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The Immaterialist

resilient living in a limitless world

March 13, 2018September 5, 2019

What is aesthetic sustainability?

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed about aesthetic sustainability by Sustain Daily as a part of their crowdfunding campaign for their magazine Sustain Yearly. I am very pleased that the magazine is now a reality – you can order it here

The full interview can be seen here – hope you will enjoy!

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Posted in aesthetic sustainability, aestheticsTagged aesthetic sustainability, aesthetics, sustainability, sustainable behaviour, sustainable design, sustainablefashion, sustainablelivingBy khharperLeave a comment

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I am in the process of writing a new book with the working title Uncultivated. And, today I wrote about an experience I had recently when visiting my friends in North Bali; an experience that involved a young widower, a motherless child and a shaman. I will write more on the blog soon.

"Whilst my adventures into mycelium weren’t particularly productive it made me look at materials in a new way and when I came across willow root, growing underwater in my local river, I became interested in its binding qualities. It seemed root had similarities to mycelium, and I wondered if I could grow textiles or materials with it.

"Innovative design solutions created with the purpose of encouraging sustainable living often require massive material and technological research and development, which initially makes the outcome costlier than conventional products. However, democratizing sustainability doesn’t only involve simplifying, streamlining, and optimizing sustainable solutions in order to make them affordable for the masses, though this process is obviously a part of the goal. It also requires a change in habitual consumption, as well as an alteration of the societal approach to material use and product design. As long as mindless consumption of trend-based goods still symbolizes being well off, as long as well-dressed still means wearing a new outfit at every festive occasion and discarding garments with the slightest sign of wear, and as long as shopping is viewed as a reward for long work hours, creating sustainable design solutions that encourage reducing consumption, that challenge use-and-throw-away-habits, and that incorporate unconventional materials and upcycled waste is not solely linked to affordability. As long as waste materials connote something contaminated, cast-off, and worn out, convincing the common consumer to accept this as a solid building resource or as an aesthetically pleasing interior material will be challenging. This is why initial statement pieces and courageous first movers can be of great importance in the overall alternation of consumption-patterns. Despite the fact that sustainable solutions must be democratic in order to have a real impact, an exclusive, flashy, extravagant starting point— like the ceiling made by BYO Living for extravagant Potato Head Bali—might be a way to create awareness and open-mindedness."

Sustainable, simple living should be synonymous with resilience. There is nothing healthy, balanced, or resilient about the occasional “sugar-rush” in the shape of consumer-ventures or luxury holidays—which are needed in order to survive one’s stressful, busy daily life. I would even go as far as to rename the sustainable way of life—known as slow living or simple living—resilient living. The majority of the connotations currently linked to simple living are too lifeless and too monotonous to be inspiring and to contain longevity. Resilience connotes robustness, flexibility, adaptability, and strength, which are much more convincing and suggestive terms than those linked to simple living. Furthermore, being resilient can involve seeking the golden mean in one’s life—in the Aristotelian sense of the term—pursuing a balance between too much and too little. Living simply in the resilient sense of the term does not mean living in asceticism or self-denial, or, of course, not living in decadence. It involves finding a balance between extremes and being adaptable when necessary.

New article at The Immaterialist Blog acompanied by photos of incredible Boro creations by @vintagecustoman💙

The trendy design-object is made to develop from being new, shiny, and attractive at its peak—when it is brand-new and freshly acquired by the consumer—to slowly, or perhaps very quickly, being experienced as unattractive and obsolete. That is the mechanism that makes the wheels of consumption spin. The trendy design-object is linear: it moves from a starting point to an endpoint, and this development is designed to be a downgrade. A trendy dress, pair of shoes, piece of furniture or toy is premeditated to be consumed—to have all its nutrients sucked out of it and provide the user with a quick burst of energy, and then to be discarded or expelled.

Sustainable living and consumption should be affordable and accessible, as well as the norm. When designing to encourage sustainable, resilient living, one must focus on mass-encouragement, and not only on creating sustainable solutions for the fortunate few. Encouraging an elite of well-informed, well-off people to live sustainably and to invest in long-lasting, aesthetically sustainable products simply won’t be enough to turn around the disastrous direction we are headed environmentally at the moment, and only adds to increasing inequality and discrimination

We live in a visual world, and we are, as a part of our upbringing and education, taught to focus on and describe the visual nature of things—often linked to the rational overview—and to share the “picture-perfectness” of our experiences. Therefore, beauty is often connected with surface spectacle rather than with the texture and the feeling of the object or phenomena. But aesthetic experiences concern more than visuality. The word aesthetics is derived from the Greek word aisthetikos, meaning sense perception; the word originally meant much more than a visual apprehension of the world. An aesthetic experience is partly a visual experience, but it is also a tactile and an aural or an atmospheric experience, as well as a taste and sound experience. And these qualities are prerequisites for the aesthetic experience’s “ability” to make us feel at home in the world: when we are sensorially aware and present, we realize that we are in fact one with our surroundings. When we breathe in the air, it becomes a part of us, and when we breathe out, we become a part of our environment. As a part of the aesthetic experience this insight and this interconnectivity is intuitive and instinctual.

