Time sheets

So as we determined that we could not seperate leisure from work, even in the autonomous space, we felt we should represent how leisure time is linked with work, so we created a leisure time sheet. this acts as a visualisation oh how leisure is work, and also reflects on the notion that if our free time is earned, then do we only get a certian amount. Should a payslip have your wage, and a leisure time allowance?

Final intervention - Photos

Hey guys

This is the link to the photos from today,
https://www.flickr.com/photos/124057779@N03/sets/72157644364717212/

Peace x

Final Intervention Video and Debrief

Today, we staged the final intervention of our project ‘The Politics of Work and Leisure’. The aim of this intervention was to create a pop-up autonomous area, free from the soul destroying monotony of work and technology, and explore the possibilities for real leisure, outside of work. We wanted participants to feel a sense of “liberation from all economic responsibility, liberated from all the debts and responsibilities from the past and other people” and to reclaim the concept of leisure time for themselves. Unlike when in the workplace, participants were welcome to stay for or as long as they desired. The zone was symbolic and effectively represented the liberation from work.

Location – We chose to stage our intervention in a Garden: a therapeutic space usually associated with leisure time.

Results – The overwhelming majority of participants, including ourselves, noted that after spending a considerable amount of time in the zone, it began to feel like work. Despite creating an autonomous space, we could not escape work. As Lefebvre suggests, “the workplace is all around the house; work is not separate from the everyday life of the family”. Even in a space of an autonomous space, in this sense leisure is the escape from work, due to the trainings of our everyday, our leisure has become dependent on what Lefebvre calls ‘Leisure Machines’. These Leisure Machines reinforce the continuation of work, such as facebook and social networking, within our free time. Leisure should be about relaxation, about taking a break from the grind of work. However in reality, we struggle for real Leisure time, and to avoid the continuation of work in these hours.Our intervention has highlighted how Leisure time, under capitalism has become alienated, and dependent on and arranged around work. The two are intrinsically linked.



Nadia, Maxi, Natalie, Miles and Cam - Group 5

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Maxi's "WASTED TIME" DIARY

Hey guys,

Managed to upload my "Wasted Time" diary - it was extremely thought-provoking, and with reason I've put the title in brackets. I find anything I have recorded in this diary, and anything that would be recorded somewhere, clearly engages you physically and mentally, which automatically eliminates the concept of 'wasted time' as you are being proactive in some shape or form. However, one can still regard this in terms of prioritising activities in which the idea of 'procrastination' feels like a waste of time, as one is aware of other things that could be done that are personally regarded as more important.
Personally, I keep myself busy at all times and feel like I am always being proactive - even in my leisure time. Leisure time can certainly be something you work towards, so that you get to work during that time. Makes sense or nah? Okay, lets look at this;  Monday, 21st of April 2014, I visited my friend and her baby cousin. Spending time with friends is regarded by most as leisure time, for sure. However, the only way possible for me to do this was to work to gain money for travel, complete the journey (about 1hour - walk, bus, train, walk) and once finally arrived at destination (so leisure time with friend), I am 'working' again by paying attention to my and my friends behaviour with the baby (to learn=work?). Can we ever escape working towards anything? In conclusion, of that day, I felt my leisure time was spent learning, which of course is a positive thing.

If someone would (hypothetically) relax in bed all day, are they working in this time of leisure? Or is this mere thought of escapism still work, even if physical and possibly mental exhaustion is prevented / kept to the minimal?

I can't see myself not being proactive in my leisure time! Even if I am 'relaxing', I have worked towards that time, creating a private space for myself, even then I might get an unwanted distraction, or I get distracted and fall out of my relaxing and 'non-working' space. Sigh.

LaUm SoCiAl InTeRvEnTiOn

Work and Leisure Space

The following article is an interesting one - it follows the idea of a public space in relation to technology turning what used to be a work environment, into an environment of complete distraction, turning work time into leisure time. This proved to be worked itself, which is basically what we discovered whilst doing our social intervention. "Even having the same thought process, making the same decision, is energy draining and will drain your willpower." In our experiment, any technological equipment was placed outside of the the 'leisure square' we created in order to eliminate any interaction with the outside world and any intrusions that relate to work.

The man described in this article that struggled with this used this problem to an advantage and created an app that did not allow you to go online as long as you desired in order to combat the issue of work space turning into leisure space.

This article sums up the "paradox of choice" quite nicely.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-clear/procrastination_b_5186723.html

De Certeau

Hey guys,

The intervention today went really well. I've just been rereading de Certeau and I think this would be great alongside Lefebvre in our essays to explain the theory behind our intervention.

"The dividing line no longer falls between work and leisure. These two areas of activity flow together. They repeat and reinforce each other."
 

De Certeau analyses the 'tactics' of the everyday and how We are the 'consumers'.

"Consumers are transformed into immigrants. The system in which they move about is too vast to be able to fix them in one place, but too constraining for them ever to be able to escape from it and go into exile elsewhere. There is no longer an elsewhere."
 

I think this sums up the message behind what we did today, as we were trying to provide a space free from they system of work, and we managed to highlight that even in leisure there is no doing so; there is no longer leisure.

