An ode to ambitious, pressured, random, restorative, and failing leisure activities. Lofty expectations, wasted hours, long to-do lists, and endless care work.

Over an extended period, Magdalena Weniger has been conducting research in various residencies on the relationship between work and leisure. In doing so, she examines her own reality as a freelance artist and mother of three, and enters into dialogue with her social environment: colleagues, retirees, children, full-time fathers and mothers, students, employed individuals, unemployed people, the burned-out, the content…

With “Arbeitstitel: Freizeit”, she now presents an interim report of her research. What has emerged is a relaxed performance—an easy-going and accessible atmosphere that invites shared reflection on leisure.
Is leisure a luxury or a necessity? Self-directed or externally determined? An activity or an experience? What role or identity do I have in my leisure time? Is leisure truly free time—and does it free the mind?

Modern humans are condemned, through their constant motion and restlessness, to live in a state of being-in-the-world without ever truly being in the world.In a world of perpetual activity, rapid change, and flickering surfaces, it has become nearly impossible to come to rest, to reflect, and to contemplate one’s own life.
Hannah Arendt, Vita Activa

The cultural achievements of humanity are owed to a deep, contemplative attention.
This deep attention is being displaced by another form: hyperattention.
A rapid shifting of focus between tasks, sources of information, and processes characterizes this scattered attention. It has a very low tolerance for boredom—yet deep boredom would not be insignificant for the creative process. Walter Benjamin called it: ‘a dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.'

Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society