I am honoured to be the keynote speaker at this very important symposium on responsible fashion organised by Istituto Marangoni London.

"We come from far away, from terrifying beauty, for a newborn child who opens its eyes for the first time is like a star, is like a sun, but we live our lives amid pettiness and stupidity, in the world of burned hot dogs and wobbly camping tables. The great and terrifying beauty does not abandon us, it is there all the time, in everything that is always the same, in the sun and the stars, in the bonfire and the darkness, in the blue carpet of flowers beneath the tree. It is of no use to us, it is too big for us, but we can look at it, and we can bow before it."

How can we legitimize designing new things in a world with way too many unwanted things and product waste?

A couple of weeks ago I was driving through the clouds in the mountains of North Bali. It was magical. The light, the colours, the scents. So beautiful it almost hurt. And I stopped to take some photos and to take it all in... Only to find the mountain side covered in trash and a man digging through it all. I spoke to him. He was devastated: I am trying to find something with a name on it, so that I can hold whoever threw this here accountable, he said. And he continued by telling that afterwards he would clean it all up, because if he didn't he knew from experience that others would throw their trash there too. It seems as if, he said, once a place is polluted people think that then they might as well use it as a dumpster.

"It's well known, B said, that every piece of hand-woven cloth has an element of magic in it, which is the special magic of its weaver. This magic doesn't necessarily die with the individual weaver but rather can be passed on from generation to generation and shared among families and even whole nations, so that one who is sensitive to such things can tell in a moment whether a piece of cloth was woven in Ireland or France or Virginia or Bavaria." (or Sudaji)

"Change is natural. Change is one of the only thing we can be certain of: we change constantly; our moods, feelings, and bodies change – change is a part of life and of our everyday existence. Like my son put it: I change over time. And I can only say that yes, he does! And that fighting that change would be like fighting the natural flow of a river and the waves in the sea."

"Living green and sustainably tends to connote reducing one’s usage of natural resources by altering one’s ways of transportation, flying less, eating less meat (or maybe none), shopping less (or maybe mainly buying second-hand items), making use of sustainable energy sources like solar power, etc. It is also associated with recycling waste, with reusing product-packaging and cast-off things, and with consuming ecological goods. However, sustainable living can also more abstractly mean living a life that is worthwhile and justifiable. And consequently, an existentialist as well as an ethical dimension is added to the idea of living sustainably: considerations about living a life that one can sustain and endure, a life that doesn’t “wear thin,” a life that one can justify living. In other words, sustainable living can go beyond concrete sustainable efforts and involve reflections on the meaningful and authentic life."

Sustainable design is many things! So many that it tends to be an abstract and diluted concept. Does it mean designing products from sustainable materials? Does it involve circularity? Sustainability certifications? Biodegradability? Longevity? Crafts? Zero waste? Or does it mean social responsibility? Upcycling.. ? Therefore, putting words on how one engages in sustainability is crucial when working as a sustainable designer.

Magical ✨ Every time we visit our lovely friends up here in lush north Bali the house project has taken a quantum leap. The roof is beautiful! It is a traditional sirap roof made of ironwood tiles. What fascinates me the most about the house is that everything is handmade! Everything! It is truly charged with time and skill.

I will be talking about both Aesthetic Sustainability and Anti-trend tomorrow at the @ubudwritersfest 🌱

My youngest son is teaching me how to draw a beetle eating monster with claws. At first I wasn't sure what it was, but he explained - slightly annoyed - and now I am paying attention and concentrating like a good student.

In my perspective one of the most important and vital ways of overcoming and turning around the immense environmental problems we are currently facing worldwide is radical reduction of consumption. When I write consumption, I mean it in the most straightforward sense of the word: buying too many things and going through and getting rid of them again way too quickly. The fashion industry alone emits more carbon than international flights and maritime shipping combined, and in addition hereto, think about the production and consumption of furniture, home accessories, toys, and other knick-knacks. However, despite the fact that altering our habitual consumer ways might sound easy, it ap- pears to be unbelievably hard. Even though we are bombarded with horrific and very tangible scenarios involving starving polar bears, whales with plastic-filled stomachs, and burning rivers, and even though these images are presented as interlinked with overconsumption, we continue to shop and we continue to discard the majority of our belongings way before they don’t work anymore or are worn out, and hence we continue to add to the mountains and islands of trash that are building up in land- fills and in oceans. Why? Because we are evil? No, of course not. Rather, the reason could be partly interlinked with an increasing detachment from our physical, natural environment and partly with the fact that habits are hard to change, particularly when engulfed in a busy daily routine. Furthermore, our lack of sustainable action is likely connected to the fact that status symbols are to an extent associated with new, glittery things, and to the constant craving for more that seems to govern our late-modern minds and societies, as well as to the despair that this entails.

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