A Decade of Rest
speculative TV episode, diagetic prototyping
Vienna, 2024
How could it look like, if Austria prioritized well-being over profit?
PROJECT BY
WRITING & DIRECTION
CAST
CAMERA & SOUND
PROP DESIGN
Angela Ying Neubauer
Angela Ying Neubauer
Oliver Schluschanek
Valerie Hagmann
Horst Lenes
Benjamin Posselt
Leo Mühlfeld
Angela Ying Neubauer
Selma Mühlbauer
Initiated at Design Investigations, University of Applied Arts Vienna
How does a hopeful future even look like? Is it still possible to imagine one that feels genuinely inspiring? A Decade of Rest is an attempt to respond to these questions, culminating in a fictional TV episode set in an alternative present-day Austria.
The premise takes the Covid-19 pandemic as a turning point: a moment that prompts a radical reordering of priorities, placing care work and the climate at the center of political life. Certain industries are slowed or stopped, while people, communities, and landscapes are given space to recover. This period becomes known as the „decade of rest.“
The fictional TV series „Conversations on the Shift“ follows three people from different backgrounds reflecting on how life has changed. Slow-paced and quietly observed, it captures the texture of this alternative Austria through its compromises, its humor, and the details of a society trying to do things differently.
The project acts as a provocation to our current relationship with the present and future, sitting with questions of labor, value, and what it might mean to genuinely rest.
As an antithesis to the ever-accelerating, loud and dystopian future depictions making us feel powerless about shaping our world for the better, it’s illustrating one that is slow and subtle, contributing to push more positive, utopian futures into the spotlight.
The times are urgent - let us slow down.
- Dr. Bayo Akomolafe