Work is No Game The project "Spirit of Work" investigates concepts like work, leisure, hobbies, paid labor, activity, laziness and creation. It attempts to reevaluate these concepts and relate them to one another.Developments on the labor market and in the economy force the question: What might an alternative to the labor society look like? Would a society in which "work at any price" is no longer the ideal still be our own?

Over the centuries, work has been very differently evaluated. The Greeks despised work, while today it seems to be the most important think in life. Work is ritualized; by means of "daily labor" one integrates oneself into the community. This increased with the emergence of a Protestant work ethic, which is easily misused by those in power, and led to a fetishism of work. To put it somewhat briefly. In the work of Marx, there is a basic contradiction, which also reflects the dilemma in which we continuously find ourselves. On the one hand, he considered work to be a metabolic exchange with nature, becoming man, and on the other hand he wanted to free man from the slavery of labor. Hannah Arendt developed a classical position of our century that distinguished between labor, agency and deeds. More current approaches are radical flexibilization (Richard Sennet) , the institutionalization of a "third sector" (Jeremy Rifkin), or Ulrich Beck's idea of alternative forms of activity: "citizen labor" and "citizen money." Self-motivated activity and artistic practice have been studied as a model for meaningful and integrative forms of activity by Thomas Röbke. Everything seems to indicate that we are about to fundamentally reevaluate work.

Behind all of this is the question of the deeper meaning of work or rest. Is money really at issue? A secret commentary is provided by Paul Lafargue -- Marx's son in law -- in his book The Right to Laziness (1883). "God gives his worshippers the most sublime example of ideal laziness: after six days of work, he rests for all eternity," he wrote, and argued against the "using up" of the simple worker for "the rich." Even if this seems ideological, he does pose the question about the meaning of work in itself in a wonderful way -- and the question of rest ("laziness"). One could apply his theses just as easily to the so-called "high earners" of today. After 14 hours in the office, so-called free time is reduced to regeneration for the next 14 hours; one can see social contacts degenerate to business contacts, and these must be utilized as well.

The economic compulsion to earn money has entered an unholy alliance with the social and moral pressure "to have to work," "to be something." This pressure significantly obscures the question about meaning and is imparted in a stronger form to those who have no work: they define themselves only in relationship to work, which they do not have, and are thus formed by the rules of a game from which they are excluded. Today, however, it seems to be less important to participate again in this "game" at any price, but instead to develop a NEW GAME, whose moral and financial rules are more appropriate to the times."The spirit of work" uses artistic means in order to make accessible the complex of themes around "work" which cannot be made accessible through other means. Even if the issue is omnipresent, this does not mean that it is really discussed. A politician who dares to say that there is no more work would not be reelected. The elite does that which they have to do: they function and try to correct effects and less often to change causes or even develop visions. New promises of work or short-term effective measures make the problem even worse: everyone stares at the paid labor which remains, and hysterically pushes up its value to be the measure of all things. Might not the bad news of "unemployment" also be good news? Finally we have the chance to divide up liberated time and to regain "lifetime" which is otherwise devoured by work. How well conditioned we are: we really should be struggling to get TIME.

These questions have long been discussed among experts, and the answer is clear: the work society is running out of work. "Poverty in terms of work is wealth in terms of time," as Andre Gorz formulates his vision. There could be countless possibilities to become active, and the means to finance it. These possibilities however are still located largely outside the value system, which serves to integrate our society. Even worse: we attempt to force activities into this value system that have no business being there. This can even be seen in language: working on a relationship, thought work. This is a serious mistake, because in these cases meaning is removed from the real activity, and they are only perceived in terms of labor efficiency. "Work devours meaning," we could say. All activity nears the state of paid labor. Professional is considered an equivalent to "good", although it does not mean anything except that something is done as a profession for pay. Thus, work is closely linked to the circulation of money. Today, publicity seems primarily to be economic, consumption and production are the be all and end all of activity, the big issues all focus on the economic. The connection to work and money constitutes our collective life. "The Spirit of Work" is conceived as a forum which will deal with these questions, and the project will attempt to contribute to the development of the NEW GAME. To cite an old man in conclusion, Socrates is supposed to have once said: "Leisure is the sister of freedom."

ARBEITSGEIST