My hosts last week at the Asia Pacific Design Library in Brisbane (which, on reflection, is probably the finest new library I have been in) asked me a few questions before our xskool:
Q: What does a typical day look like for you?
A: When I’m on the road, which is nearly half the time, I get up between 5 and 6, make the custom porridge which I bring from home In vacuum-sealed sachets, and then prepare the talk or workshop that I promised myself I would Read More
[Photograph: Hans Sylvester]
Interni and the Be Open Foundation are publishing a book, called Gallery Of The Senses, that explores the ways we experience the contemporary world through sight, hearing,smell, taste, and touch. It then asks: Are we missing a sixth sense? Here is my contribution.
Humanity’s troubles did not begin with with the industrial age, nor even with agriculture. Our problems began when we embraced symbolic culture and placed language, art, and number above other ways of knowing the world. Read More
In 1996, Ivan Illich (above) agreed to speak at Doors of Perception in Amsterdam on the theme of ‘speed’. The philosopher-educator surprised us by bringing along two fellow speakers: Sebastian Trapp, a field biologist, and Matthias Rieger, a musicologist. Their contributions are as fresh today as when we heard them in Amsterdam – so we are running them again in three parts. This is part three, the concluding remarks of Ivan Illich.
Ivan Illich: Prisoners of Speed
First let me thank the organisers of this conference for challenging us to prepare an intervention. My circle of friends in Bremen owe it to your programme that we have examined a neglected subject, the historicity of speed. Let me take you right to the core of the issue by expressing my thanks in old-fashioned English: Michiel, ‘God speed thee and thy close!’ Milton’s words would fit the occasion well. ‘To speed’ then meant ‘to prosper’ and not ‘to go fast’. Read More
In 1996, when Ivan Illich agreed to speak at Doors of Perception in Amsterdam, our theme that year was ‘speed’. The philosopher surprised us by bringing along two fellow speakers: Sebastian Trapp, a field biologist, and Matthias Rieger, a musicologist. Their contributions are as fresh today as twhen we heard them in Amsterdam – so we are running them again in three parts. This the second.
Matthias Rieger: Some remarks about speed from a belly-dance drummer’s point of view
When I prepared for this conference about speed, I was somewhat at a loss what to say in front of people who would have come from all over the world by car, train, or plane. This event, so I read in the programme, should give scientists, designers and philosophers a chance ‘to rub their brains’. After a while, I decided to ask my drum teacher Mohammed for help. Read More
Reflecting on the ways that swallows move about the earth reminded me of the time, in 1996, when Ivan Illich agreed to speak at Doors of Perception in Amsterdam. Our theme that year was ‘speed’. The philosopher surprised us by bringing along two fellow speakers: Sebastian Trapp, a field biologist, and Matthias Rieger, a musicologist. As Illich described their approach at the time, “we went back into history to distance ourselves from modern certainties, to see whether we could find speed outside our speedy society”. The three texts were revised after the conference – and each one is as fresh today as the day we heard them in Amsterdam – so this seems like an opportune moment to run them again in three parts.
Sebastian Trapp: Frederic the Second and the Speed of a Falcon
“In the early morning of February the 18th, 1248 the people of Parma in northern Italy attacked the enemy that had Read More
As an artefact, the swallows’ nest is not exactly the Taj Mahal. It’s a ramshackle structure, made of mud pellets and straw, that’s stuck crookedly to the wall. But it seems to suit them well – or rather, the surrounding habitat does.
I’m sad. The family of swallows that spent the summer in the eaves behind my office have headed south for the winter. Most of them will follow the west coast of Africa to avoid the Sahara; a few may travel further east down the Nile Valley. They’ll take it easy and stop every few miles at first to build up their fat reserves – but then they’ll speed up. In four months, as Christmas beckons here in the north, they’ll reach their destinations: Botswana, Namibia or South Africa. After just two months gorging on insects, they’ll begin the epic journey back. The strongest among them will make it back in just five weeks, traveling 200 miles a day.
And I thought my air travel was profligate. Read More
A hand, a map, a story: In each of 30 photographs made by Céline Boyer, a cartographic fragment of someone’s country of origin is projected onto the subject’s own hand. Cities, seas, rivers, roads and borders are glimpsed.
“I arrived in Toulon at the age of 29 with my seven year old daughter”
“I was born in Burkina Faso but came to France when I was four following a coup d’etat” Read More
In what ways can design help people interact with living systems in ways that help both of them thrive? And, what small practical steps might one take to test the effect of small actions on the system as a whole?
These two questions informed our Doors of Perception xskool last week; a partnership with Konstfack – and with the Read More
Desert of the Real
It is surely alarming that the world’s economy is being shaped by people who are mesmerised by all things digital – but who are blind to a much larger reality: the analogue knowledge accumulated in nature during 3.5 billion years of evolution.
The invitation to do this talk arrived around the time I was stopped in my tracks by this perplexing sight (above) in one of those endless corridors at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Who commissioned such a thing, and why? What, if anything, was in their mind? Where did they procure that cheesy stick-on foliage? Is that a robot digging away behind the window – or does it have a driver? What does he make of the living wall that’s not, in fact, alive? Read More »