weekly Objet library

Rolf Haubl, sociologist and psychoanalyst, insists that the role of objects is to carry memories. The real meaning of the thing then is within its mnemonic value. In a way, the chair becomes a sort of transformational object, gaining more significance after the passing of its owner. Granny Puckett’s essence and memory have been absorbed into it, especially for those left in her wake, who recognize the chair as an experience of remembrance.

We depend on the chair to bring back memories of Granny Puckett. Those who knew or heard stories of her experience the chair in different ways that deepen our connection to her. These stories create a history around the object, signifying the biography of the object itself, which “is no longer simply a dead or inanimate thing,” as Clive Dilnot proposes. “It possesses—or we attribute to it in our imaginations—sentience and power.”

By their nature, heirlooms tend to carry extra significance. The chair as a family heirloom is now a device that conjures memory and connection across time.

The biography of an object should not be restricted to an historical reconstruction of its birth, life and death. Biography is relational and an object biography is comprised of the sum of the relationships that constitute it.

We do have a problem of stuff. which is why we’re building objet.cc

Change and growth cannot be bought, only earned through the difficult business of removing all of the dross and faulty thinking (that’s been imposed on us) and getting to the core of things:

Love, service, creativity, community, relationships, family.

the majority population don’t really like destructive consumerism, but have been bullied and seduced by capitalism into imagining that they like it, and therefore can perhaps be persuaded out of it again, provided that this persuasion is accompanied by sufficiently far-reaching institutional changes.

the majority population don’t really like destructive consumerism, but can’t desist from it because they have become addicted to it.

Consumer society…overwhelms us with a potentially limitless range of options…limitless possibility can be debilitating and a constant source of frustration. Simplifying choice by setting our own limits and by choosing ‘not to’…can then be liberating.

The idea that the only goal in life is to produce and consume more – an absurd, humiliating idea – must be abandoned. The capitalist imaginary of pseudo-rational pseudo-mastery, and of unlimited expansion, must be abandoned. Only men and women can do that.