Hobby Central

2017 – ongoing

research, film proposal, animation

Having a burn-out in the summer of 2015, I spent several months from autumn that same year till spring 2016 not working. Taking time off gave me a lot of time to walk around and watch people around me, who were all busy, rushing from place A to B, and all constantly attached to their phones or other modern devices.

Suddenly the concept of being busy really intrigued me. I started wondering to what extent being busy was an actual fact and what part of it was more a state of mind, a pretext, a socially demanded “virtue”. Moreover I was curious to find out what was the role modern devices and internet had in connection to being busy. Did they actually save our time or just wasted even more? 

Setting off a research on the topic of work and free time, I devised an idea of a fake professional hobbyist service, a service that enables customers to outsource personal hobbies for which they themselves are too busy.

The first stage of development, supported by the AFK funding, resulted in a film proposal, a lecture and a 15 min edit of interviews.

This project-research is still in progress.

Format used: website (beta version), film, animation

Element of disturbance: proposing an absurd service (outsourcing of hobbies) that doesn’t exist, creating an art project around it that tries to convince the audience that this service is real

Method: pre-prepared curating, role-play

Key topics discussed: work, lack of time, outsourcing, digitalization, vicious circle of life, precarity, free time, neoliberalism