Protect Your Attention. Boredom as Care and Resistance.

Participatory durational performance workshop, for Softer Digital Futures Conference, Denmark 2nd-4th Oct

An immersive experience exploring attention, digital dependency and the importance of boredom and periods of offline disconnection as a form of care and resistance.

For the performance, I created EMF Protection System 001, a speculative protective costume constructed using electromagnetic shielding fabric, designed to reduce exposure from electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs). The costume formed part of a fictional scenario in which participants were invited to temporarily disconnect from digital technologies and engage in a collective offline experience.

Wearing the costume, I adopted the role of an anonymous, silent authority figure responsible for overseeing and facilitating the workshop. My identity and origins deliberately ambiguous. Without speaking, I directed participants through a series of activities, creating a structured environment in which silence, observation and non-verbal communication shaped the experience.

When entering the space, participants were invited to surrender their mobile phones to myself to put in a phone safe box and then remain in complete silence for the duration of the workshop. They were then guided through the first task of counting individual sunflower seeds into small bowls for a durational period of time. This deliberately mundane activity encouraged participants to engage with boredom, practise sustained attention and experience a period of uninterrupted sustained focus and presence.

Through speculative performance, ritual and collective participation, i wanted to create a temporary space outside the demands of the attention economy, inviting participants to reconsider the value of slowing down, disconnecting and engaging with seemingly unproductive activities, and collective reflection.