Work

Our ways of working aren’t working. How can art offer new ways of being outside of the values of hustle culture?

We explore changing attitudes to work post-pandemic and re-evaluate the importance of rest as a creative space. We hear from Bayo Akomolafe about the fertile spaces of the cracks, Black Power Naps on rest as a radical act and we lie down to contemplate art in Somerset House with artist Raquel Meseguer Zafe, after her workshop for this year’s Hyper Functional Ultra Healthy programme.

Sarah Jaffe is the author of Work Won't Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone.

Raquel Meseguer’s work straddles theatre, dance, installation, performative conversations and photo-documentary. She identifies as dis-abled, and works with rest and horizontality as creative impulses.

Dr Bayo Akomolafe, rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to Ije and a post humanist thinker, poet, public intellectual, essayist, and author.

Soft Life is produced by Alannah Chance and Axel Kacoutié
With sound by Axel Kacoutié and additional music by Ellen Zweig