Inaction, laziness, or disinterest in work and reproduction, is often associated with people who do not perform adequately in capitalistic terms; they are seen as under achievers, under educated, bums etc. This project uses the idea of inaction as articulated in the “The Right to be Lazy” written in the late 1800’s by son-in-law of Karl Marx, Paul Lafarge. Lafargue identifies laziness as an antidote to excessive capitalist production. He saw work as a Christian moral, designed to keep people busy, and a bourgeois invention, designed to keep people hungry.
Now, 125 years after “The Right to be Lazy”, work is more valued than ever–to not work is to be either emasculated or excessive in economic terms. InAction is a suite of contestational furniture designed to facilitate public inaction. Participants use the units to host public conversations, contestational actions or for a comfortable, visible conversation. Interested parties can borrow/check out the InAction Units for groups of up to 20 (download the loan form). The units are packaged pillows, roll out blankets housed in a convenient backpack. Participants are provided with a guide of suggestions of how and where to practice inaction (i.e. centers of wealth accumulation, centers of marketed entertainment); the pillow devices help soften the hardened security scapes found at nearly all sites of capitalist management.
InAction suggests productivity in doing nothing.
Quote (below) by James C. Scott. Sewing by Susan Becker.
Pictures by Brandon Phoung, Allison Putnam and Katie Hargrave.
