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Discussing work
Work might generally be approached as expenditure of energy that leads to a useful outcome.
Expenditure of energy is, here, understood as energy that goes out of a human body. If I consider the close relation of work and energy in Physics, energy is either transferred from a body/object to another body/object causing some kind of alteration or it is transformed into another type of energy. For example, when I put pressure on a metal plate, it bents. When I run, sugar and fat stored in my body are turned into kinetic and thermal energy. Expenditure of energy, therefore, involves transferring and transforming. Its outcomes might be material or immaterial, perceptible through the senses or not, lasting or short-lived.
What happens when I think, imagine or reflect?
The body still transforms sugar and fat into immaterial outcomes,
which are not perceptible by others
unless they are materialized by words or images.
Human beings have employed transferring and transforming of energy to create an artificial world. According to German-American philosopher Hannah Arendt “in order to provide human life with a secure place, we have to work, that is, to produce an artificial world of things which is lasting” (Arendt, 1989, cited in Luoto, 2015, 39). In this case, useful is the necessary to sustain and secure human existence. French intellectual Georges Bataille asserts that work is what brings order and reason to the world and lives of human beings (Bataille, 1986, 40-48). He connects the world of work and, consequently, its trait of usefulness to the notions of order, reason, and predictability.
In a neoliberal world, I could say useful equals profitable.
Selling price minus production cost equals profit
(this equation is conditioned by intricate parameters
of the economy).
Narrowing down the idea of work to a doing that occurs in the frame of employment, work is paid expenditure of energy that leads to useful products, material (objects) and immaterial (services) ones. According to Marx’s labour theory of value, the amount of expenditure necessary to produce an outcome under normal conditions determines the value of the product.
Profit
value
and
usefulness
are not the same. Yet, they are fused and confused in neoliberal society:
value attains that which is useful and profitable.
And this expenditure is measured in time, namely working-hours. This leads to a perception of time that is conditioned by productivity (calculating and predicting how much can be produced in a certain amount of time) and which I call temporality of productivity. This temporality is not confined to professional life. As pointed out by Arendt and Bataille, the world of work comprises all artificial things that are generated by human work and bring security, order and reason to the lives of human beings. Bataille maintains, further, that two modes of activity are valued in the artificial world: activity of production and activity of consumption. Temporality of productivity, therefore, permeates several aspects of our lives
when we work,
when we consume,
when we use an artificial thing.
And I am really wondering right now
when is the
time
that
I do not work
and
I do not consume.
A constant calculation of
time units
divided by
units produced
and units consumed.
Studying
I do not get paid to study at the University of Arts. Yet, I expense energy to learn, research, train or practice in order to become professional in a certain field. I store value in form of knowledge and skill that I can monetize later. There is a promise, here, to be fulfilled in the future. And there are academic requirements that need to be fulfilled in order for me to obtain a degree. The requirements are measured in expected learning outcomes and produced knowledge.
Dogmatic on purpose:
the only way to predict a learning outcome is
not to learn
because learning is an unpredictable expenditure in terms of
energy, time and outcome.
Cliché on purpose:
after submitting an assignment,
the only knowledge that I have produced is that
I want to research the things
that I don’t know yet.
University as an institution operates in the temporality of productivity. The state invests money in the university (at least in some European countries) and it asks for predictable useful outcomes in return:
x hours of education equals x units of knowledge
(essays, research outcomes, art projects).
On the other hand, university as a learning environment cannot function in the temporality of productivity because of the unpredictable nature of learning. This results in the emergence of a limbo temporality, a temporality in-between productive and unproductive, useful and wasteful, predictable and unforeseeable.
Although the above-mentioned equation is often questioned by pedagogues and students, it is maintained on an administrative level. This creates a predicament: actions of learning, thinking or making art are rendered measurable and predictable although they are not.
I see the same assumption concerning the temporality of productivity. It appropriates and exploits the idea of time as measurable entity.
8h work
8h consumption
8h sleep
The equation (x working-hours equals x useful products) does not work unless time is considered quantitative. Philosophers such as Henri Bergson, however, disagree and assert, instead, that human experience of time is qualitative.
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performance practices_divergent temporalities 