Lefebvre - Work and Leisure in everyday life

Lefebvre – Work and Leisure in Everyday Life


Work leads us to seek escape from the monotony of daily life through ‘leisure’. Lefebvre sees acts of leisure as distractions that become a form of compensation for our monotonous work. Considering this, it is clear that Leisure cannot be separated from work. He says, “we work to earn leisure and leisure has only one meaning to get away from work”. But is leisure even possible under contemporary capitalism, and given the contemporary nature of work?

These themes are central to our project and therefore our essay – Lefebvre will come in very handy when writing the latter.

today was great!

cam

'Temporary Autonomous Zone'

As part of our project, we want to create a temporary autonomous zone and consider the possibilities for leisure time within a space outside of work. Our final intervention will take place within this area. Whilst the rationale behind each our project is different, we have drawn influence from the ‘Surgical Strike Committee’ and the autonomous space they created as part of the course last year.

cam

Grande Finale - The Manifesto

We have had a very productive meeting today where we met to summarise our developments of our project and how our ideas have now accumulated into one final intervention.

This is our Manifesto;

As we have developed our initial idea, we now wish to create a complete autonomous space free from any conditions or agenda of work. We want to create an area in which ourselves and our friends can enter free from any constraints of work in an aim to explore the possibilities of real leisure (that being complete freedom from work).

Given the contemporary nature of work, as we have shown in our blog, we have found it difficult to create something that is regarded completely as 'real leisure' in our everyday. Therefore, we are going to invite our friends to join us in what is to be 'advertised' as a space in which they are completely free, (we use the word advertise with precaution, as we don't want to be seen as selling this to people). In this space we will all be completely free to do as we please, all we ask is that people join us and stay in this space.

As this space is completely free from the conditions of work, we will be providing no external sources of leisure. We are going to ask that those that join us also do not bring any external sources of leisure into the space. The reason why we ask this is, is because we want this space to be completely free from all modes/productions/results of personal or external work. This space is to be completely free from anything that can be associated with work time in any sense or thought of the term work. This is a complete hedonistic space in which people can enjoy true leisure away from work. No phones, no books, no nothing, we wish to remove all 'leisure machines'. Just themselves (yes, clothes are allowed. We know that they are a mode of production and work by someone else, but inviting ourselves and our friends into a completely autonomous zone for leisure naked is not really part of our intervention - that's just a normal Saturday night).

In this busy period of exams and essays, why wouldn't people want to be in a completely autonomous space of leisure, entirely free from any demands of work completely?

What we wish to achieve by doing this:

• We want to see whether we and others can actually enjoy leisure time without the machines of leisure associated with work.
• We want to see if they can forget about the notion of work entirely whilst in a space of leisure.
• We want to see if when we are placed in a space without any external sources of entertainment if we actually regard this time as leisure at all.
• We want to see whether this time spent in the space is enjoyable or not, and whether it starts to feel like work.
• We want to see if it starts to feel like work, exactly how long people will be willing to stay in this space.

We believe, as a development of the interventions and our work/leisure diaries, that even without the external influences of work, by not providing people with the means of leisure and by asking them to restrict themselves to our space whilst doing so, that our intervention will begin to feel like the space is in fact a space of work. By having completely nothing in the space they are free from work itself, but will the act of having nothing to do begin to revert back to a feeling that they should be doing something? And by being asked to nothing will this space of 'real leisure' begin to feel like work?

The idea of creating a space for leisure time is a means in which we can visualise our leisure time. By dedicating a completely autonomous space to this, we will be able to determine the true effects the intervention shall have. We shall be filming the intervention, and interview ourselves and those who have entered the space. We hope to capture peoples reactions to work and leisure time in the interviews, and assess that even in a space of 'autonomous real leisure' whether or not they felt they had escaped the notion of work, or whether it had begun to feel like work itself.

We will be creating a 'sign in/sign out' sheet, so that when the space begins to feel too much like work for ourselves and our friends and we begin to feel the need of a 'break', they can sign in and out of the space. The reason as to why we are doing this is a result of the success of the 'Wages for Facebook' intervention. We thought the use of the payslip was really effective and powerful in visualising the work components of our leisure time. By using the sign in sheets, we are bringing the traditional trainings of work towards our leisure time, and by doing this we aim to highlight that even when in a completely free leisure space even that it starts to feel like work, thus highlighting whether there us such a thing as leisure away from work. Additionally, the idea that people need a 'break' is effective in itself, as a break is something we associate with work not leisure.

Therefore even in a space completely free from the demands of work, a space dedicated to leisure time, will it itself start to feel like work? If so, is there really such a thing as 'real leisure'?

Yours faithfully,

Cam, Maxi, Miles, Nadia and Natalie. xox.

'Ne Travaillez Jamais' - Never Work

Internationale Situationniste #4

'What are the organizational perspectives of life in a society which authentically "reorganizes production on the basis of the free and equal association of the producers"? Work would more and more be reduced as an exterior necessity through the automation of production and the socialization of vital goods, which would finally give complete liberty to the individual. Thus liberated from all economic responsibility, liberated from all the debts and responsibilities from the past and other people, humankind will exude a new surplus value, incalculable in money because it would be impossible to reduce it to the measure of waged work. The guarantee of the liberty of each and of all is in the value of the game, of life freely constructed. The exercise of this ludic recreation is the framework of the only guaranteed equality with non-exploitation of man by man. The liberation of the game, its creative autonomy, supersedes the ancient division between imposed work and passive leisure.'

