Jenny Odell Explained

Jenny Odell (born 1986)[1] is an American multidisciplinary artist, writer, and educator based in Oakland, California.[2] [3] She taught Internet art and digital/physical design at Stanford University from 2013 to 2021.[4] [5] She wrote The New York Times best-selling book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019).[6]

Early life and education

Odell was born in San Francisco[7] and grew up in Cupertino, California.[8] [9] She graduated from UC Berkeley in 2008 with a degree in English Literature and received her MFA in Design + Technology from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010.[10]

Work

Odell's work consists of acts of close observations such as bird watching, collecting screenshots, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce.[11] Many of her artistic projects re-use existing objects or images and put them in context, for example images from Google Earth[12] and Google Maps.[13] Odell has described where this approach comes from,

I often say that medium is context [...] Part of the reason I work this way is because I find existing things infinitely more interesting than anything I could possibly make.[14]

The Bureau of Suspended Objects

In 2015, Odell was artist-in-residence at Recology SF, otherwise known as the San Francisco dump. The residency culminated in an exhibition of her work: The Bureau of Suspended Objects, a detailed archive of objects scavenged and selected at the dump. Odell conducted in-depth research into the manufacturing, distribution, popularity, and use of each object. Much of her art exists within and pulls from the Internet; this is no exception. The archive is accessible online and much of the content is pulled from the internet, such as Google street views of manufacturing plants and videos of commercials for products. The detailed history is meant to bring attention to resources involved in both the products' production and consumption.[15] [16]

Neo-Surreal

Neo-Surreal is a collection of work completed while Odell was artist-in-residence at the Internet Archive in 2017. While there, she came across a large collection of BYTE, an American computing magazine, from the 1980s. She pulled images from this archive, edited and curated in a way to highlight the surreal nature of the industry, both then and today.[17] In her own words,

The reconfiguration of this material highlights the ways in which such imagery, viewed in hindsight, inadvertently portrays some of the stranger and more sinister aspects that technology eventually came to embody. For instance, one finds things like a computer wearing a policeman's hat and wielding a riding crop (evoking surveillance) or a pill opening to reveal a computer chip (evoking biometrics). Similarly to Richard Prince in his Cowboys series, I've done nothing here except to remove the text, restore some backgrounds, and re-title the images.[18]

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

Odell's book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (2019)[19] [20] is about "how to disconnect from the attention economy".[21] [22] The book builds on the topics that had already surfaced in her previous artistic work: our relationship to technology and how observation can be a critical action. She explains how doing nothing can be a strategy to resist the profit-driven technology which attempts to hold our attention at all costs. Odell says doing nothing can be a refusal to take part in life online and instead re-engage with your physical surroundings.[23] [24] Jonah Bromwich praised the book in a review published by The New York Times "she goes on to construct a complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto."[23] In the end, the book is a criticism of capitalism, an argument against our standard definitions of productivity and an encouragement to re-engage with nature and local communities.

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

Published in March 2023 through Penguin Random House, Saving Time argues that how much of the world (particularly North American and Europe) perceives time is built around maximizing profit in a capitalist system rather than for the well-being of people.[25] Sarah Jaffe's review in The Nation points out how Odell differentiates between what she labels as "kairos" and "chronos" time:

