open:Focus:TimeTheProdirMagazineISSUE11,2022 Even times isn’t what it used to be.
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The Prodir Magazine OPEN NOSE Wow! ofmurmuringEllenaCélineonthescents [p. OPEN4] MOVIE Back to the infuture5seconds [p. OPEN9] AIR When Nature puts obstacles in our way [p. 12] OPEN SLEEP The power of napping [p. OPEN18] COMPOST All it takes is a bit wormfeelingof [p. OPEN21] END Time money.is You can steal it, save it, waste it and fritter it away [p. OPEN26] WORLD Are travellingyou yet or are you still flying? [p. 28] OPEN FACTORY No such thing as no can do [p. OPEN32] MIND My life as a anoly,Unfortunatesnail-therewastimefordiscussion [p. OPEN36] MEETING meetingsnoshe’sthinksSiegenthalerMariannelucky:more [p. OPEN40] DIARY Marie Kondo for thoughtsyour [p. 42] OPEN LAG What helps with jet lag Life is a pony Professorfarm, [p. OPEN52] PENS atandinstrumentsWritingnovelties,aglance OPEN CONTENTS 1
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Dear Readers, Have you ever tried arranging the events of the last 2 years in chronological order? I find it surprisingly difficult. The coronavirus has confused my sense of time. Reason enough to dedicate an issue to exactly that, to the subject of time. We spoke to Céline Ellena who creates perfumes in Grasse in France, whose scents slowly ebb away with time while burrowing their way deep into our memory [p. 4]. Kyle Dugan talks to the founder of a start-up that intends to give city-dwellers a good wormfeeling and their waste a produc tive future [p. 21]. In his article, Herbert Genzmer describes how the same is anything but the same after 40 years, and a life without stress is pretty tiring [p. 52]. But adventurers, too, will get their money’s worth, whether by sailing around the world in 80 days like Boris Herrmann [p. 36] or breaking the sound barrier of time in the Boom Supersonic with Claudio Visentin [p. 28]. Personally, I would like to introduce you to my favourite valley in Ticino, a landscape in which time seems to stand still [p. 12]. Enjoy your reading! And if someone disturbs you, follow the advice of Marianne Siegenthaler and simply skip the meeting that’s just starting [p. 40]! Yours, Sally Maccan – Sales Manager Switzerland & AOA The Prodir Magazine OPENING 3
Scents that speak softly
The Prodir NothingMagazineextraand nothing too much
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Spéracèdes – France 43°39'N 6°52'E The Prodir Magazine Text: Kyle Dugan 7' OPEN: How do you describe what you CÉLINEdo?ELLENA:
Why are smells so powerful at evoking memory?I’mnot a brain expert, but the nose is our most primitive sense with a direct connection to the brain. With the other senses there’s more of a circuit to fol low, hoops to jump through. But the nose connects directly to the most primitive parts of your brain. There’s no intellectualization, it’s immediate. With professionals like me, however, it’s dif ferent. When I smell something my whole brain lights up, because I work making connections, imagination, pro jection. I can imagine a scent without having to smell it. You might do that with familiar smells, like strawberries, but it’s very limited.
It’s funny, because when you say strawberry I think of that artificial strawberry smell in candy and strawberry syrup. The same with grapes – it’s the artificial grape smell in American grape soda. That’s an interesting example, because the grape smell you’re talking about doesn’t exist in France. I know it, be cause I’ve created a fragrance based on it, and I lived in America when I was a child. But to a French person that smell would be meaningless. Grapes, yes. But the way ‘grape’ is interpreted in Ameri ca is completely different from France, Russia, or Asia.
I’m a perfume com poser. That means I create fragrances for brands, like a novelist or a musician. But I tell stories with fragrance. And that means relating emotions. What touches us – in our hearts, in our blood, in our gut. Telling a story with a fra grance is the most direct way to touch your memory and draw out your emo tions, no matter how deeply they’re buried. I use raw ingredients like a painter uses paint, or a musician musi cal notes. By mixing these ingredients I create a fragrance that moves you and tells you a story. Do you work for a particular company now? For 20 years I was employed as most perfumers are, in big companies you’ve never heard of that create perfumes for brands you have, like Unilever and L’Oréal. I was surrounded by a big team of marketing and sales people and assis tants, and I almost never saw the actual client. I really enjoyed it, and this kind of industrial setting is where most of the big-name perfumes come from. But now for the last 10 years I’ve been an in dependent perfumer. I’ve got a tiny workshop, and I do everything myself: I do the research, create the formula, measure the ingredients, and send off the samples myself to the client – the brand – whether they’re in nearby Grasse, Paris, Korea or China. That sounds like a slow process. A typical project can take between one and three years – and Covid lockdowns, particularly in Asia, didn’t help. I have one project I started a week before the first lockdown in March 2020, and the client just called to assure me it’s finally about to come out on the market.
It’s one of those strong childhood memories.Yes.In France, when somebody talks to me about the smells of their childhood, I can tell where they grew up and how. I know about their life and their state of health. It’s cultural. in our memory and on our skin. And why the best perfumes may be the ones that only murmur to us, and know when to disappear. She spoke to us from her home in Spéradèces, France, just a stone’s throw from Grasse, the perfume capital of the world.
Céline Ellena talks about the power of scents to linger
Speaking of which, you moved from Paris back to the village you grew up in. How has this move affected your work? I did spend my early childhood and my holidays here in Spéradèces, but I’ve lived in so many other places. Spéradèces isn’t where I grew up, where I trans formed. So when I came back here to live, it was a bit like a perfume you re member only vaguely, but no longer have an affinity with. I had to learn to live here. Now I couldn’t go anywhere else to work. Here in Spéradèces there’s peace and calm and light. And I’m right next to Grasse.
When I worked for Hermés creating their home fragrance collection, I told them I wanted to make perfumes that murmur.
When you’re working on a new fragrance, how many ingredients go into it? There are different ways of looking at that. My father, the perfumer JeanClaude Ellena, learned from another master of the previous generation, Ed mond Roudnitska, that you should make a fragrance with few ingredients. You have to choose your ingredients careful ly and work so that each ingredient gives the best of itself. There’s a princi ple called the rapport-d’odeur, the way that each ingredient does a pas de deux, how each mixes with, repels, attracts, completes and overlays another. That’s the challenge of this craft. That’s why it takes years and years of research. The idea is that each ingredient is essential, and if you remove one the whole thing collapses. The word I use to describe it comes from architecture: tensegrity. It’s the relationship of tension that keeps a structure standing. And if you can remove something and the structure doesn’t collapse, then it was unnecessary to begin with, right? Exactly. And you’ll have to start again. Nothing extra and nothing too much. Every element should exist to support the others. What kind of scents do you prefer in your perfumes?Ihave my favourite wines – I prefer Burgundy to Bordeaux. But perfume is the one domain where I can’t have a preference. I work for my clients, and to have a preference is to limit yourself. You’ll end up repeating the same things. I stay neutral, open, objective. I prefer to remain a butterfly.