We should consider the possibilities of creating a space that is "liberated from all economic responsibility, liberated from all the debts and responsibilities from the past and other people".

NEVER WORK.

cam 

The Good Life

This is a video I found on a really interesting website. the website was set up as a guide to try and educate people on the perils of working too much. This website advocates the idea of reclaiming our time for ourselves and not the workforce. I find it interesting that we need a website to tell people to work less, we would have thought wanting to do less work should be a given. Not only do we need to be told how to work, we need a self help guide on how to not-work.



Check it out here.... http://www.newdream.org/programs/beyond-consumerism/reclaiming-our-time

Oh Bondage! Up Yours!

Liking Miles' musical posts today, thought I'd post something. Been going back to my angsty teen roots today listening to some X-Ray Spex. <3 Poly Styrene <3

Chain-store chain-smoke
I consume you all
Chain-gang chain-mail
I don't think at all

Here's Poly reminding us that even the most mundane of acts acts we do everyday are all part of capitalism. We just get on with it all without thinking. Going to a shop or having a cigarette are seemingly unavoidable, a-political actions.

Work wheel keeps on turning

We set out to provide people with creative the creative means to challenge the mundane of the everyday, by enhancing their leisure time. What we now wish to challenge is the idea that there is no escaping work within our leisure, and the circle of work is all encompassing in one way or another within the everyday.

Check this video out, I think its fitting for project. Even when we are creating something (our leisure time) the work machine just keeps on spinning, that is what the driving force behind leisure really is.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10201956374772352

And it really is an amazing video.

The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Lyrics

Another musical accompliment to our project, this song is about not being able to get any satisfaction from when we are told what to do. We need to escape that authorative voice that come froms work to get real satisfaction, real leisure.

Developments... Is there such a thing as leisure?

In my diary, I began to question whether my leisure time was really mine. More and more through this project we have seen that this is not necessarily the case. The 'Wages for Facebook' intervention was perfect in highlighting that the time in which we believe to be ours, is in fact a mechanism of work and labour for others. This was represented by Nads and Cam providing people with wage slips for their leisure time.

The interventions also highlighted that the leisure time 'created' was also intrinsic with labour demands. Therefore is all leisure a product of work? By reading every ones diaries it is clear to see that when in fact we do have leisure time it feels like we have earned that time. We have earned the right to relax and enjoy ourselves. Should payslips therefore not only have a the amount of money we have earned that week but a an amount of hours that we have earned to enjoy ourselves?

So not only do we have to earn the right to enjoy our leisure, others have to be working for our leisure to be achieved also. Even when we are free from work ourselves, others are working to ensure that our leisure time is in fact realised. when we are on social media, others are working as a result of our use. When we go to the pub (for a well deserved drink) others are working behind a bar; checking our phones, watching TV, reading a book.... all are a result of someone else's time and labour. Everything that we actually do in our leisure time, even if we do not feel the conditions of work personally, is still only achieved from the labours of others. I want to see if we can create an autonomous space that is completely free from these demands and still enjoy our leisure time.

Also, I really like how Nads and Cam managed to represent that our leisure time is linked to work with the use of the payslip. I think by incorporating the traditions of labour into our leisure time really allows to actually visualise the effects that labour has on that time. I think we should develop this into our final intervention some how. By using this, we will be able to highlight whether or not we can actually enjoy autonomous leisure time.

Keep Creating... Its Your Time - Overview

After collecting the flyers and seeing peoples reactions to them over the past few weeks, there have been some very interesting outcomes to this intervention. We set out by trying to provide people with the means to reclaim their time through creative means. An act that we hoped would enhance peoples leisure and an be an escape from work.

As we discussed right at the beginning what we wanted to refrain from was an authoritative voice behind it all. We did not want to force people to do anything, as we wanted to show that leisure is a time when you are free to do whatever you want, without any external voice. We wanted to highlight and promote that leisure is a time when you are free to do as you please. This intervention was there to merely provide the means for people to enjoy that right.

However, this intervention highlighted to us that the wasted time, free time or leisure time in our everyday could not be separated from our work time. The idea that we must do something with our free time is an act that we must enjoy the time away from work, but if leisure is just merely a reaction to work is it really leisure? It seems we have to work to ensure that we do have leisure time. We are free to do as we please, but can what ever we do be completely free from the notions of making capital. Is our leisure time just merely an act of 'unpaid labour'?

We wanted to create a space where people could enhance their leisure as a means of escaping from the tribulations of work, but I think we now should see if in fact there is a space that can be created which is entirely free from an agenda of labour all together.

Work, Work, Working...

In contemporary society, we cannot escape work. It has completely infiltrated all aspects of our lives and triumphed over all other ways of existing. Yet, this has occurred at the very moment workers have become superfluous. Here in an excerpt from ‘The Coming Insurrection’ by an anonymous group of French writers, The Invisible Committee.

“Gains in productivity, outsourcing, mechanisation, automated and digital production have so progressed that they have almost reduced to zero the quantity of living labour necessary in the manufacture of any product. We are living the paradox of a society of workers without work, where entertainment, consumption and leisure only underscore the lack from which they are supposed to distract us.”

