This book accompanies "The Bureau of Suspended Objects" installation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, opening January 28. The objects in this book correspond to the second section of the display: objects that belong to me or that I grew up with at my parents’ house. They come from bookshelves, desks, attics, and shoeboxes, and have been owned long enough to have acquired some emotional value – thus becoming more than an anonymous product at the store. However, it’s possible that this aura of meaning is visible only to their owners.

The Bureau of Suspended Objects is a one-person organization and archive that investigates discarded and unwanted objects. These objects are “suspended” in several senses: The B.S.O. has suspended them from their trajectory to the dump or landfill, but additionally, they are items whose meaning and value are also in flux after the act of discarding.Simply put, this book repeatedly asks the question: what accounts for the existence of this object?Research at the B.S.O. stems from the assumption that we are estranged even from those objects closest to us, or that their inner workings and past lives are too often experienced as opaque and inaccessible. As such, the B.S.O. endeavors to learn how to read and understand an object on its own terms – to understand why and how it came into being. More specifically, the mission of the B.S.O. is to:- Photograph, research, and archive as many discarded objects as is reasonably possible.- Reframe the objects not as items in a static and irreversible category (trash) but as 1) inflection points in an ongoing flow of material and 2) specific products of constantly changing economic contingencies.- Use photography and research to embody an attitude toward objects that is at once fascinated, sorrowful, and diagnostic.- Articulate the role of images in manufacturing our desire for objects, explore the interchangeability of objects with their images, and use the archival function of photography – its protest against “time’s relentless melt” (Sontag) – ironically, given that nothing discarded ever truly goes away.This project was made possible through a residency at Recology SF, the waste-processing facility for San Francisco. Since then, the B.S.O. archive continues to suspend objects from dumpsters, sidewalks, and anywhere that unwanted objects may be found. The archive is online at www.suspended-objects.org.

** A New York Times Bestseller ** NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY: Time • The New Yorker • NPR • GQ • Elle • Vulture • Fortune • Boing Boing • The Irish Times • The New York Public Library • The Brooklyn Public Library "A complex, smart and ambitious book that at first reads like a self-help manual, then blossoms into a wide-ranging political manifesto."—Jonah Engel Bromwich, The New York Times Book Review One of President Barack Obama's "Favorite Books of 2019" Porchlight's Personal Development & Human Behavior Book of the Year In a world where addictive technology is designed to buy and sell our attention, and our value is determined by our 24/7 data productivity, it can seem impossible to escape. But in this inspiring field guide to dropping out of the attention economy, artist and critic Jenny Odell shows us how we can still win back our lives. Odell sees our attention as the most precious—and overdrawn—resource we have. And we must actively and continuously choose how we use it. We might not spend it on things that capitalism has deemed important … but 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. Far from the simple anti-technology screed, or the back-to-nature meditation we read so often, How to do Nothing is an action plan for thinking outside of capitalist narratives of efficiency and techno-determinism. Provocative, timely, and utterly persuasive, this book will change how you see your place in our world.

This book accompanies "The Bureau of Suspended Objects" installation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, opening January 28. The objects in this book correspond to the first section of the display: new items recently purchased from large stores such as Walmart, Target, Big Lots, and Hobby Lobby. These objects function as blank receptacles, waiting to be invested with meaning. One can perhaps imagine a child growing up with one of these items resting on the mantle, and the ineffable nostalgic quality the object would later take on for that person. Some of these objects are in fact designed preemptively for nostalgia, with faux-antique finishes and references to older products.