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The Immaterialist

resilient living in a limitless world

Tag: mycelium

November 30, 2021

Interview #11: Bio-designer and Artist Zena Holloway

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New post at the The Immaterialist blog. Read about my son's and my eerie visit to an abandoned amusement park this Sunday. Warning: creepy details!

Nature is full of plants that are meant to live for a really, really long time; like an oak tree, which because it is meant to be long-lived has a sturdy core, strong, robust roots, and is “designed” or meant to develop and grow and even interact with other plants around it or co-grow with other plants. Some plants even grow on it and are nurtured by its “universe.” It is able to adapt to different situations. Aside from long-lived plants, nature is also full of short-lived plants: flower-bearing plants that flourish and then deteriorate or crops that grow and bear grains and fruits and then wither. These plants are designed to act like that. They are not meant to live for a long time. They are cyclical, changeable at their core. Longevity, in the sense that they remain the same and develop gradually, is not in their nature. When they deteriorate, they provide nourishment for other plants, for insects and animals, or they fertilize the soil. This essential difference could be beneficially adapted into two ranges of sustainable design-objects: long-lived and short-lived objects, which would lead to an expansion of the category of sustainable design and an embracement of sustainable impermanence. Perhaps not all objects are meant to last forever. Well, clearly they are not, as our world is overflowing with cast-off things. So why not accept this notion in a biomimicry way, allowing natural cycles and rhythms to inspire the design-process instead of conservatively focusing on sustainable product-design as being synonymous with design for longevity?

Today I visited this insane abandoned amusement park on the coast here in Bali with my oldest son. The saga of the park is the following: About two decades ago, the Indonesian government began constructing the theme park and spent nearly 100 million dollars on it (featuring Bali’s biggest swimming pool, an inverted roller coaster, a 3D cinema, a laser show, a fake vulcano and a crocodile pit). However, on Friday the 13th in March 1998 the park was struck by lightening causing irreparable damage which insurance companies refused to cover. And the park never opened its doors! It shut down and has been abandoned ever since. Now, tropical nature and grafitti has taken over - and apparently also ghosts. Most locals don't dare to enter - only A few insane foreigners looking for incredible aesthetic decay and grafitti artists roam around.

Yesterday my new book "Anti-trend, Resilient Design and the Art of Sustainable Living" was finally released. And as a celebration I am sharing the introduction to the book at The Immaterialist.

Today my new book "Anti-trend - Resilient Design and the Art of Sustainable Living" has finally been released and is now available worldwide.

Simple living: coffee, mountains and roof over the head.

I wish I could capture the sensation of standing right here right now with this unbelievable view and my feet buried in warm, black sand. There is so much beauty in this world. So much beauty.

New post at The Immaterialist with an extract from my new book Anti-trend.

"Nothing is more life-denying than fighting against the law of life: everything is on the way, and not in its final form."

When we reach the end of a year it can feel like nothing in particular happened in the year that just passed; that it was just a year like most others, maybe even more uneventful than usual. Especially at times like these.

"It's the idea that people living close to nature tend to be noble. It's seeing all those sunsets that does it. You can't watch a sunset and then go off and set fire to your neighbor's tepee. Living close to nature is wonderful for your mental health."

Thank you for the stunning magazine @portico.magazine and @fernando_m_caetano 🙏

Living sustainably should be the most reasonable and the most natural way of life. Mending, reusing, recycling, sharing, and eating local groceries are all examples of activities that are at the core of sustainable living, and that are also affordable, unpretentious, and accessible. So why is sustainability often associated with luxury, elitisms, and exclusivity? Why has sustainable design and sustainable living become a status symbols and ways of expressing wealth and sophistication?

My 8-year old son says: when I grow up, I want to move into the jungle and build a house with my hands. Can I come with you? I ask. No, but you can visit me, he says.

New article at The Immaterialist blog - with a tale of a shaman and a widower from my Uncultivated book project and beautiful art by @lydiajanssenart

I was recently interviewed about my new book Anti-trend and my life here in Bali by the beautiful new Portuguese Art, Culture & Sustainability Magazine, Portico @portico.magazine ❤

"My culture says: you have to learn lots of things you aren’t interested in and don’t love doing. This is important, because not everything can be fun and enjoyable. It just can’t! You have to work hard and do lots of stuff you don’t enjoy in order to succeed and become a good, civilized, cultivated human being.

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."

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