The Contingent Space of Work

To call oneself a worker, or to label an activity as work and designate a space for it, is to move away from the stigma of amateurism and toward political action, economic viability, social relevance, and acceptance. Featuring artistic and design contributions from the current issue of thresholds, the MIT Department of Architecture's annual journal, The Contingent Space of Work presents creative responses to the mercurial designations of work, worker, and workspace within the contemporary rise of digital working platforms and immaterial products. From a new super-tool designed to both stimulate sexual intimacy and promote household energy efficiency to a set of films which consider boredom as the most fundamental act of productivity, the exhibited projects stimulate connections between the spaces in which work and the tools we use as it asks us to understand the social politics behind how and why certain activities come to be construed as work.