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The historic capital of perfume. It really makes it easier. I live around the people I work with and can get to my lab on foot.
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There’s no ideal sillage, though, unfor tunately – and this is just my opinion –today I think many brands want their sillage too big. Not like a boat, but a multi-story cruise ship. That’s not a pretty image for a perfume! When I worked for Hermés creating their home fragrance collection, I told them I wanted to make perfumes that Murmur?murmur.Yes,quiet perfumes. When I said that, their eyes went wide. ‘Perfumes that murmur? But perfumes must smell!’ I think perfume should only reveal itself as you get closer to someone. It’s inti mate. Since the Covid confinements, people have come to rediscover and ap preciate scents that murmur, that are
How long should a perfume last? There are two aspects to the duration of a fragrance: sillage and persistence. Tell me about them. Sillage is like a ribbon that follows you wherever you walk. That makes people say, wow! (She mimes someone stopping and turning their head.) That would make a good TV commercial! That’s it, it’s the hook. Or think of a boat and the trail it leaves in its wake. What’s the ideal sillage?
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The Prodir Magazine intimate, that reassure, that are domestic as well, that come from your compan ion who maybe doesn’t know how to perfume themselves well but just puts a tiny bit on. And the other characteristic – persistence? Persistence is how long it stays on your skin. Today the fashion is for perfumes that stay on your skin for 24, 48, even 72 hours. I prefer perfumes that disappear, that make room for your skin, for other things. If you still want to smell like that perfume you just put it on again. I like perfumes that wake up your senses, cre ate emotions, but that let themselves be forgotten as well. Because in the end what’s really important is the person. Thank you, Céline, for our talk.
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Instagram:YouTube:ellenanezenOPENNOTEKyleDuganisacopywriterandtranslatorlivinginVarese,Italy.8
OPEN LINK Ellena Studio by Céline Ellena on
The creative studio H-57 is behind Shortology. Here’s what the creative minds from Milan say about themselves: Our philosophy is based on a no-frills approach aimed at investing less time in meetings and using the energy thereby liberated for concrete facts. info@h-57.com
OPEN OPENInstagram:shortology.ith-57.comLINKSshortologyworldREAD
Shortology H-57, Rizzoli, 2012
Most films last between 100 and 150 minutes. Too long for the makers of Shortology. They convey the nub of a story in just a few pictograms. 5" What film is this? Answer on page 56.
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The Prodir Magazine Movie fast track 1h 56' in 5"
OPEN danesemilano.comLINK 1 The Prodir TomorrowMagazinetoday is already yesterday
These days, you can read off the day of the week on almost any device, but the calendars designed by Enzo Mari for Danese Milano are timelessly up-to-date design classics. Their analogue character makes time a sensual experience, every change requires movement and doesn’t just happen. Mari is fascinated by the beauty of everyday objects – and that’s what we love about his work.
What day is Mrtoday,Mari?
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3 2 1 Bilancia, 1959 2 Timor, 1967 3 Formosa, 1963 The Prodir Magazine 11OPEN YEAR
BeautifulMagazineobstacles put in our way
The Ticino valley’s sustainable approach earned it the prestigious 2022 Global Vision Award, bestowed by the US magazine Travel + Leisure.
Immerse yourself in a what seems like a long forgotten parallel world when you stroll through Foroglio, San Carlo, Roseto or the other nine villages of Val Bavona, Switzerland.
Timelessstones
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Text: Sally Maccan 3'
The Global Vision Awards honourees are creating sustainable solutions in the built environment through their work in architecture, infrastructure, urban planning, and more. Travel + Leisure Val Bavona – Switzerland
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OPEN travelandleisure.comLINK The Prodir Magazine In the northen part of Ticino and a mere 80 km from Lugano, time seems to stand still. At the heart of an expanse of cool chestnut forests, small villages are to be found along a sev en kilometre stretch on both sides of the river named after the valley, towered over by a 110 metre waterfall and marked by sheer rock faces. The wild formation of the val ley is the result of heavy land and rockslides which the lo cal people have tamed to meet their needs over the course of centuries. The inhabitants fashioned shelters with sim ple structures under the rocks known as ‘splüi’; on top of the rocks, small vegetable gardens arose, protected from the goats, and still a fixture in the landscape today. When electricity cables were to be laid in the 1950s, the inhabitants considered electric light as a luxury they could do without. Which is why to this day, you can still experi ence the magic of this wild cultivated landscape practically unchanged. The stone houses are only inhabited from April until October; they still use candlelight and the only energy they consume is generated from solar and hydro power. Mobile phones? Once you’re here, connecting to the out side world tends to be difficult. Not just from a technical perspective. In Val Bavona, the only connections that mat ter are those to the spectacular natural world, to the past that is also the present and to yourself, far from the chaos of everyday life.
Text: Louise Thorn 4' Denis Moniote is co-founder of a Brussels-based fintech startup serving banks in the developing world. His team of 10 people is entirely remote, and he works from home. And every day, in between Zoom meetings and emails, feeding the kids when they get home from school and his daily runs, Denis takes a nap. Or maybe two. ‘I started doing it back at university when I was studying for exams’, says Denis. ‘First by myself, and then when I was studying with friends.’ He was amazed at how intensely his friends studied, but often felt he couldn’t keep up. In those moments he’d close his books, find a corner to lie down in and sleep. Now, 20 years later, he naps – or more precisely, micro-naps – whenever and wherever he needs to: in his home office, in a crowded meeting room, in the airport, he considers himself something of a nap expert.
Modern society may be facing a massive sleep debt.
This sleep discipline is something we all might learn from.
In recent years the power of sleep has been lauded in a host of articles, podcasts, studies and books, most notably neuro
My goal is simply to rest, and I almost always fall asleep.’ His daily micro-nap can last ten to twenty minutes. ‘I often wake up with a start. I think I haven’t slept at all, but in reality, maybe 13 or 14 minutes have passed. You have to jump up then, and not let yourself fall back into a deeper sleep.’ This prevents what’s called sleep inertia, the grogginess you feel after a longer nap. Denis never sets an alarm unless he’s got an imminent meeting, and in that case, he’ll even settle down for a nap ten minutes before it starts, setting the alarm to wake him up one minute before to log in to Zoom.
I’m off for 10 minutes
‘If your goal is to fall asleep,’ he says, ‘you probably won’t.
But is eight hours a night really the best way to repay it?
