Author: A'aifou Olo Junior Ioane

In this final artwork there are different things happening in these photographs but are all in the same place. With nothing else to do in lockdown rather than doing homework, eating, drinking or sleeping.

Where the camera has been positioned is showing a point of view of people who are in the middle of working on their assignments but in this case it is myself doing nothing, wasting time, and in a mindset of not caring about doing anything other than relaxing. Some people often are scared of being slack. If we were to define laziness it would be the quality of unwilling to work, this means we are in control whether we want to work or not and most people would choose to work if they had been behind on an assignment, but, others choose not to and they find laziness as a good thing to relax your mind and let your mind flow by either sleeping, playing video games, having quality time with family, or going for walk, reading a book, eating and drinking, these are all the things that kill time.

What I love about this work is how it flows like works from David Hilliard: Rising 1998, except these are at the same place.

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Going out shows some sort of leisure time, similar to artworks by David Hillard trying to create an illusion between the photographs and the viewer, as if they are taken at the same place. This is an interesting way of presenting images showing different angles of the photographs.

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When I’m doing absolute nothing, I find cleaning as leisure time in a sense as I am having free time to release stress in my head, one thing I do is setting up things and making it look clean and tidy. I find this interesting as people would view in a different perspective of labour being displayed, but I consider this as relaxing from stress and it is downtime mentally.

Just sitting next to the window in our living room doing nothing but looking outside. This idea of praising the laziness, we would consider it as chilling/relaxing and to me these photographs have a similar idea of relaxing and wasting time as to the other works. Looking at the artist Mladen Stilinovic and how he explores this idea in praise of laziness, with absolute time being wasted and knowing laziness is not enough, he says it must be practiced and perfected. What stood out for me was the backyard and the trees at the back in contrast with the sill of the window almost looking like a bench at first, I also loved the angle of where the camera is positioned almost as if someone is relaxing on a balcony looking at the view of sand and ocean, instead it is being stuck at home staring at my backyard.

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In praise of laziness, leisure time shown here is sleeping or chilling in the living room. I was still thinking of ideas and how to photograph this, so I decided to use night time to take these photos because usually that is when some people would be at home sleeping or relaxing.

As I was scrolling through the power point I came across David Hilliard’s works where it feels/looks like it is photographed at the same place. Using photoshop and combining these together as if they are in the same place but they are not was interesting in some way, because they look similar to each other with the curtain and the wooden furniture. What I really wanted to capture was myself sleeping with my homework next to me on the table, and this is to show how I have work to do but I decide to rest and relaxing to reset, gain energy, and letting the mind relax.

Going into the direction that focuses on leisure time and ‘In praise of laziness’ I wrote down a few ideas on how I might execute this. I thought of leisure time as free time where we get to do what we want such as chilling outside drinking coffee, watching t.v, playing video games, or other things that kill time. I decided to make a time lapse and use exercising as leisure time because I love to stay active and it takes up most of my time when I’m doing nothing at home, I looked at my video I thought that instead of ‘In praise of laziness’ how about ‘In praise of activeness’ because although we may have leisure time where we get to relax, the amount of time and energy taken by what we do when we’re free, but we are also active at that time unless sleeping is leisure for some people.

In this case being active outside doing exercise or playing sports is my way of seeing leisure time because it ‘fills’ up a lot of my time doing nothing else but training. What I really love about this video is that in the beginning it shows the contrast between the trees and the sky which almost looks like a silhouette, and it seems as nothing is happening due to the darkness of the background until I moved my cell phone. I then added another video of exercising inside my house, and the last one was a fitness run at the park so I would have three different places of where I exercise, outside my house, in the living room, and at the park. I was interested in the time lapse mode because you get to watch everything at fast pace to show how time is used and it goes by very fast.

