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Inhabiting the Negative Space
A hopeful meditation on how periods of inactivity become reimagined as fertile spaces for design and how we might use this strange moment in history.
“Hi, everyone. I'm speaking to you from my apartment in Oakland, though I've virtually placed myself in the rose garden nearby.”
Artist and writer Jenny Odell hadn't originally planned to deliver the Harvard University Graduate School of Design's 2020 Class Day Address from her living room. But on May 25, 2020, there was Jenny, framed by a rose garden in her Zoom background, speaking to an audience she could not see about the role of design in a suspended moment marked by uncertainty in a global pandemic. Odell's message, itself a timely reflection on observation, embraces the standstill and its potential to deepen and expand our individual and collective attention and sensitivity to time, place, and presence—in turn, perhaps, enabling us all, amid our “new” virtual contexts, to better connect with our natural and cultural environments.
Odell unspools this hopeful meditation in Inhabiting the Negative Space, where periods of inactivity become reimagined not as wasted time but fertile spaces for a kind of design predicated less on relentless production and more on permitting a deeper, more careful look at what exactly is demanding or tapping our time and attention, and how we might use this strange moment in history to respond.
“Hi, everyone. I'm speaking to you from my apartment in Oakland, though I've virtually placed myself in the rose garden nearby.”
Artist and writer Jenny Odell hadn't originally planned to deliver the Harvard University Graduate School of Design's 2020 Class Day Address from her living room. But on May 25, 2020, there was Jenny, framed by a rose garden in her Zoom background, speaking to an audience she could not see about the role of design in a suspended moment marked by uncertainty in a global pandemic. Odell's message, itself a timely reflection on observation, embraces the standstill and its potential to deepen and expand our individual and collective attention and sensitivity to time, place, and presence—in turn, perhaps, enabling us all, amid our “new” virtual contexts, to better connect with our natural and cultural environments.
Odell unspools this hopeful meditation in Inhabiting the Negative Space, where periods of inactivity become reimagined not as wasted time but fertile spaces for a kind of design predicated less on relentless production and more on permitting a deeper, more careful look at what exactly is demanding or tapping our time and attention, and how we might use this strange moment in history to respond.
68 pages, Paperback
Published August 3, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
December 30, 2021
Jenny Odell is my philosophical lord and savior
January 16, 2023
A little gem of a book that caught my eye at the register and wouldn't let go. Then I didn't even take the rewrapping off for ten months. It's a nice revisit and refresh on Odell's How to Do Nothing, and a good grad talk. Better than the usual cliche books as a grad gift especially for artists. (I'm looking at you, Oh the Places You'll Go and The Boy, the Mole, etc) But since it's not inexpensive and probably not necessary if you've read How to Do Nothing (which is required reading and to have on the permanent shelf) I'll go with 4 rather than 5 stars.
March 4, 2022
Something happens to my brain after I fall deeply in love with a piece of art from any artist. I tell myself I must soak in their entire body of work in order to, I don’t know, better merge DNA strands or something? That means I’m still listening to new Radiohead albums and I watch every Charlie Kaufman movie. Does the strategy pay off? Well, it’s like panning for gold. For every “King of Limbs” there’s an “In Rainbows”, for every “Synecdoche, New York” there’s an “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." The panning for gold phase of following an artist has lows but also gives some of the richest pleasures as the artist (often) fine-tunes their voice and laser focuses on that one exact specific thing they – not “the market” – want to focus on. So that’s kind of why I picked up this Jenny Odell “book.” Book in quotation marks because it’s just the speech transcript for the Commencement Address Jenny gave virtually during covid to the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. This is only for superfans of How To Do Nothing, which I'd highly recommend starting with first.
February 12, 2022
Jenny Odell’s work touches me in a deeply spiritual way.
“…look for the affordances of the moment…observe this moment in all of its detail-in essence, to draw lines around the negative space, and in so doing, see the possibilities that would be otherwise obscured.”
“To understand nothing is to see everything — to have an empty enough mind to observe what is actually there.”
“…look for the affordances of the moment…observe this moment in all of its detail-in essence, to draw lines around the negative space, and in so doing, see the possibilities that would be otherwise obscured.”
“To understand nothing is to see everything — to have an empty enough mind to observe what is actually there.”
April 5, 2024
I really needed to hear “drop the idea of getting it exactly right every time, or ever” and “between stimulus and response there is space”.