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The Prodir Magazine The nap economy
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The Prodir Magazine scientist Matthew Walker’s bestselling Why We Sleep. Ac cording to Walker, sleep is essential for memory formation and learning and healing, and our abundance of REM sleep (rapid eye movement sleep, where much of our vivid dream ing occurs) compared to other primates may have helped stimulate our socio-cultural evolution and allowed us to dominate the food chain and build complex civilizations, and in the process, completely ruin our sleep. Because according to Walker, the bad news is that electric lights, blue light emitting screens, caffeine and punishing work hours are all conspiring to impair our ability to get the same quantity and quality of sleep as our pre-industrial an cestors. We’re facing a collective sleep debt with devastating personal and societal consequences: more heart disease, more dementia and Alzheimer’s, more nervousness and do pamine addiction and horrendously costly accidents like the Chernobyl meltdown and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
If Walker’s diagnosis is terrifying, his prescription is simple: do everything you can to get 8 hours of sleep every night. This recommendation has fueled a whole sleep industry pitching home sleep monitors, eye masks and black-out cur tains, plush memory foam beds, and apps training you on highly regimented sleep hygiene protocols to limit caffeine, alcohol, stress and screen time. All these tools aim to give you the kind of blissfully unimpeded high-quality sleep our ancestors enjoyed nightly. But did they? Not everybody agrees with Walker’s ideal of sleep. Critics point out that the kind of sleep Walker advo cates for was something our ancestors – sleeping outside in the dirt, necessarily vigilant for human and animal predators – never dreamed of. Is Walker’s 8-hour sleep the equivalent of fuzzy slippers, a warm bath, a high-calorie meal and a weekend on the sofa watching Netflix? In other words, the kind of comfort we may instinctively seek, but that’s actually very bad for us? Which brings us back to the nap. Only a few mammals, in cluding many modern adult humans, try to get by on mono phasic sleep – doing all our sleep in one big block. Most an imals sleep in multiple phases throughout the day, as do human babies and older people. And adult humans do expe rience a biologically-induced postprandial (after-lunch) alertness dip that seems to support what siesta cultures have known for millennia: we may be engineered for biphasic sleep. That means a longer bout of sleep at night, coupled with a midday nap. While Google nap pods, nap bars and even rentable corpo rate nap trucks are increasingly available to the modern of fice worker, more important is developing what sleep train ers for elite athletes refer to as sleepability – the ability to fall asleep quickly given basic minimal conditions. Denis has, and his nap routine is still one our ancestors may have rec ognized. He first chooses a hard-ish surface, whether it’s the very firm sofa in his home office or, if he's waiting for a flight to Dakar, a nice spot on the airport floor – the important thing is to lie down. He balls up a jacket for a pillow, covers himself lightly, closes his eyes and sleeps. Micro-naps, even as short as 10 minutes, may have an in credibly restorative function for the mind. They may stimu late creativity, like power nappers Albert Einstein and Salva dor Dalí claimed, or at least help you see the forest for the trees. As Denis says, ‘I don’t forget about my concerns when I nap. But it feels like I carried them through the land of dreams, having let my thoughts circulate freely there. It’s not magic, but it helps me relativize the problem, to get a bit of distance and perspective’.
So if Walker’s 8-hour sleep rule is a prescription for making you stressed, consider the power of the humble nap. It may be everything your ancestors dreamed of. MatthewREADWalker, Why We Sleep, 2018
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Sensitive
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wormfeelingcomposting?HomeAllittakesisalittle animals
Text: Kyle Dugan 6'
Zurich-based WormUp is bringing composting inside the home, with the help of hundreds of happy wriggling worms. Co-founder and Happiness Officer Sarah Steiner talked with Open about the Swiss company, closing the circle, and the secret to successful worm composting.
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How sensitive are worms? When they arrive, your worms can be stressed from the rattling, all this tap-tap-tapping. That’s why they might not stay down in the soil. Birds know this too, which is why they tap on the ground when they’re hunting – to get the worms to come to the surface. So sometimes in the first couple of days you may find worms on your floor. It’s easy to deal with this though. Just leave a light on for the first couple of nights, or place a humid ring of towels on the floor around your composting system. The worms will crawl under it and you can collect them in the morning and put them back in their home.
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OPEN: What inspired you to bring composting inside the SARAHhome?
Wait, you have to touch them? You have to put your composter close by, so you check in on it often – we recommend every 2-3 days. You shouldn’t be afraid to stick your hands in, pick up the worms and look. How do they behave? Are they agile, moving? Normally they should be somewhere on the top, visible. And what if they’re not? Does that mean something is wrong?Iftheconditions aren’t right, there can be a worm exo dus. If it’s too dry and too warm, the worms can die and they compost themselves. They just disappear, which is a loss, and not nice. Or when people feed them too much, it can suddenly become very warm. The microor ganisms work too fast and use up all the oxygen. The system can get out of balance and the worms can die. That’s why we tell people to be careful not to overfeed.
STEINER: The idea was really born from the frustration with not being able to compost organic waste in the city, which was the case at the time in Zu rich. My colleague, one of the founders, was growing tomatoes on a huge balcony and he needed compost. So we were looking for a way to compost indoors in a city apartment where you don’t have a garden. Most commercial home composters are made out of plastic, but yours is ceramic. Why’s that? Our approach is to recycle, to live and act in natural cy cles. We wanted to have a product which has a long lifespan. If you use them as they’re meant to be, ceram ics don’t usually break – you can still find vases from the Greeks and Romans. They’re long lasting and they don’t pollute the environment. Our product is quite sturdy –some people use it as a seat on their balcony. And if it does happen to break, you can easily recycle it. It’s a circle closed. But besides the product’s lifecycle, it actually looks like something you’d want in your house. That was our other main goal: to make it beautiful. We wanted to make it really appealing so that people like to touch it, so that compost gets out of this yucky cor ner where people normally think of it. With our prod ucts, the compost doesn’t smell, it looks nice, and it becomes something very natural. That’s what we want.
And what about the worms? Do you think people know what to expect when it comes to worm composting? If people have never composted in their life, some of them expect a machine. They think they can always put in the same quantities and assume that if they follow the instructions in the manual, it will absolutely work. But that’s not always the case? People need to develop a feeling for it – we call it worm feeling. To develop it you need to look inside and see what the system needs. Get closer to nature and have an eye for natural processes. How do I know if I’ve got wormfeeling? There are a few questions I always ask. Do you like cooking? Do you have a green thumb when it comes to house plants? If they answer, ‘I’m a terrible cook, I even burn water’, or ‘My plants die and I just throw them away’, then I’m not so sure! But if they love trying new things in the kitchen, and they know how to help their plants thrive, then it’s likely that they’ll develop worm feeling. It’s slow living, not fast food. And then of course I ask if they don’t mind touching worms.
Sounds like there’s a lot to learn about caring for worms! Darwin wrote his last book on worms. He spent years studying and experimenting with them, and then he wrote his book. He even ascribed a certain intelligence to them, based on the tests he did. Worms are fascinating – we keep learning so much from them.
