'We DO talk about Bruno'
Don't Kill That Time
We are all guilty of attempting to ‘kill time’. Whether it’s whilst waiting for your friend who is always late but you still show up on time for, or from the moment you wake up until the moment you sleep again. We all know we can’t literally kill time, but we very much attempt to distract ourselves from our own perception of time. The relationship we have with time can reflect much deeper problems we face regarding our loss of meaning and alienation from ourselves and society.
We constantly view time as something simply to be ‘gotten through’, at work whilst waiting for the time to come to clock out or on that Sunday afternoon waiting for the work week to start again. We are waiting to leave work but once out of work we wait to get back, having nothing to fill that void of free time with. Living in a world where productivity is the Lord our saviour, when not working we feel we need to manage or eliminate our time. ‘Rise and grind’, ‘you can rest when you’re dead’, we try to combat our monotony with endless productivity. With everything around us continually being quantified and commodified the straight forward goal of a meaningless life is to maximise your ‘monetary worth’. As a way to escape the emptiness and anxiety around our life we see being busy as inherently valuable. The ‘hustle culture’ we are all aware of masks the heavily entrenched problems with our socioeconomic status quo, and its psychological effects we often don’t think about. The problems faced by modern mankind may be more complex than it appears. Living in our world where economic growth is valued more than wellbeing it is no surprise the desire to ‘kill time’ is so prominent, trapped in a cycle of distraction and imprisonment from a meaningful life.
This project was inspired by Erich Fromm’s 1955 book, The Sane Society. It appears more relevant now than ever before, truly ahead of its time. I can only imagine what Fromm would say of our world now. My good friend and colleague at my workplace gifted me this book, thank you Bruno!
2 Colour Screenprint
Southbank 310gsm
20 x 25cm