New modes of production, i.e. automation, increasingly render obsolete the input of human labour in the production process. Yet, more than ever, our subjectivity is defined by work. This has a profound impact on our leisure time. Furthermore those in work are subject to the increasing precarity of labour, through zero-hour contracts and outsourcing. As a result of this, workers become flexible and replaceable. The psychological trauma associated with this kind of work is well documented.

Is it possible to escape work and have any real time to ourselves?

cam

PROUD MARY + Lyrics - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Working for the man every night and day... A little bit of Creedence for you. Singing about the people on the river who don't need money or work to be happy.

My Personal Work Intervention Part Trio - The Overview

What we set out to achieve was fairly well received, and I believe the pieces that represented time stolen away from work to be a success. We set out to reclaim time for leisure not work. However what we made although a representation of leisure in the artistic sense, was in fact an act of work in itself. During these interventions, to avoid being noticed by the 'boss', we made an effort to still look like we working.

We wanted to reclaim the time for ourselves but did the act of trying to look like we were working actually make that time ours? By following the normal work structure, the time was still dedicated to the employer. Also, by producing something we were still working. We were producing something for ourselves, but it was still a mode of production. We were still working towards achieving something. It was time reclaimed for ourselves but what this intervention highlighted was that it was not necessarily leisure time that we reclaimed. This intervention has led me more towards the question of whether we can actually have a time for leisure which truly is independent from the conditions of work. Therefore I want to know whether we can ever escape the external influences of work upon ourselves and create a time which is truly ours. Is it really leisure if there is an external forcing saying DO?

Keep Creating... Its Your Time

 

 

This was the flyer we made that we wanted to distribute into areas of other peoples time that we believed was wasted time in order to provide them with the means to do something within this period. What we wanted to achieve by distributing these was to provide an outlet for people in certain periods of their day, an outlet that not only allowed them to create something personal to them but to see if they could capitalise on the wasted time within their routine. By reclaiming this time by doing something creative we wanted to change what we believed to be wasted time into something that could be deemed leisure time. The aim to increase the aspects of leisure time within the everyday routine was to break away from the work, work, work mantra and to create spaces and means to enhance leisure.

 

Over the past month, I have left these flyers in a space personal to my everyday that I believed was wasted time. I work in a couple of cafes and everyday I see people standing and waiting in queues. They stand in silence, waiting and waiting, watching the a couple of minutes pass by until they receive what they ordered. This was time I believed that people could be capitalising on, especially as the majority of customers were often coming to me before or just after work, or on their breaks. This is time that is their free time away from work. It is time away from the hassle of labour, it is their free time. However by just standing there doing nothing they are not capitalising on this time away from the workplace, and by us providing them with the means to do something in this time we wanted to provide them with a means to enhance this time into time of leisure.

 

I left these flyers next to where people queued and waited for their order. What I found really interesting and enjoyed to see was that when I called out peoples orders, rather than them standing ready and waiting, they were distracted. They were busy scribbling down on the flyers, and when I finally got their attention they were more relaxed, not agitated by the wait.

 

Often people would take the flyers away with them, but these were some I managed to collect. These are physical representations of time that was reclaimed from what could be seen as the work/not-work routine. They are not works of art, but pieces that have reclaimed time that represent the politics of the wasted time within our everyday.

 

PROJECT UPDATE

Hey all,

We’ve been extremely busy in the last few weeks. Members of our group began to analyse aspects of the everyday and wasted/leisure time in order to pinpoint where an intervention could be made. We kept diaries over the course of a week in order to do this quickly and effectively. Our original final idea was an attempt to subvert ‘wasted time’ and explore the possibilities for creativity within our everyday, banal experiences. However, after carrying out our own ‘mini-actions’ we found the prospect of forcing people to be creative, problematic.

Last week the emphasis of our project shifted slightly. We have decided to focus on work and its impact on/relationship to our leisure time. ‘Wages for Facebook’ is a brilliant example of how what we perceive to be leisure is in fact tantamount to unpaid labour. To consider every day experiences such as social networking perfectly innocuous, is to fundamentally ignore the role we play in the process of capital accumulation. We have begun to question whether leisure time actually exists...

cam

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CrimethInc

Work “makes people poor” - “in self-determination, in free time, in health, in sense of self beyond our careers and bank accounts and poor in spirit.”(Work: Capitalism Economic Resistance, Far East, Salem, 2011, p.21)

So far from this project we have definitely highlighted how the system of "working" has changed how we think about the ways we spend our time. CrimethInc. highlights how while when we think of work we automatically think of an accumulation of wealth, work actually "makes people poor". This is a valid point as having to spend so much of our lives at a place of work is inevitably going to take away from other aspects, or potential aspects of life.

While CrimethInc. claims that work takes away free time, work also creates free time. Not to say that thanks to work we get given, or we earn, all this lovely free time to use how we wish. Because if it wasn't for work there would be no need to define this time as free. Work defines this time for us, and then dictates when we are allowed to use it.

Of course, as we have discussed in this project there isn't just work and free time. Time can feel like it's wasted. If you're not actively doing work, or you're not doing something productive, then time feels wasted. However, with our 'Facebook Wages' intervention we highlighted that even though we might feel that how we spend our time is not beneficial in any way, someone is profiting. Does this change the definition of wasted time? Most people in the intervention denied that they deserved a wage for Facebook, or just saw it as a funny idea. Our work, and therefore out right to a wage, has been successfully hidden.