Fresh Mediumwastemature compost Mature compost OPEN eng.wormup.chLINK 23OPEN COMPOST
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DS8 True Biotic The Prodir Magazine Time’s running out for us, not for Nature Nature knows no beginning and no end 24OPEN CIRCLE
BioticTrueQS40 The casings for Prodir’s True Biotic writing instruments are the only ones in the world made from biobased, biodegradable sea,BecauseCertifiedremainsTosea,environmentsagain,merstheseMicroorganismsPHA.synthesisedrevolutionarybiopolyanddegradethemalsoinnaturalsuchasthefreshwaterandsoil.ensurethateverythinginNature’scycle.byTÜVAustria.wewantfishinthenotwaste.
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The Prodir Magazine OPEN LINK Find out more:
According to a study by German company Brainstream, women spend 76 days of their life looking for things in their handbags. The company’s automatic handbag light aims to remove the need for rummaging by helping women to find everything they need right away.
The Prodir Magazine Time is money The Prodir Magazine
Time timeandsaverswasters
Text: Herbert Genzmer OPEN4' END 26
The notion that dopamine influences our perception of time is now beyond dispute. A higher dopamine level (or, more accurately, increased activation of the dopamine D2 receptor) causes sub jective time to pass more quickly. The opposite applies for a lower dopamine level (or inactivation of the D2 recep tor). Exactly how this influences things is still not clear. Nor is how the effect of dopamine relates to our assessment of an event as positive or negative. Such effects do exist but they are rather com plex and contradictory. I’m currently conducting experiments into this phe nomenon. Is it possible to control one’s own perception of time, perhaps by concentrating on it? Not that I’m aware of, no. Instead, our perception of time appears to adapt flexibly to current requirements. Thank you for speaking with us. Of course, this raises the question of what they could do with all the time this frees up – some 1,824 hours or 109,440 minutes. Or, to put it a different way: Is time actually worth saving and can we make meaningful use of it, or are we fundamentally inclined to fitter it away?
Wasted time, in my view, is time that is not used for either meaningful activities or enjoyable indolence. In the worst case, we stumble back and forth be tween the two without doing either Butproperly.aren’twe hamstrung to an extent by social circumstances? Time offers a framework that is, in principle, identical for every one of us: we all have exactly 24 hours a day. How ever, not everyone has the same degree of autonomy to determine how they use this time. Does our perception of time have something to do with metabolic changes as we grow older? It has less to do with metabolism and more to do with the volume of memo ries we amass over the course of our lives. We tend to perceive new and in teresting things as lasting longer. When we’re younger, lots of things are new and interesting, so time seems to pass more slowly than when we’re older, when many things have become famil iar and routine.
Does the happiness hormone dopamine influence our perception of time?
OPEN NOTE Dr. Joachim Hass is Professor of Applied Psychology at the University of Heidelberg.
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To use a slightly old-fashioned turn of phrase, are we bound by our nature to dally away the day? We put these questions to Dr. Joachim Hass, Professor of Methodology at SRH University in Heidelberg. His research focuses on the perception of time.
Do positive experiences pass more quickly and seem to take up less time than negative ones, or is it the other way round?
The Prodir Magazine OPEN: Dr. Hass, do we actually perceive the time we save as a win, something we can put to good use? Is there actually any such thing as saving time or is that just an JOACHIMillusion?HASS: I can answer this question from my own personal experi ence. In my view, we save time above all when we don’t notice it ticking away because we’re occupied with an enjoya ble or fulfilling activity. Any time we can keep free for that sort of activity –whether in the context of work or in our free time – is time saved. Routines can be useful if they help us to complete more tedious tasks (when we are more conscious of time) more quickly. So, can you waste time?
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The disastrous crash of Air France Flight 4590 on a summer’s day twenty years ago sealed Concorde’s fate. A chain of unfore seeable events led to a catastrophe set off by an insignificant chunk of metal on the runway. In those years, however, Concorde was already disappearing from the scene: too expensive, too uncomfortable, too en vironmentally harmful. Its time had simply
Text: Claudio Visentin Photo Overture: Copyright © 2022 Boom Supersonic 7'
Keeping time,no matter what
The Prodir ArrivingMagazinebeforeyou take off
Since the days of Concorde, no one seemed to be giving it a moment’s thought any more. From 1976 onwards, the flagship of French aviation halved the flight time on the Paris–New York route for over a quarter of a century, reducing it to three and a half hours. Finally, in November 1986, Con corde completed a flight around the world in just thirty hours. Concorde’s flying speed (at over two thousand km/h, almost double the speed of sound) was twice that of its competitors, with the result that other air crafts appeared to be flying backwards as Concorde overtook them. In the case of westbound flights, the arrival time was be fore the departure time thanks to the magic of time zones (hence the striking slogan ‘Arrive before you leave’).
Butpassed.nothing lasts for ever – and a new gen eration of aircraft manufacturers are now 28
Boom Supersonic – an American aviation start-up – intends to break the time barrier. Starting in 2025, the company wants to build a next generation aircraft with the auspicious name Overture in a super factory in North Carolina – the first step towards a ‘supersonic renaissance’. It is scheduled to enter commercial service in 2029.
The Prodir Magazine 29OPEN WORLD
The Prodir Magazine 30OPEN WORLD
31OPEN WORLD
Keeping time has nothing to do with speed or slowness.
OPEN ClaudioNOTEVisentin is an author and journalist and teaches history of tourism at Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano.
The Prodir Magazine facing up to the challenge. You’ll be flying at an altitude of twenty kilometres again with the darkness of space above and the curva ture of the earth below you. The new Over ture has adopted the streamlined shape of its famous predecessor although it is smaller (around seventy seats), less expensive (price of a normal Business Class ticket) and above all environmentally friendly (on paper, it’s emission-free) – essential prerequisites in times of climate change. Every technology is backed by a vision. In the last few years, our freedom of move ment has been significantly curtailed by precautionary measures. Equally, time seemed to stretch almost to infinity as we had to discontinue many of our usual activ ities. For months on end, we were locked up like prisoners in highly confined spaces. Long-distance travel was merely the stuff of dreams. In fact, however, one of the most famous journeys occurred in a room in 1790 when François-Xavier de Maistre, a young officer in the Kingdom of Savoy, was sentenced to forty-two days of house arrest after a duel with a rival. Under these ad verse circumstances, de Maistre embarked on A Journey around my Room and told his story, drawing exclusively on his imagina tion and irony. ‘Dare to join me on my jour ney! We will take a short walk every day, and on the way, we’ll laugh about travellers who have seen Rome and Paris – no obsta cle can hold us up. And by happily surren dering to our imagination, we will follow wherever it chooses to lead us.’ However, de Maistre was only locked up for one and a half months, not for two years as we were. So it’s very understandable that people started travelling again as soon as humanly possible and at supersonic speed, so to Travelspeak. time determines the limits of our liv ing space. If there are only three hours be tween both sides of the Atlantic, working life is the first to change. The Paris–New York route has always been of crucial sig nificance in this respect. In the late 1920s, when the telegraph and radio had already made instant communication a reality, ocean steamers still required four to five days for the crossing, depending on sea conditions. For this reason, a small aircraft was launched by catapult from the steamer Île de France two hundred miles off the American coast, to ensure that mail and business people arrived in New York more quickly. Sure, it’s about work but also love, family and leisure time: Faster travel means new holiday opportunities, new interests, new love. And what about the much vaunt ed slow travel? It’s still extremely popular and it has long aeons of evolution on its side. A smart pace, between three and five km/h, still corresponds to our natural speed perfectly attuned to our senses and thoughts. But perhaps the question is much simpler. It’s not about returning to the past on a wave of nostalgia nor about the idea of a hyper-technological future but rather about learning to cope with a world of different speeds without taking it for granted that the fastest is always the best for us. Keeping time has nothing to do with speed or slow ness. This is well known to musicians and fencers who are masterful at deciding the perfect tempo for a passage of music or a fencing thrust.
