Helen Hester, Nick Srnicek, After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time

#1 min Tacita Dean

7. 8. 2025

Helen Hester, Nick Srnicek, After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time, Alarm Publishing, Prague 2024
Helen Hester, Nick Srnicek, After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time, Alarm Publishing, Prague 2024
#48 About MeReviewTechnology

In a book by the Canadian-British author couple Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek, we learn more about concepts such as invisible work, post-work or post-work society in a digestible way. Hester and Srnicek focus not only on critiquing wage labour in the capitalist system but mostly on the phenomenon of invisible domestic labour and how its conception has changed throughout history. In chapters titled Technologies, Standards, Families, and Spaces, the authors consider domestic labour specifically in connection with the development of technology, the advertising of household appliances, growing up in a nuclear family or housing. Finally, in the “After Work” section, we are presented with ways to free ourselves and work toward fulfilling leisure.

Text: Alžběta Cibulková

#48 About MeReviewTechnologyFeminismFamilyPsychology SocietyHome

#48 About Me

Let’s talk about ourselves. Let’s explore what we are and discover who we are. This is important because just as it is necessary to look around us, it is essential to look within ourselves. How does our identity change over time? And how can all of this be captured? For this issue, we have chosen to focus on authors who ask similar questions and possess the ability to reflect them visually in compelling ways. Emília Rigová has long explored the position of the Roma minority, using her own physicality to highlight the voice of the Roma people, a voice that is often marginalized. Libuše Jarcovjáková has been involved in photographic self-reflection since a young age, with her photos and diary entries capturing the ideological tension of collapsing socialism and the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals within subcultures. A strong thematic thread emerges in the exploration of gender and queer identity in the works of Dorota Franková, Robert Gabris, Sasha Chaika, František Fekete, and Shalva Nikvashvili. Original artistic autotherapy often requiring significant courage to reveal oneself here transforms into a form of therapy for society.

Talk Together

#4 min Markéta Kinterová

Talk Together

#49 Talk TogetherEditorial Talk Together

Talk to her. Talk to him. Talk to them. Talk to yourself. The first statement is also the title of a beautiful film by Pedro Almodóvar, whose message suggests that true understanding often arises even when words fall short. I often think that if we simply followed that instruction, we could prevent numerous relational or societal crises regardless of gender or context. And so, the title for this issue, dedicated to the theme of language, came naturally: Talk Together.

Rencontres d’Arles 2025

#6 min Markéta Kinterová

Rencontres d’Arles 2025

Fotograf zone Review

The Rencontres d’Arles Festival is the world’s oldest photography festival and probably also the most visited. As its name suggests, it is an opportunity for encounters. Alongside the official program, dozens of spontaneous events, initiatives, and exhibitions emerge, both official and unofficial, transforming the town into a vibrant cultural organism. This year, I had the opportunity to experience the Rencontres d’Arles Festival through the eyes of someone who moves between their own artistic and pedagogical practice and above all as someone who believes that photography has the power not only to depict but also to shape the social context.