Hosted by AEIOU and Sometimes Y (Anti-Efficiency Initiative Outreach Union, Sometimes Yielding Out-of-the-Box Uncomfortable Situations)
Take a step back from the attention-draining rush of daily life to be anti-efficient. AEIOU invites you to slow down and connect with your fellow humans.
Logo created by Yiner Xu
Hosted by AEIOU and Sometimes Y (Anti-Efficiency Initiative Outreach Union, Sometimes Yielding Out-of-the-Box Uncomfortable Situations)
Take a step back from the attention-draining rush of daily life to be anti-efficient. AEIOU invites you to slow down and connect with your fellow humans.
Logo created by Yiner Xu
Hosted by AEIOU and Sometimes Y (Anti-Efficiency Initiative Outreach Union, Sometimes Yielding Out-of-the-Box Uncomfortable Situations)
Take a step back from the attention-draining rush of daily life to be anti-efficient. AEIOU invites you to slow down and connect with your fellow humans.
Logo created by Yiner Xu
Hosted by AEIOU and Sometimes Y (Anti-Efficiency Initiative Outreach Union, Sometimes Yielding Out-of-the-Box Uncomfortable Situations)
Take a step back from the attention-draining rush of daily life to be anti-efficient. AEIOU invites you to slow down and connect with your fellow humans.
Logo created by Yiner Xu
Hosted by AEIOU and Sometimes Y (Anti-Efficiency Initiative Outreach Union, Sometimes Yielding Out-of-the-Box Uncomfortable Situations)
Take a step back from the attention-draining rush of daily life to be anti-efficient. AEIOU invites you to slow down and connect with your fellow humans.
Hosted by AEIOU and Sometimes Y (Anti-Efficiency Initiative Outreach Union, Sometimes Yielding Out-of-the-Box Uncomfortable Situations)
Take a step back from the attention-draining rush of daily life to be anti-efficient. AEIOU invites you to slow down and connect with your fellow humans.
February 28 and March 1 // A Funeral for Tiny Losses at the MIT Chapel: We take time for the big losses, but we should also honor the little things we’ve lost along the way—canceled proms and holidays, misplaced keepsakes, and unmet plans. Come participate in a ritual meant to say goodbye to those tiny losses.
March 7 // Drawing Face to Face in the Design Studio in W97: Inspired by the work of 2025 McDermott award recipient Es Devlin, join us for a face-to-face drawing studio.
March 13 // Arts and Crafts at MIT Museum: AEIOU teams up with the MIT museum to host an After Dark Arts and Crafts night. Turn your old career fair shirt into a throw pillow or a tote bag. Rip up those old p-sets to turn it into a paper-mâché masterpiece.
Obsession with efficiency is strangling our community—the washing away of what it means to be a student, now separated from humanity. Bathing with the firehose of academia, drowning in what it means to be efficient.
“Do,” but at what cost? Do the p-set, land the internship, get the job done.
Meanwhile, we’re doing away with our culture. Sterility in every hallway, every lab. Replace the banisters with steel. Don’t paint on the walls. Don’t express what it means to live.
Anti-efficiency is healing.
It provides space for contemplation, introspection, meditation, and mindfulness. In a world of constant media and noise, anti-efficiency connects us to ourselves and each other.
Take a walk, hang out with your friends, meander to find the best breakfast sandwich in town—sure, you could drive to get an Egg-McMuffin at the nearest McDonald’s, but why?
The only reason to do anything efficiently is to get back to the important, life-affirming work of being delightfully inefficient, prioritizing the unnecessary needs of every living moment: those sweet treats, that long walk, that late night talk. So, we remember what it means to be human.
What if we valued care over innovation?
What if we valued the journey over the destination?
What if we valued silence over noise?
What if we valued rest over the grind?
What if we valued stillness over speed?
What if we valued space over stuff?
What if we valued ourselves over the investor?
We would value anti-efficiency.
Yours in Dignity,
AEIOU and sometimes Y
AEIOU and Sometimes Y is the result of a semester-long study by artists who blur the line between life and art. Its founding members are Verose Agbing, Porter Bowen, Sara Brown, Kyle Pratt, and Yiner Xu.
MIT Music & Theater Arts invites its students to explore artistic disciplines as cultural, intellectual, and personal avenues of inquiry, discovery, and innovation.
MIT is committed to providing an environment that is accessible to individuals with disabilities. View the Accessibility Web App, designed for the MIT community to view accessible routes across the MIT campus. Please contact the event organizer directly for specific accessibility information or to discuss your needs.