NAME Eric Rogora POSITION Moulds, Tooling and Equipment Manager PERIOD OF SERVICE 8 years 2' 32OPEN FACTORY
2022 The Prodir Magazine Prodir people
Eric Rogora (51) is responsible for injection moulds and tool-making at Prodir’s plant in Novazzano in Switzerland. He played a pivotal role in ensuring that a writing instrument’s casing was injection moulded for the first time using natural polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA). A revolutionary material that also biologically degrades in Nature, quickly and without any residue. To achieve this, constant fine-tuning was required in countless tests, often lasting deep into the night. We leave the easy stuff to the others, says Eric.
The QS40 True Biotic has been awarded numerous prizes for its innovative combination of unique sustainability and high-quality design, most recently the prestigious iF Award 2022.
Everybody said it wouldn’t work. Then along came Eric, who knew that of course, but did it anyway.
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NAMEMagazine
Carla Traficante POSITION Human Resources Manager IN PRODIR from 1999 33OPEN FACTORY
The Prodir Magazine Is that what I want?
My lifeas a snail
5' 34OPEN MIND
Text: Eckhard
I’m now going to give my brain an airing and clear out all the assembled clutter in its Communications and Marketing department, things like being ‘data-driven’. Sohns
With my bid for a blast of fresh air, I’m beaming myself back to a time when my online shop for vegan dog food didn’t yet know me and my needs better than I did myself. I’ll admit it, I miss those days. A world without data traces, where the man who sold me dog food was still reliant on face-to-face conversations to find out what kind of dog I had and what I thought about the world so that he could draw his own conclusions, both personal and profession al, about the right dog food. Why all this nostalgia? Firstly, because – sticking with dog food for the moment – there might ex ist some completely different dog food that would throw into disarray everything I’d known up to that point and that no algo rithm in the world had yet discovered. And, secondly, because I like to be surprised, and sometimes I like to see something oth er than what algorithms think I’m like everywhere I go, I look so that I’m con fronted with it so often that even I soon be gin to think I’m like how they think I am.
It doesn’t require an awful lot. We just need to zoom out a bit, at least mentally, from the data-driven universe of algorithms that feeds itself and only needs me and you as ‘somethings’ that leave behind data traces and shell out money: a snail that leaves ev erlasting traces from now until the end of time. In the olden days, this snail was a cus tomer, who we courteously called our ‘king’. But this particular monarchy fell victim to the digital revolution, and the king is now in exile or, at most, is merely one snail among many. Is that what I want? As a self-confessed man of nostalgia, not really. Sometimes, I wish I could go back to a world in which people weren’t always hot on my heels like a stalker in the shadows and using every single trace I left behind for targeting and profiling like a digital Miss Marple. A time in which you could still rely on being for
I’d like brands and companies that want to sell me something to keep a respectful dis tance, not ambush me at every turn, not make demands on me immediately or ex cessively, like drinking from a fire hose just because I happen to be a bit thirsty at the moment. This endless quickening of the pace that pretends to be a journey but that ultimately ends up going nowhere fast is too stressful in the long run. Give me a bit of peace, some open-ended tedium, in which anything can happen and nothing is set in stone. Something that fits into my life rather than fitting me into a life that’s only how you perceive it to be. As any couples’ therapist will tell you, relationships that follow this pattern are toxic in the long term. That’s where you can grab me, that’s where you can surprise me, because I’m not yet the person that your data has reduced me to. With this sense of worth, we’d be people-driven, close to people, even when it’s only dog food that’s involved. At the end of the day, I don’t want to be shocked any more by the realization that I’ve just spent another two hours surfing In stagram – and that, while I don’t remember a thing, you’ll have clocked everything, and I no longer have any idea why I was even looking at what you’ll have noted down.
The Prodir Magazine
35OPEN MIND
gotten about sooner or later. But now for getting is a thing of the past, and every sin gle pack of dog food that’s ever been bought is ruthlessly preserved for posterity like WhatStonehenge.doIwant apart from forgetfulness?
Wouldn’t it be more exciting if we were taken seriously rather than being ‘captured’ as a target? EckhardNOTESohns is Chief Sales & Marketing Officer at Prodir.
OPEN
Wouldn’t it be more exciting if we were taken seriously rather than being ‘captured’ as a target? For this dream form of commu nication, which is a lot of things, just not data-driven, my brain hits on the term ‘people-driven’ midway through its airing.
The Prodir AroundMagazinetheworld in 80 days, seriously 80 14:59:45dayshrs. OPEN RACE 36
3' 37OPEN RACE
OPEN vendeeglobe.orgyannickbestaven.frborisherrmannracing.comLINKS
On 07.06.2022 at 15:06 Sohns Eckhard wrote: Thanks for the rapid reply, Mr. Albrecht! We would suggest booking a time and date for a conversation by telephone / video call in the coming days or next Weweek.don’t need much time. The fact that he is taking time out to speak to us – however briefly – while being so busy finishing the new boat is already more or less part of the interview. I would be delighted if we could manage EckhardSincerely,this.Sohns
The Prodir Magazine Hello Mr. Unfortunately,Sohns,that won’t be possible in the coming weeks. With building the boat and the start of training, there will be no time left. With many thanks however for your interest and best wishes, Nikolaus Albrecht
******
The 2020-21 Vendée Globe started in Les Sables-d’Olonne on 8 November 2020. 80 days, 3 hours, 19 minutes and 46 seconds later, the Frenchman Yannick Bestaven was the first to cross the finish line in Les Sables. There was also a German competitor among the 33 starters: Boris Herrmann. On day 22 of the race, Hermann was one of three captains that joined in the search and rescue mission for competitor Kevin Escoffier, whose yatch suffered total hull failure. All those who participated received time credits: Herrmann was accredited with six hours, and winner Bestaven 10 hours and 15 minutes. One day before arriving in Les Sables, Herrmann’s yacht rammed a fishing boat in the Bay of Biscay and was so badly damaged that he was only able to reach the home harbour at reduced speed.