November 19, 2022
“remember that even the rocks are moving” :,)
March 2, 2024
“To listen is to stay awake and alive to the world as it is…When someone orchestrates your attention it literally “produces the presence of things in your world that were not there before.”
May 8, 2025
Lovely little read, thank you Ella
Intrigued to read more of Jenny, but loved this as intro, especially the pictures and the geology references
Intrigued to read more of Jenny, but loved this as intro, especially the pictures and the geology references
February 6, 2023
like a cold plunge after 15mins in a sauna. vital, wise, emotional, a place to return to.
July 20, 2025
I’m conflicted. Maybe in a similar way to the political climate upon which this talk was temporally located. Odell is speaking to graduates from a screen. It might as well be a topological mountain top due to technology. She’s speaking on the ideology of doing nothing. This is while the stay at home COVID crowd competes with the itchy business elite and the Black Lives Matter protest types.
This book didn’t have to be a book. But Odell has the kind of innovative mind a David Foster Wallace (who published something similar) had. Which means she’s lucky to be highlighted intellectually for such different ideas, at all. I love how she jokes that taking the gig was based on what it might pay. This is part of the privilege. Yes. Make some money. Acknowledge your priviledge. She probably knows where she stands politically with the richest of them. When you do, shout it out right.
That said, I’m cautious and weary of getting politically bifurcated. On the one hand you have folks like Mario Carpo and Jenny Odell attempting to give Gilles Deleuze his due after all these years. Attempting to apply his philosophy to everyday business culture. And how are you going to appropriate someone so outlandish as that without also acknowledging technology and other shady architecture/design corporations? On the other hand if we’re going to be critical of the government for botching COVID, let’s be consistent in our high ethical expectations of Silicon Valley. Because it’s not just the publicity of federal government propaganda that is echoing.
Odell is innovative in part because she is present. She’s one of those emotionally available leaders we’re all too often unable to find these days. And she’s actually here and now leading the thing. Don’t miss it. She’s making the big speeches in the big moments of eventuality.
She’s aware of the knee jerk reactions to this. And probably how her representation may be used against her. Something we’re all more susceptible to with the territorialization machines attached to our brains. When algorithms decide to reappropriate movements like BLM or feminism, big institutions can really take the wind out of the sails of those whose political meaning was just hijakced.
When BLM is pitted against staying at home, are we going to be able to rise up with the kind of crap the algorithms are feeding our brains? Because if we can’t see through that one then I also get “nervous” about who is carrying on the legacy of folks like Deleuze, Guattari, and Baudrillard. Not because they don’t have the best intentions. More so because none of us is smart enough to outsmart the new forms of machinic reappropriation.
By defending Deleuze in this review I’m at risk of being politically pitted against Odell. When we clearly should be on the same side of history. If I’ve learned anything from Odell’s books it’s that part of doing better is being better. Listening to one another rather than keeping to oneself about it. Understanding the new temporal paradigm takes patience and respect for the companies who are flipping the script. We need to know how to protect our time and our sanity. Reading Deleuze has taught me that just because two ideas appear to be fighting for the same temporal existence doesn’t mean we can’t reposition the pluralist lens to make better sense out of them.
This book didn’t have to be a book. But Odell has the kind of innovative mind a David Foster Wallace (who published something similar) had. Which means she’s lucky to be highlighted intellectually for such different ideas, at all. I love how she jokes that taking the gig was based on what it might pay. This is part of the privilege. Yes. Make some money. Acknowledge your priviledge. She probably knows where she stands politically with the richest of them. When you do, shout it out right.
That said, I’m cautious and weary of getting politically bifurcated. On the one hand you have folks like Mario Carpo and Jenny Odell attempting to give Gilles Deleuze his due after all these years. Attempting to apply his philosophy to everyday business culture. And how are you going to appropriate someone so outlandish as that without also acknowledging technology and other shady architecture/design corporations? On the other hand if we’re going to be critical of the government for botching COVID, let’s be consistent in our high ethical expectations of Silicon Valley. Because it’s not just the publicity of federal government propaganda that is echoing.
Odell is innovative in part because she is present. She’s one of those emotionally available leaders we’re all too often unable to find these days. And she’s actually here and now leading the thing. Don’t miss it. She’s making the big speeches in the big moments of eventuality.
