In the face of the speed, productivity, and spectacle of the capitalist world, the work of Laura Aranda Lavado invites us to embrace a slower, more conscious, and contemplative rhythm. Inspired by The Contemplative Life by Byung-Chul Han, Aranda’s research does not understand inactivity as the absence of action, but as a form of resistance and the reappropriation of time.

The project gathers a series of everyday, professional, and user-generated images sourced from the Granollers Municipal Archive. Scenes of play, community, and freedom that escape the logic of productivity make us question how we prioritize the value of some historical documents over others. Furthermore, one of these images has been translated into textile language through crochet, a gesture that transforms the photograph into a manual, fragmentary process and highlights how the image can also serve as a means of constructing a narrative open to reinterpretation.