Eight hours are not enough to make love

“Eight hours to work, eight to rest, eight for leisure.” The labor movements of the early twentieth century reclaimed exploitation by dividing the day into three segments. Today, thanks to those achievements, we know that the progressive liberation of our time from work improves the conditions of individual and collective well-being. Toward the development of the human person, of social relationships, of pleasures, of the care of ecosystems. Toward the possibility of making love in as many ways as possible.

A hedonistic response, outside of consumerist logic, as a right to personal fulfillment, pleasure, idleness, sexuality, and anything that has no productive purpose.

Using lead and wooden characters, obsolete technologies, to speak of a post-work society is not an act of nostalgia, but rather a perspective for reimagining the future. If this capitalism accelerates, degrades, and replaces, the necessary automation should do the opposite: it should be slow, qualitative, and autonomous.

The project was developed (by Giacomo Mondino) in dialogue with researcher Valerio Ricciardi (Fondazione Istituto Piemontese Antonio Gramsci) on the theoretical research of authors such as Nick Srnicek, Alex Williams, Aaron Bastani, and Mark Fisher. It was born within the context of the Kairòs residency, a project supported by Polo del 900 and realized by Centro Gobetti in collaboration with Arci Torino, Istituto Gramsci Torino, and Unione Culturale.