She’s aware of the knee jerk reactions to this. And probably how her representation may be used against her. Something we’re all more susceptible to with the territorialization machines attached to our brains. When algorithms decide to reappropriate movements like BLM or feminism, big institutions can really take the wind out of the sails of those whose political meaning was just hijakced.
When BLM is pitted against staying at home, are we going to be able to rise up with the kind of crap the algorithms are feeding our brains? Because if we can’t see through that one then I also get “nervous” about who is carrying on the legacy of folks like Deleuze, Guattari, and Baudrillard. Not because they don’t have the best intentions. More so because none of us is smart enough to outsmart the new forms of machinic reappropriation.
By defending Deleuze in this review I’m at risk of being politically pitted against Odell. When we clearly should be on the same side of history. If I’ve learned anything from Odell’s books it’s that part of doing better is being better. Listening to one another rather than keeping to oneself about it. Understanding the new temporal paradigm takes patience and respect for the companies who are flipping the script. We need to know how to protect our time and our sanity. Reading Deleuze has taught me that just because two ideas appear to be fighting for the same temporal existence doesn’t mean we can’t reposition the pluralist lens to make better sense out of them.
October 11, 2024
beautiful ❤️
The perfect book for any designer (or person really) in an in between moment. The speech I wish I had at my graduation! A reminder of permission to enjoy time in which not much happens. Perfect for graduates (like me) feeling like they should be constantly accomplishing more.
The perfect book for any designer (or person really) in an in between moment. The speech I wish I had at my graduation! A reminder of permission to enjoy time in which not much happens. Perfect for graduates (like me) feeling like they should be constantly accomplishing more.
December 20, 2023
I'm crazy about Jenny and every word she writes. Just read this for the second time and loved it just as much. ideas for pause, ideas for looking, ideas for chilling the fuck out. Also beautifully designed so...
June 28, 2022
My first and last self-help book (to be read ritually every Monday morning for the next twelve weeks)...what else could I possibly need?
July 8, 2022
I was introduced to Odell's writings with her acclaimed book "How to do Nothing" and have been a fan ever since, so I got this book with my eyes closed.
Here she delivers an important meditation on the role of design and designers to young graduates, expanding on ideas developed in her book.
I especially liked that she invites us to think about the designer as a steward of what already exists rather than a productive force constantly outputting new stuff. Caring can be innovative, too.
The three concrete piece of advice she ends up delivering also resonated a lot with my own experience in the field: 1) be patient, give yourself time to look at and make sense of the world unfolding before jumping in 2) perfection is a mirage, allow yourself to step outside your comfort zone and look at your prejudices 3) do it with others, embrace the fact that conversations with other people will bring surprise and substance to whatever it is you are doing.
Here she delivers an important meditation on the role of design and designers to young graduates, expanding on ideas developed in her book.
I especially liked that she invites us to think about the designer as a steward of what already exists rather than a productive force constantly outputting new stuff. Caring can be innovative, too.
The three concrete piece of advice she ends up delivering also resonated a lot with my own experience in the field: 1) be patient, give yourself time to look at and make sense of the world unfolding before jumping in 2) perfection is a mirage, allow yourself to step outside your comfort zone and look at your prejudices 3) do it with others, embrace the fact that conversations with other people will bring surprise and substance to whatever it is you are doing.
October 6, 2021
In many ways a distillation of How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, this speech is especially resonant in these pandemic/quarantine times. A wonderful reminder of all the things she taught us in her previous book.
January 11, 2025
yearly reread, this time i cried
December 6, 2022
Jenny Odell gave this 2020 Class Day Address at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design during the early phase of the pandemic. Inhabiting the Negative Space is about close looking, reflection and the reminder that the ways that we live in the world take time. I am particularly interested in the means by which Odell layers seemingly disparate subject matter together to reach a space of interconnectedness.
Odell's commentary about Manifest Destiny and her turning it on its head in advocation for a "manifest dismantling" is fascinating. A means by which to reinvent and reimagine through design where we have arrived in our current human situation.
A beautifully designed, small text that I am glad to have on my shelf.
Odell's commentary about Manifest Destiny and her turning it on its head in advocation for a "manifest dismantling" is fascinating. A means by which to reinvent and reimagine through design where we have arrived in our current human situation.
A beautifully designed, small text that I am glad to have on my shelf.
