pictured here: Black Pudding project logo and the exhibition at Pantar social workshop
Stefanija Najdovska and Jolan van den Wiel of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie designLAB presented their project 'Black Pudding' at the Slow Repair Dialogue 'SLOW CONSUMPTION' on 29 May. Black Pudding is an upcycling project in collaboration with the Pantar social workshop, a clearinghouse for secondhand items the provides people who are out of work with a reason to stay busy, repairing and re-selling unwanted items. Students of the Rietveld designLAB, under the coordination of Sophie Krier, voted democratically to develop this project out of 20 core issues proposed by designLAB students. They worked alongside people at a Pantar recycling plant in Amsterdam, "looking for potential in not obvious items" and re-designing them as new products.
The result was a collection under the name Black Pudding, and the connection with the topic of Repairing is obvious: fixing and upgrading discarded items and thereby extending product life cycles. Less obvious is the impact of working alongside the people at Pantar, which revealed the productive potential of conversation and collaboration with people the students might otherwise never have considered working with.
At slowLab we believe that an important component of shifting toward more sustainable modes of production and consumption will be participatory models for including a broader community in the design process. Given that most design schools teach their students autonomy over collaboration, Black Pudding has given Rietveld students a positive taste of the reality that is to come.
As I was cycling home early this morning, the garbage truck was rumbling down the street, collecting the miscellaneous refuse that residents are allowed to put out on the sidewalk one day per week. I looked up as they passed and notice that one of the workers was holding a small, odd chandelier-like object, with bulbs and bells clustered together. He was examining the object, turning it to view all sides, holding it up the light. Perhaps he was thinking about keeping it for himself? I watched as the truck continued down the street, with the chandelier-thing still holding this man's attention. Then, as they turned the corner, he carelessly tossed the object into the jaws of the truck. The sound of breaking glass confirmed that the object was 'dead,' but I wondered whether it had to have been so.
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