Trojan Horse Summer School 2017 – “CLIMATE CHANGE OF WORK”

Posted on by Trojan Horse

Trojan Horse Summer School 2017
”CLIMATE CHANGE OF WORK”
August 15–24,
With Brave New Alps, Nick Axel, Johanna Jõekalda and Aapo Korkeaoja.
Bengtsår island, Hanko, Finland
59°53’54.7″N 23°06’30.8″E

The second season of the Trojan Horse summer school begins with a burst of questions which circulate around the topic of work.

What does work mean? Who has the power to decide what is counted as work?

How can we re-organise our day to day life so that it would create new structures of feeling and meaning as well as new structures of work?

How can we overturn the fetish of the individual creator and express the sensations of collective life?

Can work be therapy? What would that even mean, can that be anyhow meaningful to others? Does that matter?

What do I actually do when I do what I do? Is it work? Is my work meaningful just for a few privileged countries or social groups?

So, what does the Climate Change of Work mean?

We recently went to see the Signals from the Periphery graphic design exhibition at the Tallinn Art Hall. In between objects, images, tools and music, the exhibition also displayed alternative design spaces, -events and -projects from around the world. What these initiatives had in common was that they were initiated out of frustration that there was no place or platform to do the kind of work these designers found meaningful and fulfilling. This is also one of the reasons why we started the Trojan Horse summer school.

How is it possible that so many people feel that there is so much design work that feels more and less unnecessary or unfulfilling, and so little that would take us towards the kinds of worlds we would like to live in?

How is it possible that work occupies more and more of our time, even when we live in increasingly automated societies, where many human necessities could be taken care of with very little actual human labour?

Why do we risk our mental and physical health working on our laptops, staring into screens inside cubicles, when we would have all the technology to use the space and our bodies much more fluidly?

How is it possible that we value efficiency and modesty and rationality so much, when there has never been so much surplus energy (and time) available to us to waste?

How does this affect the kind of knowledge and the kind of work we produce?

What are we actually doing?

And what does this have to do with climate change?

Climate is the history of weather. Where weather is something we can observe and feel here and now, climate is something we cannot sense directly. “Climate is the average state of the atmosphere over periods of years, decades, centuries, and more.” Climate becomes real as graphs and excel sheets. “Everything we know about the world’s climate—past, present, and future—we know through models.” In order to model climate we need global data, and to have global data we need different measurement devices, standardized procedures, satellites orbiting our planet and many other inhuman things, which sense our world very differently from how we humans do, based on our partial and limited local perspectives.

And climate, of course, changes all the time. The biosphere of our planet Earth has experienced many dramatic changes in its four billion years of history. What we call climate change today is something different. Something that will make our own existence threatened. Something which is already causing mass extinction of plants and animals, soil depletion, mass migration and wars over natural resources. That’s why what we now call climate change is something inherently political, it’s something related to the work we have done, and work we think we should be doing. If our collective work (utilising the energy released from burning fossil-fuels) has changed our planet’s climate once, it might make sense to rethink what we call work in order to transform both our world and ourselves.

What does it even mean to work? Is work anything that brings you money? Is it what you do during your days? Or, is work something that in some sense builds a common good? Something that someone forces you to do? Something you just have to do? Something that creates change? Something that creates new knowledge? A quest to find a world worth working towards?

In her book The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt writes about three different activities: labour, work and action, as equally necessary to a complete human life. “Labor is human activity directed at meeting biological (and perhaps other) necessities for self-preservation and the reproduction of the species. Because these needs cannot be satisfied once and for all, labor never really reaches an end. Its fruits do not last long; they are quickly consumed, and more must always be produced.” … “Work, unlike labor, has a clearly defined beginning and end. It leaves behind a durable object, such as a tool, rather than an object for consumption. These durable objects become part of the world we live in. Work involves an element of violation or violence in which the worker interrupts nature in order to obtain and shape raw materials. For example, a tree is cut down to obtain wood, or the earth is mined to obtain metals.” … “Action is the means by which we distinguish ourselves from others as unique and unexchangeable beings. With humans, unlike with other beings, there is not just a generic question of what we are, but of who each is individually. Action and speech are always between humans and directed toward them, and it generates human relationships.” For Arendt knowledge is acquired not simply by thinking, but by making; working, labouring and acting with the products of previous human work.

