Project: Be Bored
Doing nothing for a few hours seems almost impossible. You hand in your phone and don't do anything all day. Not reading a book, no studying, just hanging around, talking to people, walking and you have nothing to do. Can you handle that freedom; a day without obligations? Do you allow yourself that freedom?
The German artist Anselm Kiefer tells in a documentary about his work how he was bored to death as a child. It was the year 1946. A small village on the Rhine, no friends, some bomb craters and nothing to do. Yet this period became important in his later work. Kiefer says that he has taken many ideas from that time and developed them into a work of art. So boredom does not necessarily have to turn out negative. Who knows what periods of boredom will yield at a later stage. In a time when there seems to be no room for stagnation, reflection and boredom, it is a challenge to do nothing at all for a day. But we would like to take on that challenge and therefore we invite students and employees of Radboud University and the University of Applied Sciences Arnhem and Nijmegen (HAN) to take up that challenge.
You sign up to participate via the registration form and hand in your phone at HAN or at the University Chaplaincy. There are lockers in which your phone is stored. If you can no longer go without your phone, you can pick up the phone. If that is outside the closing time of the building, you can pick up your phone the next day. No problem, your challenge will just take a little longer.
Time: 10.00 - 17.00 hrs. (Mon-Thurs; Fri: till 15.00 hrs)
A text from Byung-Chul Han about boring (Langeweile) in German: DIE TIEFE LANGEWEILE (docx, 15 kB)