January 20, 2024
One of my favorite authors.
Here are key three tips from the book - paraphrased - as I find them vital words.
A. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Practising patience, is vital. To give ourselves the time.
B. Drop the idea of getting it exactly right every time, if ever. Perfectionism attends an unrealistic view of the ego as a static. Remember that even rocks are moving.
C. Whatever it is you are doing, don’t try to do it alone. Appreciate how much of our thinking happens in conversations with others, in encounters with unexpected ideas and situations.
A gem of a book.
Here are key three tips from the book - paraphrased - as I find them vital words.
A. “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” Practising patience, is vital. To give ourselves the time.
B. Drop the idea of getting it exactly right every time, if ever. Perfectionism attends an unrealistic view of the ego as a static. Remember that even rocks are moving.
C. Whatever it is you are doing, don’t try to do it alone. Appreciate how much of our thinking happens in conversations with others, in encounters with unexpected ideas and situations.
A gem of a book.
June 5, 2024
Brought in cool facts, a kindred spirit. Loved the geology, loved the quote from a friend "being asked about the present is like being asked about falling while you are falling." Felt like someone who couldn't avoid using academic language to philosophize. Some of the musings about the nature of perception lost me in abstraction.
Classic CompLit experience. Smart person starts with a very cool fusion of ideas, ends by petering out into a vague lesson I couldn't repeat in detail 5 minutes later.
I always get the feeling that I'm not willing to meet these kinds of writings halfway. I'm very open to the idea that I didn't do enough intellectual lifting while reading this. I may return someday and be blown away. Time will tell.
Classic CompLit experience. Smart person starts with a very cool fusion of ideas, ends by petering out into a vague lesson I couldn't repeat in detail 5 minutes later.
I always get the feeling that I'm not willing to meet these kinds of writings halfway. I'm very open to the idea that I didn't do enough intellectual lifting while reading this. I may return someday and be blown away. Time will tell.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 20, 2022
This tiny little volume is basically the companion piece to Jenny Odell's brilliant and thought-provoking book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. It contains the text of a keynote address she delivered, complete with visuals. The book is beautifully designed and its themes are important: about resisting the pressure to be endlessly productive so that you can leave space for new insights to emerge. It's as much about living as it is about art-making, in other words.
November 11, 2022
read this before bed last night. didn’t even realize jenny odell writes about the east bay when e&m&s gifted it to me aw! i found it to be less out of touch than i found how to do nothing, but that could just be because of its form/length/audience. i understood the negative space metaphor only so far as it applied to the original figure drawing anecdote and not the pandemic? but think that her advice lands nonetheless. most importantly, this gave me the same feeling as i get in the fossil halls at the museum of natural history—at peace and in awe
May 27, 2024
Lovely, simple and creative.
Sound and sight.
Would be interesting to get a take on taste, smell and touch.
COVID was obviously an unmitigated (and largely unnecessary) disaster, but it gave us this commencement address.
The only one better was John Waters hilarious adieu to RISD grads available in print as Make Trouble.
Available at your local Indy bookstore!
Boycott Amazon!!!!
Sound and sight.
Would be interesting to get a take on taste, smell and touch.
COVID was obviously an unmitigated (and largely unnecessary) disaster, but it gave us this commencement address.
The only one better was John Waters hilarious adieu to RISD grads available in print as Make Trouble.
Available at your local Indy bookstore!
Boycott Amazon!!!!
April 15, 2025
4.5 - a very interesting time to be reading this book as i not only would have been in the graduating class at GSD (had i gone there) but am now facing a deeply unstable country once again as i face graduating with my doctorate within a years time. nice reminder that you never know where your life is headed and of the holistic notion inherent in the idea of your own humanity and to give that notion the gravity it deserves in your moment to moment world. maybe ill get really into birds now.
December 26, 2021
The perfect short read for this moment in the pandemic, Odell builds off of her thinking from “How to Do Nothing” that feels like an appetizer for her next book. The book design is also lovingly handled to compliment the text. Bravo.
August 17, 2021
Thanks Jenny- this helped me out of bad place <3
January 4, 2022
I just love her to pieces.
February 25, 2022
nice short piece that captures a lot of the core ideas from how to do nothing and provokes you to read more
March 16, 2022
This is a beautiful and clear reflection on how to consciously access our present world.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews