Humanities Forum: Saving Time with Jenny Odell

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture

Jenny Odell, writer and artist

Biography: Jenny Odell is a writer and artist based in Oakland, California. Her work generally involves acts of close observation, whether it's birdwatching, collecting screen shots, researching trash, or trying to parse bizarre forms of e-commerce. She is compelled by new frameworks that allow us to perceive something new about everyday reality. Her first book, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, was published in 2019, and her second book, Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture, was published in 2023.

Odell’s visual work has been exhibited at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, the New York Public Library, the Marjorie Barrick Museum (Las Vegas), Les Rencontres D'Arles, Fotomuseum Antwerpen, Fotomuseum Winterthur, La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), the Lishui Photography Festival (China), and apexart (NY). She has been an artist in residence at Recology SF (the dump), the San Francisco Planning Department, the Internet Archive, and the Montalvo Arts Center. From 2013 to 2021, Odell taught digital art at Stanford University.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Media and Communication Studies; the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Public Health; and the Center for Social Science Scholarship.

Books will be available for purchase on site courtesy of Charm City Books.
 
Photo by Ryan Meyer.