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The Immaterialist

resilient living in a limitless world

Tag: anticonsumption

January 18, 2022

Anti-trend, Resilient Design and the Art of Sustainable Living

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January 5, 2022January 6, 2022

Designing new objects in a world with way too many things

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November 18, 2021April 27, 2022

What does sustainability mean?

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“We are condemned to freedom”, said the French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. We are responsible for everything we do, and it is up to us to give our lives meaning.

At the moment I am having lots of conversations like these with my youngest son Severin:

In his philosophical enquiry on the Sublime and Beautiful from 1757, English philosopher Edmund Burke connects the sublime to vast, redoubtable, sensory stimulating experiences. Burke unfolds a scene in order to describe the sublime aesthetic in which a wanderer, after reaching the top of a steep mountainside and experiencing a glorious, breathtaking view, is faced with a threatening storm that moves in fast. The wanderer seeks refuge in a cave, from which he can safely observe the storm unfolding with heavy rain, hail, and lighting. The wanderer feels frightened and paralyzed. However, suddenly, the threat seems to dissipate. He realizes that he is not actually in any physical danger; he is sheltered by the cave, and the storm will eventually pass. And suddenly, instead of alarming, the power of nature seems fascinating and beautiful. Smells, sounds, and sights are intensified by the shift in mood. By letting go of fear and the need for control, and allowing himself to be sensuously present, here and now, the wanderer is blessed with a beautiful experience that engages all senses.

The front page of the Anti-trend report I just created in collaboration with @pejgruppen 💜

I had lunch with amazing @frejaloewe last week in Ubud and was thrilled to hear how well her little one-woman textile design business is going 🧡

I am investigating the concept of cultivation at the moment as a part of my new book project with the working title Uncultivated. And I can feel that my focus tends to turn towards cultivation as something limiting and confining. As the antithesis to freedom and rewilding.

"In a few of my previous posts I have shared extracts from my new Uncultivated book project. The book is built around negations of what I have chosen to call “the ten commandments of cultivation”. The intention herewith is to challenge taken-for-granted cultural and societal “truths” and assumptions and to promote a rewilding of the cultivated human being.

Yesterday I went to a horrific animal market with my son on a "rescue the hamsters mission" (and we did get out of there with a couple of little fluffies that he has now named Rosella and Sky and built a mansion). Anyway; the experience was to saddening - as expected. Endangered colourful birds in small cages stuck in the scorching sun, rodents of all sorts in cages so small that they were forced to lay in layers, huge monitor lizards in small cages that didn't even allow for them to fully stretch, eremite craps in shells that had been coloured and decorated making them look like some kind of surreal moving candy.... We walked through quickly, so I didn't see anymore. But I have heard that they sell baby monkeys there too. You might ask: why would we go to a place like that? And I didn't feel sure either when we walked through there, feeling the absurdity and violation in our core. But just because we don't look, just because we don't face the uncomfortable and the ugliness, it doesn't make it disappear. Sometimes we need to know exactly what is going on. And, I needed my son to see. He asked me: why don't we just buy all these beautiful birds and set them free? And I felt his need to do something. But if we would do that we would just be causing more birds to be caught, more of this absurd sense of human superiority to take place. I explained this to him. But then what can we do, mum? he asked me with desperation. And I didn't have an answer.

The sublime. The big, overwhelming beauty-experience that throws you off course and simultaneously grounds you.

I recently met an elderly man who told me of the beautiful country where he had spent the past 20 years of his life. He told me about the mountains, the beaches, the valleys and the rivers; the almost excruciating beauty. He painted pictures with his words. I could almost smell the wind that carried the gus of the sea to the green valley where his two storey creaking house was located.

"And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair."

Anti-trendy living is besides slowness and reduced consumption interlinked with resilience. Resilience is often connected to ecosystems and permaculture. Ecological resilience refers to the ability of an ecosystem to respond to and recover from damage, disturbance or homogenization (often human led). The most resilient being; animal, plant - or human being for that matter - is a flexible, adjustable being. Simply put, if one is able to adjust to one’s environment; to get the most out of the nutrition available, regulate according to weather conditions, adapt to customs, enter communities, or if one can be both bendable and robust, well, then one is more likely to endure and thrive than if one is unbendable and stagnant. Resilience can furthermore involve seeking the golden mean in one’s life - in the Aristotelian sense of the term - and hence pursuing a balance between too much and too little. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle is known for having said that you should behave in life as you would at a banquet; you should rise therefrom neither thirsty nor drunken. Living virtuously and authentically involves balancing between two extremes; between excess and deficiency. For example, the virtue of courage is a balancing act between recklessness and cowardice, and ambition between greed and sloth. In line herewith, living an anti-trendy life does not mean leaving society entirely and going off-grid, as this would be defined as deficiency, whereas over-consumption is excess. Or put differently; anti-trendy living is not the equivalent of living in asceticism or self-denial, as does it of course not include decadence. It involves finding a balance between extremes and being adaptable when necessary.

Ever since I first heard the term “the sublime” as opposed to “the beautiful” when I studied Art History many, many years ago I have been mesmerized by the term. It is synonymous to darkness, crookedness, decay, chaos, unpredictability, shapelessness, asymmetry and even hideousness. But, the sublime experience is an aesthetic experience, and an aesthetic experience is per definition nourishing or somehow enjoyable or arousing. Despite the seemingly negative connotations attached to the sublime, it is considered in many philosophical writings on the topic as the most elevating aesthetic experience one can have. It is complex, and can be a seminal turning point. I know the feeling so well. The most intense beauty experiences are not characterized by harmony and comfort. No. They are powerful and profound - and maybe even a little bit scary.

I have just put the finishing touches on an anti-trend report for a Danish trend agency. This task was very special to me; the thought of creating an anti-trend report is in itself refreshing and says a lot about the readiness for change in our time - and I had to really dive deep into a concretisation and clarification of what I mean when I say anti-trend.

The many small villages in the mountains and valleys and on the coasts of Bali are the core of the island. Yesterday we visited our friends in their beautiful village. They run a coffee plantation here and we went for a walk through the stunning landscape while the sky was slowly changing from dark grey to radiant blue 💙 thank you @nungkigiri

Obsessed with this landscape: the shadows of the mountains overlapping each other and the crisp green amphitheater of rice fields in front. Bali you are such a show off!

Painfully beautiful ❤️

New post at The Immaterialist blog 💙 Interlinked with the conversation I had with @liinaklauss last Friday at our combined film premiere and book launch.

At the combined book launch and film premiere Friday at @thebridge.greenschool I started by reading the introduction to my new book Anti-trend:

My beautiful partners in crime 🌸

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