Post-work Relationshi(f)ts

Inspired by post-work feminist theorist Kathi Weeks, my collaborators and I explored alternative futures we could embody where waged labour was not the only means to meet our needs. We asked, how would people sustain themselves and their kin?

Using an auto-ethnographic approach, we observed our own lives as a starting point of how entrenched our culture is with work. Using narratives and multimedia, we explored fragmentary, alternate futures we would inhabit.  Each speculation explores a different facet of life affected by capitalist work culture, such as living structures, linguistic hierarchies, kinship, leisure and time.  Instead of proposing large-scale transformation, we turned to the micro-shifts that need to occur to embody these futures we imagine. 

But in the process of imagining, we ran up against our own refusals to shift and transcend our entrenched mindsets. Thus what we've collected here are artefacts of our flawed but honest, struggles to imagine post-work futures. We asked ourselves, how must we shift our relationships with ourselves, each other and non-humans to embody these futures?

Role: Researcher, Video Editing | 4 weeks

The project was featured in the Anthropology x Design Exhibition (ADX) in April 2021.