Laura Böök: Break Room

A break stretches on or is cut short. It fades into work, is lost in the rush, and keeps slipping further away. For some, a break is permission to sit down and have a rest. For some, it is an opportunity to get up and stretch for a moment. Sometimes, a break means lifting your gaze from the screen to the scenery, looking into space, or getting lost in animal videos – you are here, but not present.

The documentary short film Room for a Break (2025, duration 27 min) depicts breaks in a think tank, construction site container, museum, and midwife break room, among others. In the video, a break expands into a question of space and time: who can take a break in today’s work life, in what kind of settings are breaks taken, and who decides on breaks?

Created in collaboration with artist and architect Liisa Ryynänen, the installation brings a piece of an open-plan office into the exhibition space. The acoustically treated booth is designed for meetings as well as for resting and retreating. According to the ideals of modern work, it is flexible and adaptable, blurring the boundary between work and break. The meeting booth’s sofas invite the exhibition visitor to stay for a moment and read the exhibition texts that address care work, avoiding work, and breaks in urban space. The texts are written by Juho Narsakka, Katariina Yli-Malmi, Vilja Saarinen, and Hami Kuurtamo. The sound design is by Kirsi Korhonen.

Laura Böök (b.1986) is a Helsinki-based artist who works with moving image, photography, and text. Everyday life, apparent dullness, and making the ordinary strange fascinate her as starting points for artistic work. Her works have been on display at the Photographic Gallery Hippolyte and the Finnish Museum of Photography in Helsinki, the Mältinranta Artcenter in Tampere, and in various international group exhibitions. Böök graduated from the Aalto University with an MA in photography in 2020.