Labour in a single shot explores how labour has been shown in one shot, whether the camera is panning to where labour is shown or in a stilled position. The labour I have shown here, the camera is in a fixed position almost like a high shot with myself washing dishes in the morning and sticking to 2 minutes max. I wanted to capture this labour because usually in the morning is when families have breakfast and cleaning is like a repetitive thing going back and forth.

During the video you can hear people talking in the background and this added more detail of what it’s like waking up in the morning with everyone busy and that is also labour. What interested me about this video is the sun that shines through the house that shows what time of the day it is, this explores what kind of time people are working whether it is at day or night. I was also interested with the water continuously running which again shows that this labour is a repetitive thing.

In one workshop we used Adobe Photoshop to make animations of our labour videos and also to present photo sequences.

In this animation, as I finally looked back at what I made it involved labour in somewhat way of the time taken as you had to spend a lot time on it, me and my mates were in the same boat. We’d sit there for a whole hour doing our animations, getting use to the process, and to me this was labour. Although I don’t have the video shared on here because I had saved it on the computer in studio, I still had thoughts about labour and it’s connection to making these animations.

In my other animation I thought of packing my bag as labour where again time and energy is used, the amount of work done at this time shows a sense of labour as if it’s when class is finished and you’re about to leave for home. The labour of waiting at the takeaway was also another form of labour, waiting in line while other people order their food can be labour and downtime at the same time, because you’re on breaktime or “downtime” and labour.

Some of us weren’t that familiar with using photoshop, so they used apps that they were familiar with and were easier to make animations with.

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Photo sequences was interesting and these photos were all related to labour in some way. Walking up the stairs, sweeping the floor, and catching the train to come to school which are all labour as we all know. What I found interesting about the photo sequences I made was that each one had different lighting as to where the camera is presented, for example, the one with the stairs looks bright and me sweeping the floor sequence looks dark, with the last photo sequence of catching the train, it almost looks like the second one. Lighting is important when it comes to photography or film because it creates the mood of what you are looking at. I also found the colours attractive as they all have some connection to each other, black and white.

In studio, having this idea of “down time” we got into groups of 3 and were told by our lecture Dieneke to make little GIFS in relation to labour. Joon, Tobias, and myself made GIFS ourselves walking up stairs and tying our shoes which is some sort of labor shown by the time taken and energy from someone to tie their shoes, or to walk up the stairs. We suggested that one way of showing labour was the person recording someone doing labour, in this case we have Tobias who is recording Joon, who is then recording me tying my shoe laces. Labour can be shown in many forms and as we were discussing how we were going to showcase these different types of labour, that was labour being present at that time. And I really loved this idea of labour because it’s a everyday thing that someone has to do, whether it is waking up and getting dressed, making breakfast, on your way to campus, walking up a stairs, and many other things. Labour is everyday whether we see it or not, it is because it has different forms and meanings to it and that is what draws it to downtime which are opposite words to each other. Downtime is a sort of relax kinda thing, whereas labour is always got to do with work but have some connection in a sense because making coffee maybe downtime for some of us but it is also labour because you’re “doing” something.

In class, the brief was about “Down time” and what it means to us. Some of the class members replied to that as relax, chill, meditation, playing games, hanging out with mates, and taking a break from studying. Down time can relate to something like embracing laziness that ensures our souls are taken care of.

We were discussing labor(what it means) and what sort of labor we do in our daily lives. A activity or homework we were told to do was to take photos of us showing labor we do everyday, showing some sort of sequence.

The labour I have shown here is how I exercise everyday and it goes to show how to do workouts, and you’re putting in the work. By the way I have presented them, after having little conversations with Dieneke, suggesting it as if it’s a daily schedule from Monday to Friday(with the use of the pins) and that is a idea of labour we have in our daily lives. We tend to have each day planned out and what we are going to do, whether it is coming to campus, going to work, making breakfast for your family, and everything that keeps ourselves busy everyday – that right there is labour because the amount of time taken, used, wasted, on thinking and doing simultaneously is hard work.