Though trained as an artist, Odell has gradually become known for her writing. In the book’s first chapter, she remarks that she finds things that already exist “infinitely more interesting than anything I could possibly make.” Then, summoning the ideas of others, she goes on to construct a complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto.
Odell’s first book, “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,” echoes the approach she took with her bureau, creating a collage (or maybe it’s a compost heap) of ideas about detaching from life online, built out of scraps collected from artists, writers, critics and philosophers. (A bird-watcher, Odell is friendly with a pair of crows that sit outside her apartment window given her talent for scavenging, you wonder whether they’ve shared tips.) As the sole employee of her bureau, she photographed things that had been thrown out and learned about their histories. Odell was then an artist-in-residence at a waste operating station in San Francisco. In 2015, Jenny Odell started an organization she called The Bureau of Suspended Objects. HOW TO DO NOTHING Resisting the Attention Economy By Jenny Odell
0 kommentar(er)