"For the market manages the managers, hierarchy bosses the bosses, capitalism owns the owners, but a crimethinker is truly a human being, free and wild" (CrimethInc. Manifesto Part 72-A)

We've tried in different ways, through different interventions, to get people to think like a "crimethinker". We put out the ideas that capitalism is at work in every moment of our lives even when we think we aren't doing anything. We gave people the option to do 'something' rather than 'nothing' during the spare, seemingly empty and wasted moments given to us by the working day (wether you're the one at work, or consuming through someone else's work). We wanted people to claim back time, and do what they want with it. But just telling people to be free, or that they have the option to be free, doesn't create free individuals. Telling people to do something at a specific moment in time defeats the point of creating real free time. While we we're trying to get people to question how they spend their 'wasted' time, all of our interventions still worked with and around the capitalist system of work.

This "free and wild" individual cannot be created through planned intervention. All we can do in our interventions is take these theoretical ideas about time and work and create 'real life', tangible ways of seeing them.

'Wages for Facebook' Action Debrief

So, as you can see, the majority of individuals we interviewed as part of our mini-intervention -‘Wages for Facebook’ - laughed off the concept of a wage for our social networking, let alone considered their time on social networks as labour. This, however, was the expected response.

Social networks profit directly from the data we generate, turning this into an act of ‘friendship' or flirtation. By denying this a wage, capital has gained the upper hand in a plethora of ways. First and foremost, it has managed to deceive us into working for free. But also, far from struggling against this unwaged labour, we seek it as the most preferable thing on the internet, and as means of ‘killing time’ on our or lunch breaks or those early morning commutes. Our relationship with Facebook is completely mystified. We have been well and truly alienated from this process of unwaged labour, left blissfully unaware of our own subjugation.

The demand for a Facebook wage would acknowledge that our social networking is, in fact, work. Once we have our feet in the door, we have the ability to struggle around the terms and volume of that work.

To quote Tronti, "if the conditions of capital are in the hands of the workers, if there is no active life in capital without the living activity of labour power...", then one can conclude that from its inception, Facebook is in fact subordinate to us: the workers.

Once our labour is visible, we can begin to refuse it in all its guises…

Wages for Facebook is a revolutionary demand. It does not, by itself, destroy capitalism, but it forces capital to restructure social relations in terms more favourable to us.

“WAGES FOR FACEBOOK IS ONLY THE BEGINNING, BUT ITS MESSAGE IS CLEAR: FROM NOW ON THEY HAVE TO PAY US BECAUSE AS USERS WE DO NOT GUARANTEE ANYTHING ANY LONGER. WE WANT TO CALL WORK WHAT IS WORK SO THAT EVENTUALLY WE MIGHT REDISCOVER WHAT FRIENDSHIP IS.”









cam

x

My Personal Work Intervention Part Duo

These were just a few that I managed to get photos of, they were never meant to be saved, collected and presented in a gallery. These pieces were little personal interventions, that allowed myself and others to visualise the time we were reclaiming as our own leisure time within work time through a physical medium. Some were humorous, some were creative it didn't matter, what was important was the idea that at that moment that time was filled doing something they wanted to do.

 

 

 

 

 

(Gave the Gnome in a bath... a bath)

 

My Personal Work Intervention Part Uno

What I set out to do in this intervention was to challenge my conception of spare time within my work space. By this, I do not mean the formal breaks that I am provided with, I am talking about the periods of time when I am working but I am doing nothing in particular. I wanted to challenge the periods in which I was doing nothing, to at first accentuate the potential periods in which i could be doing more with my time, and secondly to see if I could challenge the 'work' time by reclaiming it for myself, and reclaim it as my 'leisure' time. I thought this was an interesting area to of wasted time to challenge, because I wanted to see if you could actually take control of this time when it really is someone else's; the employer's. I wanted to to see if it could be made into 'my' free time, even though my time was already being paid for by someone else.

 

By no means was this an intervention to justify being lazy or avoiding your duties whilst working, I was not ignoring the work that needed be done, and for all understanding whilst doing these interventions me and my colleagues were seen to be working to our full potential. What we tackled in this set of mini interventions was the genuine down time between jobs when there was nothing else to do. These periods occur in all work places, whether it be a chance to chat to your colleague or a customer, check your phone, have a chat by the water cooler, stare into space, relax for a second. These are breaks away from work within work time, but what we wanted to challenge was whether it was our time or the employer's.

 

The intervention was to try and reclaim this time by doing absolutely anything that the person wanted to do in these periods, which was something physical and creative; something that could be seen and questioned. The reason why I suggested it to be something creative was to revert back to what we wanted to achieve in our initial chats as a group. We believed that pushing someone to be creative was the one way to get people to project their true feelings as to what that period of time represented to them. Secondly, the reason why in this intervention I wanted it to be something physical, is because I wanted these pieces to have presence in the work place and by actually producing something that could be seen allowed us to reflect and look back on all the pieces and the visualise the time we had reclaimed. Those periods of time were not just visualised but represented by these pieces. These little mini interventions were physical representations of time we had reclaimed within the monotony of work.

