This workshop, called Shame: Wasting Time, focuses on the feeling of Time Shame. It draws on Sara Ahmed’s theory to understand time shame as an emotion produced and internalised through social norms, rather than a personal failure. It also combines Walter Benjamin’s idea of “slowing down” as a response to accelerated temporal logics.

The workshop uses a structure of rapid questioning, short guided meditation, and sand painting. Its core aim is to externalise and visualise personal experiences of time shame, and to turn them into a shared experience that can be collectively observed and discussed.

The process has four steps. First, rapid questioning, where participants recall concrete situations and feelings of time shame, returning to lived experience. Second, guided meditation, focusing on bodily sensations and emotions, creating a safe space, and helping shift from self-blame to structural understanding. Third, sand painting, which externalises shame into a non-verbal visual form. Finally, collective display, where shared viewing and discussion help reduce individual shame.

 

Why is this effective? First, shame becomes visible — it moves from something internal to something that can be seen and shared, following Ahmed’s idea that shame is not only personal failure. Second, the clear steps reduce overthinking, and the slow pace of meditation and sand painting supports “slowing down”, echoing Benjamin. Third, meditation helps create a safe space for calm attention and self-awareness. Finally, sharing reduces embarrassment and shows time shame as a common social feeling.

What impressed me most is that simple steps and hands-on making turn time shame into a visible and discussable group experience, helping participants reframe it from a sociological perspective, and see how social pressure and personal feelings are connected.

I began to reflect on the connection between this workshop and my own research theme, and how it might inform my next steps in practice and investigation, I started to consider whether emotions can be treated as symbols that can be extracted and translated.

• How can bodily sensations and emotional labour be transformed into forms, traces, or visual marks?
• How can theory directly shape methods and structures, rather than only explaining the work afterward?
• How can personal emotional experiences be connected to social norms through visual and material practice?
• In repetitive and hands-on processes, how can suppressed or negative emotions be shared in a safe way?