I read Walter de Maria's Meaningless Work and I get pissed off. I read it and my blood starts to boil. I start to get pissed thinking about how terribly art is misunderstood these days, how so often it's shoved away by perfectly intelligent individuals simply because it's inaccessible. I think about how this "meaningless" art thing is bullshit because the action is so far removed from the meaning. The action is completely arbitrary, since the act of making art becomes the art, and the result isn't just not important, it's completely excusable. And the irony here is that's exactly what the viewer has to see, has to try to interpret. It's this disconnect that ruins modern art and distances artists from so many perfectly beautiful people.
Then I think about Kracauer's definition of boredom, and it's close relation to what so many people come so close to achieving every day, it seems that these two things might be speaking to each other. And I find myself thinking of the Buddhists, and those who try to achieve enlightenment through the repetition of one mindless task. They perform very simple tasks for hours on end in an effort to both focus and unfocus their minds. All of a sudden these Monks are on to something.
And this leads me to thinking about myself, and about my “work ethic”. As an architecture student, I’m constantly being told to “manage my work hours” and to find a way to de-stress. It’s no small secret that the work load given to a typical architecture student far exceeds the number of daylight hours in the week. My life is a very loosely strung series of decisions of what night to choose to get my sleep. I am constantly faced with the decision to rest and to sacrifice satisfaction on a project, or to continue working and satisfy a creative curiosity. There is very little time for boredom in my life.
And I find myself considering this a very important lesson that I might need to teach myself very soon. What time in life is reserved for play? De Maria seems to suggest it can be found anywhere at anytime by anyone - and can be performed in any way or length so long as there is no product that is advantageous to anyone. I find myself kinda keen on that. I could use a non-product around me every once in a while. I think then.. if I really really need to do work without a product, and the product of that work is my happiness, am I stuck? If nothing else I find a little bit of glee to be stuck in a theoretical sort of purgatory.
I think also of Kracauer’s insistence of boredom by isolation, and my tiny little cube in the corner of studio. The number of times I open my mouth in a day can’t be that many. When I actually do work I speak very little, content with filling my sensory system with entirely inhuman dots and dashes of music, text, images projected through tens of thousands of liquid-filled crystals in a grey rectangle. I push down on bits of silicone to express myself. What a strange little world we inhabit.
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L.Planas has left a new comment on your post "Boredom, Meaningless Work, and now?":
The elusive concept of boredom, as defined by Siegfried Kracauer, is a necessary element of life. This empty counterbalance to work carries the human spirit through the moments between exercise and self-imposed distraction. To Kracauer, it is a pure state of mind that encourages unfettered development and speculation. From boredom comes emptiness. From emptiness comes an unresolved, yet satisfying sense of being.
However, Kracauer warns that attempting to amuse oneself in one’s boredom will eventually destroy that Zen like state. Distractions should be avoided at all costs, as they pervert the being and snuff out the “spark of the spirit” that pure boredom cultivates. Radio, movies, globalization, and other such meaningless distractions are the enemy of true boredom, as their ability to unconsciously drift into and dictate one’s subconscious destroys the spirit of boredom.
While Kracauer argues that boredom is the killer of progress, and that any action taken during this state is literally a waste of time, Walter de Maria argues that it provides a healthy form of exercise for the soul. De Maria says in his dissertation that this so-called “meaningless work” is an honest form of exercise. While it might not contribute to anything of importance, or lead to anything benefiting society, the mere exercise of directionless activity is what leads one to the state of nirvana-boredom as identified by Kracauer.
In these times, the driving need to constantly be busy, to constantly work and strive for achievement is a strong one. In our constantly moving, information-filled world, Internet and videogames have all but replaced radio and movies. They bring the wired nations of the world together as well, ramping up the level of “boredom-killing distraction” that Kracauer warns against in his essay. However, it is these very distractions that the people of today turn to whenever they feel “bored” as a way to relieve stress, or as a method of focused procrastination.
What category, then, does idly browsing the Internet while procrastinating fall into? Is it a distraction, like Kracauer’s denounced examples? Or is it “meaningless activity”, shallow but pure? It is true that idly clicking through sites such as Wikipedia or Youtube might have been started by a need to distract oneself from the stressful structure of a hyperbusy world. However, if one continues to aimlessly “wander” wherever their clicks take them, the mere action of browsing would fall under the category of meaningless activity. This in itself is a reflection of the very nature of boredom in our modern times—fueled by distraction, continued through an almost dérive-like nature.
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