Guest Lecture: Digital Commons: Transforming time(s)

How does the system of production influence the way we perceive time? In our everyday lives we think and act upon time in ways that we measure, divide, exchange, debit and credit it. We lose time or gain time; we struggle to ‘invest’ time to our loved ones, our leisure, and rest. While our struggles focus on valuing time as an individual asset, not much different from financial or real estate assets, we remain blind to how much of its “value” we owe to the struggles of others. Time is infinite, affective, and collectively created. Time, much like our forests, the oceans, the rivers and the air we breathe, is one of those things that we often take for granted. Until we are desperately running out of them. As we are currently running out of time on an unprecedented planetary scale, it is high time we take a closer look at how time is created and reproduced as a social and political creature. Can the commons provide a transcending perspective that emancipates us from the treadmill of our times?

Maro and Alex are friends and collaborators in research and pedagogy. Over the past few years, they have been plotting various schemes to take over the world, perhaps most notably the summer school 'Life After Growth' taking place since 2023 on the Tzoumerka mountains of Greece. They are core members of two action-research collectives P2P Lab and Quokka, which keep them rather meaningfully occupied to fend off their existential despair, while working to advance commons-based alternatives.