects with cultural imaginaries of unemployment, decadent aristocrats and mental illness. From the rest cure to the work cure, psychotherapy and medication treating burnout, work has been the pharmakon for exhaustion, presented both as its cause and its antidote.
References:
01’08” Fifth Harmony “Work from Home”
02’59” Herman Melville, Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street, 1853 read by Jo Willoughby
05’20” Mariah Carey “A No No”
06’55” Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891 read by Tracy Hanna
08’23” Nas ft. Lauryn Hill “If I ruled the world”
10’39” Clip from StarTrek “First Contact”, 1996
12’34” Clip from German government advert, 2020
13’48” Oasis “Importance of Being Idle”
15’20” Clip from Matthew Fuller, Son[i]a #245, 2017
16’45” Quoted from Anne Boyer, The Undying, 2019 p. 81
17’30” Quoted from Schaffner Anna Katharina, Exhaustion: A History, 2016 p.139
17’48” Quoted from Anne Boyer, The Undying, 2019 p. 34
To listen to the PREVIOUS chapter click >>5. Just Do It<< below
Lila Athanasiadou
Lila is awriter, programmer and researcher with a background in architecture.
5. Just Do It
This chapter explores the blurred boundaries between work and leisure entangling the sources of the social, political and cultural stigma of leisure as laziness. Read more
4. Ora et Labora
This chapter departs from automation of labour and the evolution of work landscapes from factory counters to office cubicles. Read more
3. Looks like harmonizing growth and desire is gonna be a tricky business
From 1960’s utopian re-imaginings of the house of the future, to Wages Against Housework, this chapter explores the versatile and invisible character of female labour. Read more
2. Out of Office
From capitalist realism to domestic realism, architecture has played a major role in the standardization of work as well as in the engulfing of time dedicated to labour. Read more
1. Introduction
Work, we love to hate it as we pay tribute to, sing about, reflect on and whine about it. Read more