What Does Rest Really Mean?

Available for over a year

Most of us would like more rest – but what exactly is it? Doctors tell us to put our feet up - but Claudia Hammond hears how a boxing poet and composer interpret rest. Over the past two years she’s been working at the Wellcome Collection in London as part of Hubbub – a group of artists, scientists and historians – examining the topic of rest. Hubbub’s leader, Professor Felicity Callard from Durham University, muses over rest’s relationship to activity. Some believe that life is a cycle between activity and passivity – rest always has to make you better at being active. Dr Ayesha Nathoo from Exeter University studies how rest became a technical skill which needed to be taught in the early-twentieth century. Composer Antonia Barnett-McIntosh wrote a piece for flautist Ilze Iks called “Breath” – an exploration of the musical term “rest”, when a musician pauses to inhale or exhale. Novels often use activity to drive plot: rest has been largely neglected except in rare examples like Bartleby the Scrivener who decides to make rest a way of life. Boxing poet Steve Fowler rests by sparring. He says his mind can’t rest until his body is tired out – and it makes him a nicer person. (Photo caption: A man sleeps in a hammock close to the beach in the commune of Anse-a-Pitres, Haiti © HECTOR RETAMAL/AFP/Getty Images)