How do we deal with the violence related to our work? How do we housewife our climate? How do the tools we use change our bodies? How can we work out what the infrastructure around us wants? What should we be doing with our designer skills, designer knowledge and design tools?

9,903 responses on “Trojan Horse Summer School 2017 – “CLIMATE CHANGE OF WORK””

  1. I have read some good stuff here. Definitely price bookmarking for revisiting. I surprise how a lot effort you set to make one of these magnificent informative website.

  2. I am really impressed with your writing skills and also with the layout on your blog. Is this a paid theme or did you modify it yourself? Anyway keep up the excellent quality writing, it’s rare to see a great blog like this one these days..

  64. F*ckin’ amazing things here. I’m very glad to see your article. Thanks a lot and i’m looking forward to contact you. Will you kindly drop me a e-mail?

  154. hey there and thank you for your info – I have certainly picked up anything new from proper here. I did alternatively experience several technical points the use of this web site, as I skilled to reload the web site many times previous to I could get it to load correctly. I had been pondering if your web host is OK? Not that I’m complaining, but slow loading circumstances times will often impact your placement in google and could damage your high quality rating if advertising and ***********|advertising|advertising|advertising and *********** with Adwords. Well I’m including this RSS to my email and could glance out for a lot more of your respective interesting content. Make sure you replace this again very soon..

  337. Güvenilir bahis siteleri arasında popüler ve Kazançlı bahis deneyimi için en iyi bahis sitelerini keşfedin. Güvenli ve eğlenceli bahis keyfi burada

  397. I loved you better than you would ever be able to express here. The picture is beautiful, and your wording is elegant; nonetheless, you read it in a short amount of time. I believe that you ought to give it another shot in the near future. If you make sure that this trek is safe, I will most likely try to do that again and again.

  426. Türkiye’deki bahis siteleri 85 milyondan fazla nüfusu olan bu ülkede oldukça popülerdir. 2023 yılında ülkedeki bahis siteleri sayısı artmıştır.

  479. certainly like your website but you need to take a look at the spelling on quite a few of your posts Many of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very troublesome to inform the reality nevertheless I will definitely come back again

  591. I loved even more than you will get done right here. The overall look is nice, and the writing is stylish, but there’s something off about the way you write that makes me think that you should be careful what you say next. I will definitely be back again and again if you protect this hike.

  642. I loved even more than you will get done right here. The overall look is nice, and the writing is stylish, but there’s something off about the way you write that makes me think that you should be careful what you say next. I will definitely be back again and again if you protect this hike.

  709. Ive read several just right stuff here Certainly price bookmarking for revisiting I wonder how a lot effort you place to create this kind of great informative website

  719. I was recommended this website by my cousin I am not sure whether this post is written by him as nobody else know such detailed about my trouble You are amazing Thanks

  733. Nice blog here Also your site loads up very fast What host are you using Can I get your affiliate link to your host I wish my site loaded up as quickly as yours lol

  793. Hey, cool post You can check if there’s a problem with your website with Internet Explorer. Because of this issue, many readers will overlook your excellent writing because IE is still the most popular browser.

  842. helloI really like your writing so a lot share we keep up a correspondence extra approximately your post on AOL I need an expert in this house to unravel my problem May be that is you Taking a look ahead to see you

  846. Hi Neat post Theres an issue together with your web site in internet explorer may test this IE still is the marketplace chief and a good component of people will pass over your fantastic writing due to this problem

  854. I just could not depart your web site prior to suggesting that I really loved the usual info an individual supply in your visitors Is gonna be back regularly to check up on new posts