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Fat Crush: Jenny Odell
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You know when you read a book and get that freaky feeling like someone has been inside your deepest thoughts and articulated them in a way you could have only dreamed of? That’s how Jenny Odell’s book How To Do Nothing feels. This is also why we have a big ole’, scream it from the mountaintops, Fat Crush on Jenny Odell. The pandemic, alongside social uprisings, has us thick in paradigm shifts. Fertile ground for evaluating our values, priorities, and attention, and asking ourselves what the hell do we actually spend our energy on? Do we have our attention on the things that really matter to us?
Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. Once we can start paying a new kind of attention, she writes, we can undertake bolder forms of political action, reimagine humankind’s role in the environment, and arrive at more meaningful understandings of happiness and progress. F yes. Jenny Odell has us pumped on the power of reclamation. She does what the best artists do: reminds us that the world is built by how we see it, and that the way we see it can change.
If you’re in the Bay Area, check out @moments.co.op - a community space near and dear to Jenny. Moments Cooperative was founded in the summer of 2020 to support the creative and material needs of Black, Indigenous, People of Color on Occupied Lisjan Ohlone Land (Oakland) by providing physical space for community care, collaboration, and education. They seek to uplift QTBIPOC voices and visions in order to build the conditions for our communities to thrive here and now.
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