At the time of the accident, he was in third place with a chance of overall victory. It was no longer possible to make up the time lost as a result of the incident.
In the end, he finished fifth with 80 days, 14 hours, 59 minutes and 45 seconds. We would have liked to talk to Boris Herrmann about time but he didn’t have time.
The Vendée Globe is regarded as the hardest single-handed regatta in the world. It covers over 24,000 nautical miles through treacherous Antarctic waters once round the globe. The start and finish line is the French Atlantic coast.
The Prodir Magazine QSRange 38OPEN CIRCLE
A cycle knows no beginning or end DS Range 39OPEN CIRCLE
The Prodir Magazine Waste is raw material
OPEN LINK Find out more: All Prodir writing instruments are made from recycled plastic. 100% for white and black ones, and 50% for coloured ones. That’s standard with us.
40OPEN MEETING
My face isasleepfalling
The Prodir
CanteenMagazineinsteadof meeting
Stand or keep quiet According to the above study, employees in companies spend around 15 percent of their time in meetings – and the figure is trending upwards. Ingenious minds have thought of all kinds of ruses to keep the waste of time to a minimum. ‘Stand-ups’, for example, or meetings held on foot. These take up around one third less time and they re liably prevent anyone from falling asleep. Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has developed a special method to combat the end less waffle: a silent start. No-one speaks for up to half an hour. But they don’t spend the time dozing. No. The time is to be used to read the material for the meeting or prepare yourself for the upcoming discussion.
The Prodir Magazine I’m lucky. Since I’ve been working as a freelance journalist, I’ve been spared a lot. Commuting to work, for example. I don’t get stuck in traffic or in the corridor of an overcrowded train. But what’s much better: I don’t have to attend any more meetings. Of course, I still have meetings or concep tual discussions with my clients. But these are about a spe cific interview, piece of reporting or article. Work meetings like that are usually held with no more than three people and they’re over in a flash as soon as everything has been discussed. But I can well remember the time when I was still an employee. There was no escape. Morning meetings, weekly meetings, briefing meetings, debriefing meetings –whatever the meeting involving the whole department and its head was called, it was always pretty much the same. And it went like this: Braggers and empty phrases The whole gang meet more or less punctually in a much too small, stuffy conference room, sit down around the table and wait for something to happen. There’s always someone who comes late, of course. Mr or Mrs Bragger was busy sav ing the world. Or they were simply in the toilet, tidying their hair. Finally everybody is there and the meeting can start. And immediately, you’re bombarded with empty phrases from one end of the table. The talk is of quick wins that you have to focus on proactively as this is the only way to achieve the core values. Another colleague takes the op portunity to big themselves up with plagiarized ideas. An other who can’t even manage that bores the meeting with their wildly exciting private life. Others don’t say anything at all, play with their mobile phone, bite their fingernails or write to-do lists. No, not for their job. They're just remind ing themselves to buy butter. And cat food. And that it’s time for their annual check-up with their gynaecologist.
Canteen instead of meeting
I’m not sure if that does any good. In any case, I’m glad that I’m spared the 25 hours of meetings a month which, accord ing to the Sharp study, people feel are ineffective. It adds up to a lot of time that can be put to better use. For working, for example. Or for a walk. Or going for lunch with your col leagues. According to a study by Cornell University, that’s not only supposed to improve teamwork but also boost per formance in general. So from that point of view, the canteen is preferable to any meeting. Bon appétit! our lives as Uetikon am See. Text: Marianna
author. OPEN MariannaNOTESiegenthaler
Nothing against creative dialogue with colleagues at work. But meetings are frequently a huge waste of time, according to
a freelance author in
Boredom to the point of nodding off Minutes turn to hours and the meeting goes on and on. The air gets stuffier and stuffier. And it seems just a matter of time until somebody nods off. Which is no rare occurrence, by the way. The electronics company Sharp surveyed over 2,000 employees in different companies in Europe and came to the conclusion that one out of ten employees has fallen asleep in a meeting. Ten percent had made up an ex cuse for leaving the room early. No wonder, then, that ac cording to a study by management consultants Bain & Company, over 50 percent of all meetings are regarded as a waste of time by those attending them.
Siegenthaler 6' 41OPEN MEETING
Text: Javier Alma 5'
What they don’t tell you about keeping a diary
The Prodir Magazine Marie Kondo for your thoughts The Prodir Magazine
Do you keep a diary? If you ask someone about why they keep one, they’ll probably give you a list of positive-sounding reasons for doing it. Writing a diary, like I have for most of my adult life, is a daily writing practice that helps you reflect on the chaos and wonder of any single day. The process involves mentally replaying your day, and then ordering, selecting and writing about the events or emotions that matter. It’s a procedure that can leave you as satisfied as ending the day with a tidy desk, or house (though in my case in a lot less time, as you’d know if you saw my house). It’s a sort of day-end Marie Kondo-ing of the mind.
42OPEN DIARY
The Prodir Magazine 43OPEN DIARY
OPEN LINK You can get great notebooks at Scanmishmash.ptandselect your pen to go with the diary: 44OPEN DIARY
Even if I don’t look back and reread everything I’ve written, keeping a diary day after day, year after year, has been a rich and rewarding experience. But it’s certainly not for everybody, no matter what they say.
