‘What did you do at the break?’. Quick flash – primary school ‘at the weekend, I – ’.
‘No – it’s “on” the weekend’
(That was some body else; I always got my prepositions right!)
We learn chit chat when we’re young.
Breaks are the spaces between work and … more work. With so little of them there’s a bit of pressure to make them productive, mark them … work. Break time can be hustle time. Eke some value out of that space and time between KPIs, SOPs and Zooms.
I don’t mean a side hustle, double times and working a second shift here; though no doubt that is what many do. I mean the value squeezed out of social activities, holidays, reel-able relationships, moments made material through words and pixels up-loaded on-line. Social and cultural capital are sticky – adhering to ‘the sites’, ‘the events’, ‘the special person’. Moving the ephemeral break happenings from their in-between work-space takes them out of the between. They are materially ‘over there’ outside work but doing the work of marking out the ‘break’.
My break doings are no less ekes, squeezes and reaches for social and cultural capital. I dutifully upload stories and posts to Instagram weekly. But I avoid things and processes likely to be hammered down by that proper word ‘the’ definite article. My best breaks in Singapore have been between work and more work, but not accruing ‘been to’ ticks of attractions and ‘must do’s’. Rather, I am at my most attentive when I’m moving through the in between spaces which punctuate the city. I wander the HDBs and shopping centres – my only compass are void cats or signs for food centres. I choose a station and begin with the nearest block. My photos are not of people. Rather I focus on the context through which they move. These images are of every day spaces betweens – where home and public space intermingle through laundry racks or charms hanging on doors; where stray cats belong to and are fed by a whole block, but are not allowed inside homes, and where people congregate, yell, play cards, smoke, scribble secretly on walls, then move on again.
These photos were all taken on my iPhone at places along the East-West line. Next year I plan on exploring the North-South line.