 

This was of course something that could not just be done in one shift, as it would have been too obvious not only to the employer but to ourselves. I did not want these interventions to be forced, as they were intended to provide a means for the worker to slowly start to establish an authority over his own time within work and leisure. We have been doing this for the past month slowly and surely, and what would have been interesting to know is the accumulative amount of time these little interventions had taken away from work time. However that was not the aim for the intervention, it was to provide myself and those around me with the drive to recognise the time spent within our everyday workday and to realise how we could reclaim some of our work time for our own leisure time. It was intended to do this so that we could realise the use of our actual leisure time away from work.

 

But as i said it would have been interesting to actually accumulate the time spent, because what I have noticed more and more as this project continues is the idea that leisure is just a product of labour and then just like work shouldn't this time be recorded. Should we have a quota to reach of a certain amount of hours of leisure a week? Should we have to clock in and out of our free time too? This is a concept I think we should tackle in our final intervention, when we develop this idea of trying to reclaim time and see who our time really belongs to.

Facebook Wages Mini-Intervention

Inspired by the idea of ‘Wages for Facebook’, Cam and I wanted to do something to put this idea out there. We decided to make some fake payslips and letters from ‘Facebook’ and give them to people we spotted browsing the website in the library. A few of these people agreed to be interviewed, which we filmed and made into a video.

Browsing and using Facebook is something which so many of us do everyday. It is an extremely prevalent part of contemporary life. For most of us (as we can see in the video) using Facebook is something we do to have a break from real work. There is often a sense of guilt form spending ‘too much’ time on Facebook, as this time is now wasted.

This mini-intervention aimed to subvert the idea that using Facebook is simply innocuous wasted time that nobody profits from, as money is being made out of any time spent of Facebook. Putting the possibility of being paid for using Facebook out there was meant to highlight the idea that Facebook time is in a way, work time. Whenever someone networks using Facebook, money is made. Of course, the user isn’t the one profiting, so it could be said that Facebook is, in it’s own way, a form of unwaged labour. 

Although the people we spoke to didn’t generally agree with the idea behind Wages for Facebook, the aim wasn’t to get people to start demanding money for their time on Facebook. We wanted to put the idea across in a creative, easily understandable way. Making a physical symbol of paid work, a payslip, was how we chose to do this. We felt that the bizarre situation of being handed a payslip while just browsing Facebook would highlight the fact that the idea of Facebook as unwaged work is such an alien concept. 

The website from Cam’s original post on the topic (http://wagesforfacebook.com) puts this down to the capitalist system: 

CAPITAL HAD TO CONVINCE US THAT IT IS A NATURAL, UNAVOIDABLE, AND EVEN FULFILLING ACTIVITY TO MAKE US ACCEPT UNWAGED WORK

UNDER CAPITALISM EVERY WORKER IS MANIPULATED AND EXPLOITED AND HIS/HER RELATION TO CAPITAL IS TOTALLY MYSTIFIED

WE MUST ADMIT THAT CAPITAL HAS BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL IN HIDING OUR WORK

There are clearly many factors which affect how we define how our time is spent. If we don’t see Facebook as work time, then it makes sense that it’s defined as wasted time. Does the reminder that someone profits from Facebook change how we define the way this time is spent?

Free/Wasted/Work Time Diary

 

 

 

This is my diary outlining how I spent my time in a normal week, and in this diary I set out to realise the politics of the time within my everyday. I was able to to establish and decipher the relationship between the work and leisure time in my schedule. With each day I wrote how by realising the way i spent my time, I could decipher if in fact my leisure time was wasted, and how i could be doing more with it. What I came to realise however was that my leisure time was directly linked to my labour time, and the only time I was able to escape the work, work, work mantra was when I was doing absolutely nothing. but even when we are doing nothing are we still escaping the dominance of the work machine.

Wasted Time Diary

We decided as a group that over the last week we should record and discuss the time which we felt was wasted, and the time which we felt was free. Doing this helps us see clearly what wasted/free time means for us in our own lives, and will hopefully help us move towards a final intervention. I personally found that space played a huge part in how I defined how my time was spent. While I recently lost my job, I've been spending most days in the library, which is very different but still a place of work. Having a lot to do, but having to make my own schedule, has meant that this diary really picks up on the anxiety around wasted time versus free time.

Free time/Work time

Up until a few weeks ago, I had possibly one of the worst jobs out there, I worked in a call centre raising money for various charities. It sounds all nice and moral but I was basically paid to phone up old people and manipulate them into setting up direct debits which they probably couldn’t really afford. The set up was one big noisy room full of people in headsets doing a job they despise. 

The calls were made on an autodialler, so there were usually a couple of minutes between the calls where you weren’t connected to anyone. This is called ‘wrap time’. It’s time spent at work, which you are paid for, but is spent doing ‘nothing’. Is this time wasted time? Is it free time? Or is it work time?

Personally, I feel like I would have gone mad had I spent those thousands of few minute intervals doing ‘nothing’, so I would spend the time reading. I feel that since I was doing something semi productive, reading, the time wasn’t wasted. Especially seeing as I wasn’t exactly laden with options of other productive things I could do, sat at a desk in a call centre. Reading felt like a perfectly good thing to do with that time. 

