Art Pracice and Other Activities
2017
an external hard drive 1TB and 10 photographs (Lambda prints, 120 x 90 cm and 60 x 40 cm)

After several years of my research of free time and art practise, I bought a Western Digital storage disk with 1 TB of data, formatted it and moved all the data there and started organizing. I deleted some folders and divided others. Numerous touches of the keyboard and the mouse began to create a new type of archive.

Its basic structure consists of eight folders that appear on the computer screen when an external drive is attached: Salaried Work, Idleness, Unsalaried Work, Organized Education, Procrastination, Recreation, Sleep, and Free Time. Two of the eight folders are empty. I have them on the hard disk to remind me of human activities that have not been fully affected by the cyber revolution and that make us fully fledged human beings, namely Idleness and Sleep. The remaining six are full of data and information. All together, they refer to the most important human activities. Part of these work in pairs, such as salaried and unsalaried work, free time and recreation, idleness and procrastination. Others work independently, such as organized education and sleep. These do not require a partner, a social counterpart.

Thanks to this small device that I always carry with me and to which I have a very specific relation, it has helped me eliminated my formal view of art practice and it allowed me to place some human activities at the same level as work for which I am grateful.

photo: author’s archive and Ondřej Polák