The Art of Unlearning: Rediscovering Joy in Creative Practice

This chapter delves into the idea of unlearning as essential to fostering creativity, focusing on the joy of the creative process over specific outcomes. It emphasizes the value of engaging in simple, personal activities that can lead to fulfillment and a liberating creative flow.

Transcript

chevron_right

Play full episode

chevron_right

Transcript

Episode notes

When a pandemic book report becomes a four-year creative practice, it reveals how making something "pointless" by hand might be the most radical act of resistance in our optimized world.

Christie George never meant to become an artist. But when she started scribbling quotes from Jenny Odell's "How to Do Nothing" during lockdown, something unexpected happened: a simple reading practice transformed into 200 handmade pages, an exhibition, and a movement helping others memorialize their pandemic experiences.

In this conversation, Christie reveals why she ships her books one by one to people she knows, refuses to optimize for scale, and receives weekly Google Docs from strangers sharing their own creative journeys. Igor and Johannes explore how her deliberately inefficient approach challenges everything we think we know about creativity, success, and authentic connection in the digital age.

From the politics of pandemic memory to why "practice" deserves to lose its pretentious air quotes, this episode unpacks how individual acts of creative resistance can model new ways of being human. Christie's comparison of her art practice to a golf hobby brilliantly reframes what it means to spend time on something with "no point"—and why that might be exactly the point.

Whether you're seeking permission to start your own creative practice, wondering how to maintain authenticity in an algorithmic world, or simply curious about alternative models for sharing work, this conversation offers both inspiration and practical insights. Sometimes the most powerful response to a world demanding optimization is to handwrite 500 addresses.

Chapters:

00:01 - Introduction & The Power of Long Emails

02:19 - Who Is Christie George?

03:28 - From Quotes to 200 Pages: The Illustrated Book Report

08:56 - Reclaiming “Practice” Without Pretension

11:04 - What Does the Practice Actually Look Like?

15:08 - The Politics of Pandemic Memory

18:22 - Book Reports as Cultural Exchange

21:34 - Everyone's Experience Deserves Memorialization

25:02 - Beyond Reviewing: The Rashomon Effect

29:13 - Curating Your Own Taste vs. The Anointed Books

30:50 - The Great Unlearning Project