Because I was reading, doing something I would do in my free time, and I wasn't required to do any work related duties in this time except wait for the next call, does that mean this time was free time? While I was doing something I would count as a free time activity, I was still in a work space, and was bound to that space by my status as employee, so it would be a stretch to say my time was ‘free’. Of course, I was still being paid during this time, so while I wasn’t actively doing any kind of work, I was still selling my time to the call centre.

What I personally found astonishing, was that the majority of the people at the call centre would spend their ‘wrap time’ doing pretty much nothing. A few times I forgot to bring anything to read, and I found my shift to be about a thousand times more painful than it usually was (which was pretty painful). Wrap time is basically a ‘break’ between calls, a break from work. As a break is usually associated with a lack of effort, it’s understandable why most people would use that time to do ‘nothing’. 

I wanted to ask people what wrap time meant to them, but without directly telling them to do something by asking them to answer my questions. I specifically wanted them to tell me what they thought of wrap time during wrap time. So I gave some people a piece of paper before the shift started and asked them to do what they wanted with it, or express themselves how they liked with the piece of paper during wrap time.

What I got was some doodles, an origami flower, and a paper aeroplane. I feel like I was expecting to get something from this activity which was unrealistic. Just because I asked people to express feelings on something, doesn’t mean they will necessarily have any feeling on the topic, or be willing to tell me about them. Personally, I think if I was told to basically do some extra-curricular writing about something while I was just trying to get on with my job I wouldn’t be too keen on complying. Plus, if I’m asking these people to question wether or not this time belongs to them, then by asking them to do something for me during this time surely I’m defeating the point in some way.

Unrelated to my thoughts on wrap time, I (unfortunately?) lost my job at the call centre about a week ago as I apparently wasn’t making them enough money. I wasn’t actually that bad at my job, but how the system works there is that they hire/fire so many people every week. They clearly do this to ensure that the turnover is as high as possible. So they hire hundreds of desperate people each week and give them all zero hour contracts, only to fire them a few months later because they  aren’t cruel enough to literally force money out of the elderly. I’m sure if any of the managers knew about my attempt at an intervention they would not have been pleased at all. 

Aren’t call centres lovely things?

A bit of fun

http://m.vice.com/en_uk/read/reasons-why-london-is-the-worst-place-ever

I usually cannot stand vice, but this article did make me laugh.

 

It also has some politics behind it that is relevant to us, and how an environment can change our attitudes towards they way in which we approach such things as work and leisure.

 

The article comments on the morbidity of London's inhabitants, and although this article is tongue in cheek, can it be that in a city where we have to work more hours than any other city in England just to pay rent, thus leaving us with less time and money for leisure, be an insight to the work-leisure relationship.

 

Thinking about paying rent wont cheer you up, but hopefully the sarky vice article will.

Easter Sunday "Holiday"?

I have my diary for last week ready to upload but i have no scanner to do so because the library is shut for Easter Sunday. I found this pretty funny because we have been discussing work and leisure time and how they affect each other. Its funny how a public holiday is meant to be enjoyed by all, yet as I walked around today, there were shops still open, pubs still serving and people still working.

All day I have seen people frustrated as they complain that the library isn't open or a certain cafe is not open; 'pfffft, they should be open', should they? People are 'enjoying' their day off yet they complain about others for enjoying the exact same privelidge. This has highlighted the fact that for one person to enjoy a fulfilment of their leisure time away from work, others still have to be working. There is no escape from the pressures of work and the 'capitalist' agenda.

The irony is that free time isn't free and it differs from person to person. Leisure comes from work, whether it be yours or others. This is really important, because when i examined my diary for the week I was oustounded by the relationship between what I thought was indeed my free time and my work time.

I will be able to show you in more detail when I upload it tomorrow, but what I found was the notion that my free time was either a part of, or a reaction to working time. The activities that I do for leisure, take for example band practice, it is something i do for fun, yet we have a prearranged time that we all meet, and we have to work hard on our music for a set amount of time; when analysed, it can easily be compared to the notions of labour. Additionally, say going out after work for a drink, a part of my leisure that I really enjoy... alot, was justified to myself as being deserved. I deserved free time after i had worked hard all day. Why must we feel like our free time has to be earnt?

We set about trying to provide people with the means to fulfill their wasted time and to enhance their leisure time away from work by doing so, but by looking at my diary I think we need to question more so the labour aspects of leisure time and how labour affects it, rather than peoples leisure time itself.

I will upload the mini interventions and my diary and highlight however succussful or failed they may have been, by us asking or interfering with the free time of others whether it deemed wasted or not is an act of force and an act of labour upon the person, entirely against what we were trying to challenge in the first place.

Our Journal/Diary Proposal

So we met last week to discuss our project and the direction we are heading towards with our final intervention.

 

We discussed our guerrilla style interventions into the spare times of others and how they had been developing. Our initial aim in our project was to tackle the idea of peoples leisure time and challenge whether free time was in fact just wasted time. We wanted to provide people with the means to break away from the monotony of simply letting time waste on by, by intervening into these situations of their lives.

 

As a group we talked about challenging such areas as the tube and travel, whether it be to or from work or even a journey as part of a persons leisure. We wanted to tackle the notion of waiting in queues or waiting rooms and see whether this time could be more fulfilled. Personally, I wanted to provide people with a creative outlet whilst queueing in the cafes in which i work so that the time they spend waiting, instead of standing in frustrated, longing silence could be spent doing something creative; something that could provide greater fulfilment of that time.

