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The Immaterialist

resilient living in a limitless world

Tag: gratitude

June 15, 2020June 25, 2020

Interview #5: local sustainability hero Zanzan

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March 24, 2020September 23, 2020

Collaborative consumption: swapping, sharing and repairing

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August 8, 2019August 15, 2020

Travelling, and thoughts on what it means to feel at home

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January 24, 2019January 25, 2019

Homeliness

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October 11, 2018October 11, 2018

What I miss…

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September 4, 2018

Drop everything and read

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August 29, 2018March 22, 2021

Walden, jungle style

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July 23, 2018July 23, 2018

Tasty colours

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Downscaling

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My dear Putu is representing our sustainable start-up @alamanda_sudaji_bali right now at the Sunset Market at Azul Beach Club in Legian Kuta 🌴❤️ if you're in Bali, come by! 🙏 #alamanda #theimmaterialist #alamandasudajibali #womenempowerment #craftstradition #endangeredcrafts #crafting #weaving #naturaldye #handloom #traditionalpattern #supportartisans #supportdyingcrafts #supportsmallbusiness #supportmothers #sustainability #sustainablefashion #sustainableliving #slowfashion #ethicalfashion #slowdesign #love #loveinaction #reduce #reducereuserecycle #supportlocal #women #localwomen #aesthetics #aestheticsustainability

Formkraft, Danish Crafts & Design Association’s archive and new magazine is now available in English! The theme for the first edition of the online magazine is Durabilty. I have written an article about celebrating the raw and changeable: "The raw design object is a ‘rewilded’ design object. Rewilding is typically used in connection with the re-establishment of ecosystems in nature, like an act of rewinding the process in a transition from cultivated nature to wild nature. Creating raw objects has a similar character." Photo of Jonas Edvard's rewilded, raw MYX Chair. #theimmaterislist #rewild #rewilding #raw #antitrend #sustainable #sustainability #sustainabledesign #aestheticsustainability #aestheticnourisment #openness #jonasedvard #formkraft #designobject #designstrategy #degrowth #reduceconsumption #rethink

Aesthetic Sustainability is now number 9 on Bookauthority's list of the 100 best Product Design Books of all Times! And, at the moment it is being translated to Chinese. So happy for my little book on sustainability. It is amazing to experience the independent life of a book. It's almost like a child growing up; starting to influence people without you being there, making friends you don't know, and learning languages you don't speak.

Re-read or read the interview with the thought provoking Balinese artist @slinat at The Immaterialist:

The aesthetic bond that encourages people to keep and mend their belongings rather than buy new things as soon as unappealing traces of usage appear, or as soon as the ever-changing winds of trends shift, is based on slowness. Well-crafted things tend to grow more beautiful or more intriguing when used. This of course has something to do with the materials that are used; i.e. natural materials that age with beauty or “assume their character” when used and weathered. But furthermore, one can sense when an object has been infused with time and careful considerations, and when it has been marked by the hands that have (literally or metaphorically speaking) shaped it. In a sense one could hence say that the slowness goes two ways: it is related to the many hours that have been used on creating, conceptualising or crafting it, but also on the slow, beautifying decay that characterises aesthetically sustainable objects. #theimmterialist #aestheticsustainability #aestheticsttategy #aestheticnourisment #aestheticexperiences #sustainingendangeredcrafts #sustainablefashion #sustainability #sustainableliving #slowdesign #slowliving #slowfashion #crafting #crafts #traditionalpattern #traditionalcrafts #decay #aesthetic #durability #aestheticdecay #sudajiweavers #lovedclotheslast #reducereuse #reduceconsumption #reduce

The beauty of decay. Some clothes, furniture, floors, walls, textiles get more beautiful, more intriguing, more tactility nourishing when traces of usage start shaping and decorating them. This special kind of beauty is the most sustainable, the most durable. It is open and inclusive,. It embraces changes and rhythms. #theimmaterislist #beautyofdecay #aesthetic #aestheticnourisment #aestheticexperiences #aestheticdecay #aestheticsustainability #rawness #changeistheonlyconstant #antifashion #anticonsumption #antitrend #antismoothness #antitrendyliving #floor #usage #sustainable #sustainability #durability

I am grateful for these weekly reminders of the slowness of crafts, of the time and effort it takes to create an object from scratch, and of the beauty in the raw and rustic expression 🙏 #theimmaterislist #slowness #crafts #ceramics #pottery #slowdesign #slowmade #handcrafted #handmade #raw #rustic #slowliving

Today I had a "Madeleine moment" - momentarily I was thrown back in time; a scent allowed me to relive an emotional experience from the past. As a matter of fact it felt like I was there; I was in that past moment, I was a part of that past experience. Time dissolved itself for a short while.

