243. Maintenance
Channel: THUNK
Date: 2023-09-07

Maintenance is often ignored, minimized, or portrayed as being inferior to creative/productive work, but it's really the most fundamental activity of life itself, & it can teach us a lot about the world.

- Links for the Curious -

Graham, Stephen, and Nigel Thrift. “Out of Order: Understanding Repair and Maintenance.” Theory, Culture & Society 24, no. 3 (May 2007): 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276407075954.

HOW IT WORKS | Wine Glasses, Grand Piano, Water Tap, Soy Sauce | Episode 1 | Free Documentary, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIWObPuL244.

“American Time Use Survey - 2022 Results,” n.d.

Berger, Markus, and Kate Irvin. Repair: Sustainable Design Futures. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003244028.

Denis, Jérôme, and David Pontille. “Beyond Breakdown: Exploring Regimes of Maintenance,” n.d.

Mitchell, William J., and Anthony M. Townsend. “Cyborg Agonistes: Disaster and Reconstruction in the Digital Electronic Era.” In The Resilient City, by William J. Mitchell and Anthony M. Townsend. Oxford University Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195175844.003.0021.

Mohun, Simon. “Productive and Unproductive Labour in the Labour Theory of Value,” n.d.

Prattes, Riikka. “‘I Don’t Clean up after Myself’: Epistemic Ignorance, Responsibility and the Politics of the Outsourcing of Domestic Cleaning.” Feminist Theory 21, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 25–45. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700119842560.

Stairway to Heaven, 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgO4Gd4RhvM.

Star, Susan Leigh. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43, no. 3 (November 1999): 377–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027649921955326.

xkcd: Dependency - https://xkcd.com/2347/

182. Lessons from "The Mythical Man-Month" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuJfEHnjZyY

How Mierle Laderman Ukeles Turned Maintenance Work into Art - https://hyperallergic.com/355255/how-mierle-laderman-ukeles-turned-maintenance-work-into-art/

What is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first one is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.
-Bertrand Russell