The Prodir Magazine They’ll also tell you that it helps you remember. When I was young, I thought I would actually remember everything important in life. When my high school friends were drop ping cash on cameras and rolls of film, they asked, ‘Aren’t you into taking pictures?’ ‘No,’ I told them. ‘I’m into re membering.’ I actually said it like that, dragging out the word for emphasis. Of course, by my early twenties I came to realize that not only could I not remember everything, I could remember very little of anything, and my childhood was fading into the obscure fog of the past. That is, until my friends started showing up on Facebook to remind me with their scanned camera rolls. But even so, writing a dia ry helps you remember more than just the cheesy smile you’ve plastered on for the camera. Consciousness is a dai ly battlefield, and your mind is cruelly efficient at triage, at identifying patterns of significance and choosing to save the useful memories, while banishing the small, unusual details to oblivion. But of course, it’s often those small de tails that make life interesting, and in your diary you can record them along with all your fresh emotions and mental debates that never show up in a snapshot. They might tell you lots of other benefits of keeping a diary. It calms you down, helps you destress and puts things in perspective. And if you’re learning something new, train ing for a goal, or have put yourself on a path towards any thing, a journal can be great for helping you see your pro gress. They might even tell you it can make you a better writer, and better able to communicate your thoughts to friends, family and colleagues. But they won’t tell you everything about keeping a diary. The biggest thing they won’t say is you’ve got to have an iron stomach. Because it takes an iron stomach to go back and swallow what you’ve written a year, two or ten years later. Things that seemed so serious are laughable in retro spect. Things you thought would change the course of your life had little impact at all. It’s like being stuck in an endless Facebook feed of cringe-worthy sentiment, embarrassing outdated clothes and bad hair days. Despite all the good writing a diary can do, I think this is what stops most peo ple: the ability to look at yourself in the mirror, see your past self, and live with it. Before humans invented pens to write with, we just forgot. And it may be easier. The other thing is that it can be a slog. Like anything you have to do every day, from showing up for team meetings to going for a run or walking the dog, sometimes you real ly just don’t want to do it. Nowadays, when we’re looking for support, we might turn to social media, but the very nature of a diary is you can’t go public. Your friends might post on Instagram about sticking to their diets and their beach-body routine; ‘Hey, I’ve just written in my diary for the 1103th day in a row!’ said no one ever. When we post everything on social media, you might come to expect a little community-fuelled dopamine hit every time we do something good. ‘Picked up some litter today!’ Like, like, like. ‘Baked a chocolate cake!’ Like, like, like. ‘Here’s my cat!’ LOVE. But a diary – and not a blog, but a good
old-fashioned diary – is personal. The rewards are all pri vate, and they won’t earn you a like, share or follow.
The Prodir Magazine Mood Pens Sometimes, it has to be something special
beautiful.andgoodDistinguished,clip.metalDS5newThe
45OPEN BOTTLE
DS5 The Prodir Magazine Fast, please! Would yesterday be ok, too? 46OPEN SPEED
DS3 DS8 The Prodir Magazine OPEN LINK Find out more: We can’t make yesterday but if you’re in a hurry, we’ll make sure that up to 5,000 DS3s, DS5s or DS8s are shipped to you within five working days from print Fastlane.approval.The fast track for your order. 47OPEN SPEED
JEDDAH AST (UTC +3) • 1:10 PM CAIRO EET (UTC +2) • 12:10 PM PARIS CEST (UTC +1) • 11:10 AM LONDON BST (UTC 0) • 10:10 AM The Prodir Magazine What helps with jet lag Different places, different times Jet lag is the inevitable downside of intercontinental travel. There are various methods of counteracting the troubles of time difference – but most are far from straightforward. Text: Stefano Bernasconi 6' 48OPEN LAG
On a flight from Zürich to New York, for example, we pass through six time zones and our internal rhythms are pushed out of sync with the natural, external time indicators of day and night. The flight to the east coast of the United States throws our perception of time completely off track, as what we feel should be morning suddenly becomes the middle of the night. Despite this, within ourselves, we continue to live in the time to which we are accustomed, with our digestion, hormone release, feelings of hunger, blood pressure and body temperature all lagging behind, still not up to pace with our new location as our body punishes us for the demands we place on it.
The Prodir Magazine
EUCLA ACWST (UTC +8:45) • 6:55 PM PYONGYANG KST (UTC +8:30) • 6:40 PM BEIJING CST (UTC +8) • 6:10 PM BANGKOK ICT (UTC +7) • 5:10 PM YANGON MMT (UTC +6:30) • 4:40 PM DHAKA BST (UTC +6) • 4:10 PM KATHMANDU NPT (UTC +5:45) • 3:55 PM NEW DELHI IST (UTC +5:30) • 3:40 PM KARACHI PKT (UTC +5) • 3:10 PM KABUL AFT (UTC +4:30) • 2:40 PM DUBAI GST (UTC +4) • 2:10 PM(UTC +3:30) • 1:40 PM
We love to travel, constantly flitting from place to place. As Bruce Chatwin wrote: ‘Diversion. Distraction. Fantasy. Change of food, fashion, love and landscape, all this is trav elling.’ This list, however, fails to mention the change in time between different locations. Some refer to it casually as time zone-hopping, while others call it jet lag; either way, this discombobulation of our internal body clock and our per ception of time is something travellers must contend with.
As a rule of thumb, we need one day to adjust for each time zone of change. This corresponds to a week of discomfort and malaise upon arrival in New York. There are a whole host of recommendations and home remedies for acceler ating this adjustment. Above all, however, you should try to preempt the time difference and start living in your new time zone a few days before you depart. That means going to bed later, no longer eating food at ‘Swiss’ times, and 49OPEN LAG
Some kind of preparation is essential – but how you do it is up to you! You could try sleeping in Zürich until 2pm and then having breakfast, or you could go to bed at 5pm after arriving in New York and wake up at 1am ready for breakfast. Either way, you’ll be out of step at some point.
It’s interesting to note that jet lag is a relatively modern malaise. One certain way to avoid this discomfort is simply 50OPEN LAG
SYDNEY AEST (UTC +10) • 8:10 PM ADELAIDE ACST (UTC +9:30) • 7:40 PM TOKYO JST (UTC +9) • 7:10 PM
HONOLULU HST (UTC -10) • 0:10 AM MIDWAY ISLAND SST (UTC -11) • 11:10 PM DAY BEFORE BAKER ISLAND AoE (UTC -12) • 10:10 PM DAY BEFORE KIRITIMATI LINT (UTC +14) • 0:10 AM DAY AFTER The Prodir Magazine scheduling your leisure time, exercise, entertainment and work (if possible) by the ‘New York’ clock. You should give your body and soul clear signals, including by changing all your clocks to the new time zone before you actually start to live in it. This will help you to acclimatize to the new time zone since jet lag affects not only the body but also the mind. It will also mean that you won’t spend the entire time in the new location thinking: ‘But it’s midnight in Switzerland!’ You need to banish these thoughts if you’re going vanquish jet lag. Meanwhile, some people swear by homeopathy. Cocculus D6 and D12 globules, used to counter motion sickness when travelling by ship, car or bus, are also said to help with jet lag. Other people, however, take a diametrically opposing view, arguing that homeopathy relies on the pla cebo effect and focuses primarily on the mind, which you can outwit in other ways.
Whatever your view, reducing all these recommendations down to a common denominator, it is clear that anyone hop ing to avoid jet lag needs to start preparing before their trip.