Publications

Exhibitions

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: 2023-04-08. Jenny Odell. YBCA.
  2. Web site: 2019-09-27. Jenny Odell on 'How to Do Nothing' and being meaningfully counterproductive. 9 May 2019. Los Angeles Times.
  3. News: Kevin. Lozano. 2019-09-27. Jenny Odell and the Quest to Log Off. The Nation. 20 May 2019. 0027-8378. www.thenation.com.
  4. Web site: jenny odell: contact / about . 2023-04-15 . www.jennyodell.com.
  5. Web site: Willett. Megan. 13 Gorgeous Works Of Art Made From Google Maps Images. Business Insider. 2019-09-27.
  6. News: Elle. Hunt. 2019-09-27. Jenny Odell on why we need to learn to do nothing: 'It's a reminder that you're alive'. The Guardian. 27 September 2019. 0261-3077. www.theguardian.com.
  7. Web site: 2019-09-27. Jenny Odell. phmuseum.com.
  8. Web site: Angela. Chen. 2019-09-27. Artist Jenny Odell explains why place is the antidote to the attention economy. 22 April 2019. The Verge.
  9. Web site: 2019-09-27. Jenny Odell Wants You to Put Down Your Phone and Smell the Roses. 23 September 2019. Cal Alumni Association.
  10. Web site: Jenny Odell CV 2017. Jenny Odell.com. 2020-03-03.
  11. Web site: jenny odell • contact / about. www.jennyodell.com. 2020-03-04.
  12. Web site: 2019-09-27. Jenny Odell. 16 December 2011. Dazed.
  13. Erica Fahr. Campbell. 2019-09-27. Finding Art in Google Maps: Jenny Odell's Satellite World. Time.
  14. Book: Odell, Jenny. How to do nothing : resisting the attention economy. 2019. 978-1-61219-749-4. Brooklyn, NY. 5. 1085144412.
  15. Web site: Recology. Jenny Odell. 2021-08-26. Recology. en-US.
  16. Web site: The Bureau of Suspended Objects. 2021-08-26. www.suspended-objects.org. 19 August 2015 .
  17. Web site: 30 May 2018. Jenny Odell - Neo-Surreal. dead. https://web.archive.org/web/20190927183322/https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/whats-on/display/jenny-odell-neo-surreal. 27 September 2019. The Photographers' Gallery. 2019-09-27.
  18. Web site: jenny odell • neo surreal. 2021-08-26. www.jennyodell.com.
  19. Web site: Kaitlyn. Tiffany. 2019-09-27. How to quit Facebook without quitting Facebook. 25 March 2019. Vox.
  20. Web site: 2019-09-27. A Podcast About Nothing with Jenny Odell. Los Angeles Review of Books. 20 September 2019.
  21. News: Oscar. Schwartz. 2019-09-27. Why beating your phone addiction may come at a cost. The Guardian. 13 March 2019. 0261-3077. www.theguardian.com.
  22. Web site: 2019-09-27. How to Do Nothing, With Artist and Educator Jenny Odell. Lifehacker. 5 August 2019 .
  23. News: Bromwich. Jonah Engel. 2019-04-30. A Manifesto for Opting Out of an Internet-Dominated World. en-US. The New York Times. 2021-08-26. 0362-4331.
  24. Web site: Shechet. Ellie. 2019-04-02. How to do nothing: the new guide to refocusing on the real world. 2021-08-26. the Guardian. en.
  25. Web site: Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock . 2023-03-07 . 2023-07-31 . Penguin Randomhouse . Odell . Jenny.
  26. Book: Travel by Approximation by Jenny Odell. 2 April 2010. www.blurb.com.
  27. Book: I Hate to Part With It by Jenny Odell. 22 October 2012. www.blurb.com.
  28. Book: The Satellite Collections by Jenny Odell. 19 August 2013. www.blurb.com.
  29. Book: The Archive of the Bureau of Suspended Objects by Jenny Odell. 29 November 2015. 9781364713102. www.blurb.com. Odell. Jenny. Blurb, Incorporated .
  30. Book: Satellite Landscapes by Jenny Odell. 6 April 2015. www.blurb.co.uk.
  31. Book: The Bureau of Suspended Objects at the Contemporary Jewish Museum by Jenny Odell. 19 January 2016. 9781364465001. www.blurb.com. Odell. Jenny. Jenny Odell .
  32. Book: The Bureau of Suspended Objects at the Palo Alto Art Center by Jenny Odell. 1 October 2016. 9781367171879. www.blurb.com. Odell. Jenny. Blurb, Incorporated .
  33. Web site: 2019-09-27. How To Do Nothing's Jenny Odell on balancing political burnout with engagement. The Fader.
  34. Bromley . Camille . Jenny Odell Can Stretch Time and So Can You . en-US . Wired . 2023-06-22 . 1059-1028.
  35. News: Schlossberg . Tatiana . 2023-03-07 . She Taught Us to Do Nothing. Now Jenny Odell Wants to Save Time. . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-06-22 . 0362-4331.
  36. Web site: 2023-03-07 . Jenny Odell Is Here to Liberate You From the Clock . 2023-06-22 . Esquire . en-US.
  37. Web site: The CJM In That Case: Havruta in Contemporary Art—Jenny Odell and Philip Buscemi. www.thecjm.org. 2020-03-04.
  38. Web site: Peripheral Landscapes: The Art of Maps. www.nypl.org. 2020-03-04.
  39. Web site: The Internet Archive's 2017 Artist In Residence Exhibition / August 5 - 26 • Ever Gold [Projects]]. emerging. About the Author Ever Gold Projects Ever Goldis an exhibitions program of. Owner. Mid-Career Artists Under the Direction of. Ever Gold [Projects]. en-US. 2020-03-04. in 2009. rew McClintock Founded in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. of 2016. the gallery relocated to the Minnesota Street Project building in the Dogpatch neighborhood in March.

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