Redefining Work: An Interview with Andalusia Knoll

By Matt Dineen

What does it mean to not work in a capitalist society? With so much social emphasis put on our jobs or “what we do” for a living people who do not work, in the traditional sense of the term, are seen as outcasts or slackers. But what about people who are redefining the work ethic, who are living their lives in ways that do not require a wage job? “In an industrial society which confuses work and productivity the necessity of producing has always been an enemy of the desire to create,” Raoul Vaneigm declared in The Revolution of Everyday Life. “The imperatives of production are the imperatives of survival; from now on people want to live, not just survive.”

Andalusia Knoll is a Pittsburgh-based activist who is following her “desire to create” and to live by not working a traditional job. Although she does not “work” she is busy with lots of vibrant projects. I spoke with Andalusia about her job-free life, consumption, and the significance of place on one’s lifestyle at last year’s National Conference on Organized Resistance (NCOR) in Washington DC.

You haven’t worked in the past few years. Could talk about that decision and about the kind of lifestyle you live as someone who doesn’t work a regular job?

Well, I’ve only worked really short-time jobs and I guess I’ve been able to structure my life in a way that I don’t need that much money. There’s a lot of ways you can find to get out of expensive rent situations. Like I used to live in New York City, and I don’t think this is actually an ideal one but, I lived way too many people in a small apartment and only paid $75 rent. So I didn’t have a job and I dumpstered my food and then was able to whatever projects I wanted. I guess I got into doing things like this because there is a culture of punk-traveler-squatter people. The downwardly mobile (Laughs). A lot of people who come from more privileged backgrounds and have rejected that to survive off as little money as possible.

In recent years I have been able to make it more sustainable. I moved to Pittsburgh which is a city that’s really fucking cheap. If you pay rent, no one pays more than $200. When I first moved there I was paying $100 and it’s not hard to make $100.

Per month?

Right, per month. There are psychology studies and little things that if I had to make the hundred dollars I’d do. I could do like five of these two hour studies or do a survey or something and I’d make that money. Or even random things, like once someone needed me to go on this boat trip of an environmental, sustainable tour of the river and then transcribe it and I got paid a hundred something dollars for that. I think it’s just knowing that you make money somehow, figure out little odd jobs and you can get paid for them. If you do one a month and your rent’s cheap, it’s gonna pay your rent. And I lived down the street from a store that once a week would throw away all their produce so I got all my food there once a week. And I ride my bike everywhere so I don’t have to pay for car insurance and gas or whatever. I mean, I’ve had jobs that I never really liked all that much even if they were interesting. I worked for this Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility and I worked on genetic engineering issues and that was interesting but, you know, it’s a job. I was just able to structure my life in a way that I could have as much free-time as I want and not have an official job.

One thing that’s happened is that I essentially have a job I just don’t get paid for it. I help run a recycled bike cooperative and through that I’ve been able to get really awesome jobs that have been for 6 weeks part-time. One year I got a job that was actually riding the bus around with my bicycle to promote the bicycle racks they had just installed. So kind of through volunteering somewhere I was able to get this really sweet job that paid $10 an hour to sit on the bus and do nothing. Then the next year I got another job that was just as good, also for 6 weeks and also part-time, counting to see if kids wore their bike helmets—just sitting on street corners counting that. Those were the little things that I was able to do to make the $100 for rent.

And you could live off the money from those jobs for a while.

Right, I could live off that for a really long time. Actually—this is kind of ridiculous—one year I went to Mexico and the Middle East twice and paid rent for half the year and I only spent $1,000 the whole year.
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To read this interview in its entirety check out Toward Freedom.