SLOW CONSUMPTION > Re-imagining Material Interactions

pictured, clockwise from top left: Arlene Birt, 'Background Stories' sketch; Maria Blaisse, 'Bamboo moving meshes'; Monika Hoinkis, 'Living With Things'; Martin Ruiz de Azua, 'Human Chair.'


The weather was glorious and tempting on Friday evening, resulting in a more intimate group of 10 who gathered inside at Platform21 for the Slow Repair Dialogue, SLOW CONSUMPTION. The group represented a range countries (Netherlands, US, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Italy, and South Korea), bringing their diverse backgrounds to bear on the gathering.

After introductions and sips of wine, slowlab director Carolyn Strauss began with the assertion that SLOW CONSUMPTION looks beyond the everyday use of products to re-imagine material interactions. This includes addressing the larger flows that those products are part of, like consumption behaviors and motivations, imbedded cultural expectations, and local vs. global production models.

She showed the work of a handful of designers that challenge contemporary notions of consumption. Arlene Birt's ongoing project, 'Background Stories' upgrades product packaging to reveal the whole story behind the product. Judith van den Boom's social collaborations in China offer a slower approach to widely-accepted manufacturing practices by developing 'warm relationships' with the Chinese factories and workers who help make her products. Martin Ruiz de Azua's Human Chair questions whether material goods are always the best way to fulfill our needs.

Carolyn ended with the work of designer and materials innovator Maria Blaisse (NL), focusing on her most recent project Bamboo 'moving meshes' where flexible bamboo structures in intersection with human bodies enable us to envision more symbiotic relationships with the built environment. Blaisse contributed her poem, Vouwblad 5 (2008), for the consideration of our group:

"form forms forms
embedded in the material, the form reveals itself
to experience the freedom of not giving a name to things
to see what emerges from one form
inciting the flow of continuous creation "

Blaisse calls it a poem "to visualize that when one really takes care of all aspects of designing it will cause an energy that is connecting and creating coherence in architecture, fashion, products, music, dance... Repair will be natural and no one will every throw away the form." It's something like what slowLab network member Stuart Walker has coined 'evolving permanence,' and it's an idea that seems worthy of further reflection.