NUKU'ALOFA TOT (UTC +13) • 11:10 PM CHATHAM ISLANDS CHAST (UTC +12:45) • 10:55 PM WELLINGTON NZST (UTC +12) • 10:10 PM NOUMÉA NCT (UTC +11) • 9:10 PM
LORD HOWE ISLAND LHST (UTC +10:30) • 8:40 PM
The Prodir Magazine
DENVER MDT (UTC -7) • 3:10 AM LOS ANGELES PDT (UTC -8) • 2:10 AMAKDTANCHORAGE(UTC-9)•1:10 AM MARQUESAS ISLANDS MART (UTC -9:30) • 0:40 AM
SANTO DOMINGO AST (UTC -4) • 6:10 AM ST. JOHN’S NDT (UTC -3:30) • 6:40 AM NEW YORK EDT (UTC -5) • 5:10 AM CHICAGO CDT (UTC -6) • 4:10 AM
ALL 39 TIME ZONES AT A GLANCE by travelling more slowly, which although anachronistic will completely negate the time difference. In truth, rapid travel has always been met with hostility. In 1825, when the first train traveled the 25 miles from Stockton to Darlington in north-east England, a man along the side of the track suf fered heart failure when he saw the iron steed racing towards him. Scientists at the time also recommended keeping cows away from the railway line to avoid the train’s prodigious speed of around 19 km/h per hour frightening them and causing their milk to sour. However, on a slow transatlantic journey by ship, the time difference resolves itself over the course of the six-day voyage – with the clock set back one hour each day so that we arrive in a timely manner.
51OPEN LAG
AZORES AZOT (UTC -1) • 9:10 AM FERNANDO DE NORONHA FNT (UTC -2) • 8:10 AM RIO DE JANEIRO BRT (UTC -3) • 7:10 AM
How updatedofrequentlyyouyourtimecapsule?
Text:
The Prodir Magazine Life – without the stress of living
52OPEN TRIGGER
Time heals all wounds, so people say. But if values and the perceptions of events shift over the course of time, time can even do the opposite: it can open up wounds. So do you have to keep opening your personal time capsule to update it? If so, what does that do to the contents, which ultimately no longer preserve the time elapsed but are made subservient to the here and now? Herbert Genzmer 7'
The Prodir Magazine 53OPEN TRIGGER
Panic disorders and depression
54OPEN TRIGGER
Just as a footnote: Xanax is a drug from the group of benzodiazepines used to treat anx iety, panic disorders and depression. It has become extremely popular among US stu dents as it works very quickly and is appre ciated for intensifying the effect of alcohol. Side effects of Xanax include altered con sciousness and impaired judgement. Today, doctors frequently describe the use of Xanax at American universities as an epidemic.
The Prodir Magazine
A world in cotton wool
One example of a time capsule is Volker Schlöndorf’s film ‘The Tin Drum’ from 1979. When I showed this film to my Amer ican students in my film course, a nineteen year-old female student suddenly ran from the screening room, loudly accusing me as she fled that I had not given any trigger warning and had therefore exposed her un prepared to a film which, aside from much too much sex and violence against women, also contained child pornography! With tears streaming down her face, she told me I should have warned her to enable her at least to take a Xanax in order to cope with the film and the sexual violence portrayed in it. We’re talking about the scene when Oskar is on the beach with Maria and he licks sherbet powder from her cupped hands and her belly button. The student continued to rage at me, telling me she would now have to take a double dose of Xanax, which meant she wouldn’t be able to attend classes for at least two days. She wouldn’t do any work on the film or even give it any further thought, she shouted. She also informed the Dean’s office of all this in writing as it was imperative that her course marks were not affected by the vio lence inflicted on her. She had not come to Berlin, she wrote, to be forced to view child pornography in a course. Shortly thereaf ter, further students left the screening and they, too, complained to the Dean’s office about the risqué sexual content of the film and the effrontery of being exposed to it unprepared. The upshot of these events is that I am no longer allowed to show The Tin Drum in my next film courses.
Trigger warnings try to wrap the world in cotton wool or to put it in a more modern way, in bubble wrap and to prepare con Trigger warnings try to wrap the world in cotton wool or to put to prepare consumers, readers, viewers, museum visitors, smokers, etc. for anything they might not like to see, that might irritate or depress them or induce panic in them.
Assisted living In their complaint, the students demanded that all films in the course be given trigger warnings to enable them to decide: to view or not to view. This practice has been standard procedure at American universi ties for around twenty years for the protec tion of their students. Lectures must be as signed trigger warnings in order to avoid potential trauma, particularly when touch ing on violence, skin colour, gender or sexu ality. That’s the reason why my students de manded the censorship of a time capsule, i.e. a 43 year-old film. The anglicist Ingo Be rensmeyer wrote in the Frankfurter Allge meine Zeitung that academia did not need ‘assisted reading’, meaning that trigger warnings should be avoided for the academ ic study of literary texts. Because academic studies mustn’t degenerate into a stay on the pony farm, the celebration of an ideal world.
The Prodir Magazine sumers, readers, viewers, museum visitors, smokers, etc. for anything they might not like to see, that might irritate or depress them, induce panic in them and subjective ly damage them. They want to decide what to do and what not to do on the basis of trigger warnings without having seen, read or felt what they were deciding about. But how can that work? Regardless of such de cisions, however, art cannot be wrapped in cotton wool or bubble wrap unless for transportation, as this flies in the face of its most intrinsic meaning. Art, e.g. films, lit erature, sculptures, paintings, pieces of music, performances, is actually meant to shock, astonish, shake people up, delight them or honour our Lord (mainly in earlier times) who died on the cross to enable us to get into heaven. The fact that in doing so it portrays a bloodthirsty scene of torture barely touches anyone, and pictures of Je sus with a crown of thorns or loincloth on the cross don’t cause anyone to shout for trigger warnings or suffer a crying fit.
55OPEN TRIGGER
OPEN HerbertNOTEGenzmer is an author, translator and lecturer. He spends his time between Berlin and Tarragona.
Life without stress So, prepared and armed for anything and everything with trigger warnings, life can seemingly run smoothly even if all the time capsules would ultimately prove to be emp ty: not seeing what might harm us, not hearing or feeling what doesn’t fit with our world view. Feelings are homogenized in a standardized world where everything is the same and life is spent in cotton wool to protect us from any kind of harm: Life –without the stress of living –, as the slogan goes in Adam McKay’s film ‘Don’t Look Up’ with Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence.
The dog in the microwave In the US, people are used to such things as all items of daily life are labelled, often with an absurdly ingenious love of detail, with what we can and can’t do with them –trigger warnings, in fact: Rub hair tonic only into your scalp, don’t drink it; only pull the trigger of a gun if it is not pointing at yourself or someone else (unless it’s an enemy); don’t jump into a pool without any water; don’t take your hairdryer into the bathtub; don’t dry your dog in the micro wave after washing it, etc. With such as sessments of people as complete idiots, the authorities are in fact using warnings of this nature to avoid any liability in the face of possible claims. In fact, as always, it’s all about the money, not your well-being. That’s why bananas, for example, carry a warning not to eat the peel. And to make absolutely certain, bananas costing $ 2.99 a kilo state that they’re free of gluten and cholesterol while those for $ 1.09 carry no such information.
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