Reflections. Reflect. #theimmaterislist #reflections #reflect #earthday2021

"If a man prefers the land he has discovered to the possession of this land, a painting or a statue to their material presence, it is insofar as they appear to him as possibilities open to other men” Simone de Beauvoir

"So why did I not defect to Toronkei’s community (Tornkei is a 19-year-old Maasai warrior)? It is a question that still troubles me. I was, as I had kept discovering, too soft for his life. I could not quite keep up physically. More importantly, I could not cope with the uncertainty: with the dislocation of not knowing whether I would eat today or eat tomorrow, or still possess a living – or a life – in a month’s time. The Maasai accepted the wild fluctuations in their fortunes with equanimity. In one season, their cattle would darken the plains; in the next, drought struck, and they had nothing. To know what comes next has been perhaps the dominant aim of materially complex societies. Yet, having achieved it, or almost achieved it, we have been rewarded with a new collection of unmet needs. We have privileged safety over experience; gained much in doing so, and lost much." George Monbiot, Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life

"An object is a frozen or fixed event." (Danish philosopher and artist Willy Ørskov)

Extract from my upcoming book Anti-trend:

Extract from my upcoming book Anti-trend on oppression and pollution:

Consumption—or minimal and/or well-informed consumption—can be a non-violent way of protesting against mindless overconsumption of unnecessary merchandise, unethical production methods, and the insignificance and poor quality of the majority of the products we surround ourselves with. In Thoreau’s essay Civil Disobedience from 1849, Thoreau argues that change must come from the individual. If there is something in the society, we live in that we don’t agree with or that goes against our moral fundament (and intuitively just feels wrong), we must protest. The essay is a defense for the individual’s right (and duty) to act based on moral values, even if these are in opposition to the norms of society or the demands of the government.Thoreau was put in jail after refusing to pay his taxes as a protest to slavery (he was determined to advocate respect for each individual and for individual freedom). In Civil Disobedience Thoreau argues that community taxes supporting highways and schools are ethical, but contrarily those supporting unjust war and enslavement are not. He continues by saying that we should be men first and subjects afterwards, and that we should cultivate respect for the right rather than for the law. If not, why are we equipped with a conscience?

What is beautiful and continuously aesthetically nourishing? This is an important question to ask when working with sustainable design and architecture. To Plato, a physical object can be considered beautiful if it clearly expresses the form or idea that gave birth to it. A beautiful chair, according to this way of thinking, is a chair that is clearly recognizable as being a chair and that is good at being a chair. There is thus a kind of precision to beauty. Beauty is precise and unambiguous in its expression. Beautiful physical objects are clearly expressed and decoded as what they are, at the same time as they are good at being what they are. Such as a viewpoint contains the germ of a functionalist approach to thinking aesthetics.

More blissful grounding. This time spiced up with colours and pigments🙏 #theimmterialist #handcrafted #ceramics #ceramica #handicrafts #handmade #colourbliss #colours #slow #slowness #slowmade #pigments #clay #kidsart #mallorca

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. And importantly, diversity fosters resilience! #theimmaterialist #antitrend #antitrendyliving #resilience #adaptability #slow #bend #durability #ecosystem #diversity

I have had the pleasure of writing an article about the raw and rewilded design-object for the new amazing platform for design and crafts @formkraft.dk (in Danish!). Formkraft is a digital archive for design and crafts (dating back to 1948) as well as an online magazine. The first theme for the magazine is sustainability and durability. My article is beautifully accompanied by photos of design by e.g. @frejaloewe, @jonasedvardstudio and @margretheodgaard 🙏 Link in bio. #theimmaterialist #sustainability #rewilding #raw #aestheticsustainability #antitrend #durability #formkraft #frejaloewe #jonasedvard #margretheodgaard #danishdesign #crafts #aestheticnourisment #aesthetics #aestheticstrategy #sustainableconsumption #sustainabledesign #designstrategy #designobject #reducereuse #reduceconsumption #reducereuserecycle #antitrendresearch #anticonsumerism

I am writing and reading about nomads at the moment: nomadic indigenios tribes would never stay in the same place for too long, as it would make them vulnerable. Maybe we are not vulnerable in the same way; physically that is. But we are mentally vulnerable. Staying in one place our whole lives can potentially make us lethargic and closed-minded.

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