Idleness and contemporary art. On taking one’s time
Idleness and contemporary art. On taking one’s time

Summary/Abstract: In this article I propose a close examination of the notion of “idleness” that can be of relevance to some contemporary works of art. Those “phenomena-producers”, to use Olafur Eliasson’s phrase, impose on the beholder a passive attitude that leads him to reflect upon the conditions of perception, and upon the conditions of the phenomenal presence that cannot be reduced to the viewers’ place in the symbolic order. Such reduction, however, is performed in the critical writings on the minimalist tradition, mainly inspired by the poststructuralist turn, from which these works derive. The phenomenon that I propose to call “idleness”, by its connection to the Greek notion of skhole and its Latin equivalent otium, appears as the other, allos, of the critical, socially and politically engaged discourse. By referring to the works of Hannah Arendt, Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger I try to show that re-evaluation of the notion of idleness is possible and that it should be performed together with the re-examination of the role of the notion of disinterestedness in contemporary art discourse.

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