name: flavia / age: 26 / profession: filmmaker / location: amsterdam / weekday: Saturday / reference: not the dishes
leisure
in an essay on free time, the philosopher theodor adorno once wrote, not without a certain pride: “i have no hobbies”. for him, hobbies as well as leisure was only thinkable as an outside to capitalist labour time, but as an outside that also served to sustain that labour time, that is mostly invested in the reproduction of labour power. (here a gap can be bridged with feminisms such as that of silvia federici and others who assert that the reproductive labour women do in their supposed “leisure time” should be acknowledged and valued as work proper.) adorno writes about how several hobbies, such as sports, serve to subject workers more strictly to the disciplinary demands of capitalist labour. as for himself, as an intellectual worker, adorno suggests that everything and nothing is work: reading, relaxing, listening to music… weirdly enough, many of us, intellectual as well as physical labourers have now inherited this condition (without the elitism, but also without having much to say in it). with the reorganization of work and time, the boundaries of work and leisure time becoming increasingly blurred, and many of us do not have any hobbies indeed – this is the case for domestic workers who are expected to be on call 24/7 as it is (despite the clear differences) for flexworking freelancers.