Thresholds, the annual peer-reviewed journal produced by the MIT Department of Architecture and published by the MIT Press, is now accepting submissions for Thresholds 53: Idle. Submission deadline: June 9, 2024.
Thresholds 53: Idle. Edited by Joshua Tan and
Mingjia Chen.
Thresholds, the annual peer-reviewed journal
produced by the MIT Department of Architecture and published by the MIT Press,
is now accepting submissions for Thresholds 53: Idle. Submission deadline: June
9, 2024.
In a world that prioritizes activity and
circulation, idleness has become untenable, even criminal. The significance of
“idleness” has over time oscillated between a neutral state of “not doing work”
to the negatively charged notion of “laziness.” Evoking waste, Victorian moral
values and Lockean concepts of property come to mind. Yet if positioned as
leisure, the privilege of being idle can take on many architectural forms from
the pavilion to the shopping mall. Interpreted as rest, it can situate
resistance against the subordination of the laboring–and often racialized–body.
Declaring a stasis, it reminds us of the deeper material history one may find
in geological time. If idleness is simultaneously intolerable and desirable,
what can this tension mean in art and architectural practices?
Thresholds 53: Idle invites scholarly writing,
artistic interventions, and criticism from the realms of architecture, art, and
related fields to delve into the complexities of idleness. We aim to unravel
how art and architecture have historically engaged, harnessed, or resisted the
concept of idleness across different geographies and in different historical
periods.
What can be inferred from the uses and
representations of idleness? The Ming-Dynasty artist Wen Zhengming (1470–1569)
celebrated idleness during his time away from politics in Garden of the Inept
Administrator (1535) while the English painter William Hogarth (1697–1764)
famously criticized the immorality of idleness in his engraving, Industry and
Idleness (1747). The workers at General Motors’ Flint factory deployed idleness
as an organizing tactic during their 1937 sit-down strike, while the British
welfare state warned against “idleness” in the 1942 Beveridge Report. Today,
the concept of idleness is being redefined by changes in remote-working
technology, work patterns, and societal norms; sometimes, being idle means
strolling in a Bloomingdale’s mall. In what ways have cities reflected
society's attitudes towards idleness and recreation, and how have these
spaces—playgrounds, gymnasiums, shopping malls and parks—evolved over time?
From the early modern state reinforcing its power through the management of
nature to Cuba’s encouragement of the “organopónicos” or urban agriculture on
idle land, in what ways has idleness been addressed as an ideological issue?
From challenging idleness’ implied passivity to
exploring its resiliency and emancipatory potential, Thresholds 53: Idle seeks
to uncover the visible and invisible ways in which idleness shapes our
disciplines. We encourage contributors to critically examine idleness as both a
discourse and a tactic, acknowledging its potential for societal critique while
exploring how embracing moments of stillness and inertia can foster connections
across scales of being, praxis, and types of representation.