Aktion Weile
How can alternative formats stimulate different perspectives on our actions in our fast-paced society and create timeframes for ways of lingering?
Ongoing forces such as Covid-19 and climate change are increasingly challenging the focus on our social values in terms of performance, production and consumption. Instead of a perfunctory and temporary fight against symptoms, a systemic shift in mindset is required. Therefore, it is essential to reflect the individual’s actions and non-actions in the social sphere of efficiency in order to rethink one’s own understanding of work and non-work. How can alternative formats and experiences stimulate other perspectives on our actions in order to create a change in values?
Aktion Weile, a call to ordinary activities, is the answer to prevalent concepts of increasing demands within our social and economic lives. By means of design experiments, a world is outlined in which basic human activity can be experienced in a passionate and alternative way. Products and participatory actions create islands of unproductive doing, whereby sweet inefficiency makes purpose and optimisation seem meaningless.
![Making tea in a different way. In a participatory experiment, an everyday activity is broken down into individual steps and rethought.](/site/assets/files/3667/zhdk-design-8lsudxz4.1600x0.jpg 1600w,
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![Here, inefficiency and unproductivity were tested over three days. Bread was shredded, threads were stretched and new material produced.](/site/assets/files/3667/zhdk-design-0xv25ad2.1600x0.jpg 1600w,
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