Stealing time from high emitters
Cold Call: Time Theft as Avoided Emissions is an unconventional carbon offsetting scheme that draws on strategies of worker sabotage and applies them in the context of high emission companies in the fossil fuel industry. Time theft is a strategy to deliberately slow productivity, where workers waste time and are therefore paid for periods of idleness. For example, fake sick days, sleeping on the job, extended lunch breaks, or engaging in non-work related activities like social media or unrelated phone calls.
Photo: Walter Wlodarcyzk. Courtesy of Pioneer Works.
Photo: Walter Wlodarcyzk. Courtesy of Pioneer Works.
Cold Call is an installation that takes the form of a call center. Audiences are invited to connect by telephone to executives in the fossil fuel industry and instructed to keep them on the phone as long as possible. The cumulative time stolen from these executives is then quantified as carbon credits using an innovative new offsetting methodology.
Bio
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Photo: Walter WlodarczykTega Brain and Sam Lavigne
AU/US
Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne’s collaborative work examines shifts and transformations catalyzed by computational systems. Their work asks questions of ecology, climate, class, language, labor and economics. In their wide-ranging practice they have simulated international organizations, run a dating service in New York City and created a subscription service for the Enron email archive. In 2023, they received a Creative Capital award to create experimental carbon offsets.
Credits
Commissioned by the STRP Festival, Eindhoven with support from Creative Capital.
Presented in the context of the European Digital Deal project. European Digital Deal is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sport.