 

I also wanted to see if the actual time we spend working which is not generally deemed wasted time as we are being rewarded (paid) for that time, could be intervened with. I wanted to see if i could steal back work time and times that were not productive towards labour could be transformed into moments of leisure I therefore over the last month have been trying to coerce my fellow employees, as well as myself, to steal back some of this time.

 

Whilst discussing these interventions of trying to transform what could be deemed as wasted time of others, it dawned on us that in order to coherently understand this we needed to examine the areas of our own lives that were seen as work, leisure or wasted time. It became clear that we could not determine the time of others effectively, until we had examined our own. Therefore, last week we decided to make a diary/journal of our routine and goings of that week. We wanted to do this so that we could outline and breakdown the time in which our free time is effected by external factors and decide whether our own free time is truly our own.

 

 

Wages For Facebook cont.

Following on from the 'Wages for Facebook' post, last week Nadia and I decided to put this idea into action. We approached individuals using Facebook in the library, and offered them a cheque for their service. Video to follow...

On the subject of work, here is a photo of Autonomia Operaia. A 'workerist' movement in Italy, c.1977.

Wages for Facebook

We've been away for a while, but we're back...

After the last meeting we all had together, our project took an interesting turn.

We started considering work and the impact it has on our social lives/time. most of us spend all of our lives doing jobs that we despise, that are even dehumanising. yet we still believe we are free. this is great illusion of capitalism.

last week I stumbled upon an interesting concept that relates nicely to our project, and the ideas discussed in the last meeting. it's called 'Wages for Facebook'

here's a snippet:

"CAPITAL HAD TO CONVINCE US THAT IT IS A NATURAL, UNAVOIDABLE AND EVEN FULFILLING ACTIVITY TO MAKE US ACCEPT UNWAGED WORK. IN ITS TURN, THE UNWAGED CONDITION OF FACEBOOK HAS BEEN A POWERFUL WEAPON IN REINFORCING THE COMMON ASSUMPTION THAT FACEBOOK IS NOT WORK, THUS PREVENTING US FROM STRUGGLING AGAINST IT. WE ARE SEEN AS USERS OR POTENTIAL FRIENDS, NOT WORKERS IN STRUGGLE. WE MUST ADMIT THAT CAPITAL HAS BEEN VERY SUCCESSFUL IN HIDING OUR WORK."
are the countless 'wasted' hours we spend at home on facebook completely unblemished by any kind of social relation? surely somebody must own and even profit from this time? it will be interesting to discuss in more detail.

HTTP://WAGESFORFACEBOOK.COM/
cam

The Diary of Cameron Louis James Dugdale

hey all,

We've decided to keep diaries over the course of the week, in an attempt to identify an area of wasted time in which we could intervene. Here's mine. I tried to use the lyrics of my housemate (who *may or may not be a semi-famous musician) to describe each day. It's harder than you'd expect...

Monday - "Life is hard, when everything you do is nothing but monday..."
One of those awful days when you role out of bed, straight into the library. Today marks my first day enclosed in the self-inflicted 'academic gulag'. very busy with work from here on in. The library would be a great place to stage an intervention of sorts, if it weren't for all the dissertation desperation. Something to consider, perhaps...

Tuesday - "Whenever you say hello with no ulterior motive..."
Took a break from the library in the afternoon to venture into Peckham - bank issues. After queuing for what seemed like hours, it occurred to me that it could be interesting to stage some kind of intervention in a bank (not like that). Why do people keep themselves to themselves when in situations like this? I decided to challenge this, and attempted to start a conversation with as many people in the queue as i could, at the same time. Sadly I didn't capture this moment, although its probably for the best. It failed spectacularly, although I had a lovely chat with Pat, 76, from Peckham about her granddaughter who's doing quite well for herself these days...

Also, here's a video of direct action group UK Uncut staging a 'bail-in' in a branch of Barclays. Here's your big society.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esob5I8KOsY

Wednesday - "A Missed opportunity, in the place where we meet. Repetitive until there's nothing else"

I couldn't seem to avoid a sense of missed opportunities, as I was back in the gulag for the duration of the day. However, whilst I was hammering away at the keys on my laptop, in the hope of some profound articulate spiel, the mind started to wander. After reading some Italian Autonomism, I started to consider work. This could get interesting...

Thursday - "Do you have a name? What's your favourite colour? Is it blue? 'Cos mine is green..."
Back in the library once again. Decided I'd have one last attempt at engaging people whilst queuing/killing time in the library. Turns out asking people what their favourite colour is (when everyone seems to be plagued by that gruesome spectre of academia) doesn't go down well. We need a rethink...

Friday - "Work is Work, sometimes tangents benefit the dreams that lurk..."

Looking back on the week,  Surely there must be somewhere in which we could intervene? I've been thinking a lot about work: the effects of the wage relation on economic freedom, and working hours and how they effect our leisure time. The majority of people work all our their lives, and for the most part it is utterly soul destroying. I think it could be interesting to explore work in greater detail, analysing, as Engels put it, that repetitive routine of endless drudgery...

cam

x

p.s meeting this week?








*he's not.