Since January 3rd I have done nothing else than moving things. That’s more than two weeks. I even spent my birthday on a truck. The overall operation includes moving furniture from Germany to Malta some time later this year. Malta, being an island state, is not easy to reach. That has implications for this specific transport, but also for any other supply. Now there will be a few quite iconic things coming in, and it appears not easy to match them up with what is there. If not managed well, this is easy to set up a chain of new purchases. And in Malta, as said, supply is limited.
The situation reminded me of the essay by the French philosopher Denis Diderot, who in 1769 wrote an essay on “Regrets sur ma vieille robe de chambre, ou Avis à ceux qui ont plus de goût que de fortune” (Regrets for my Old Dressing Gown, or A warning to those who have more taste than fortune). The story begins with the philosopher receiving a new luxurious and elegant dressing gown as a gift. Subsequently, the dissonance with all his other possessions drive him into replacing them in a chain reaction of new purchases, finally driving him into debt. It’s a funny piece. The term “Diderot effect” has been coined by the Canadian Anthropologist Grant McCracken in 1986. The discussion around this effect, was mainly into how to avoid or trigger impulse purchases, depending on which side you stand on. Well, that’s not my subject.
Somebody, I regard as “best practice” (excuse my “Consultingnese”) when it comes to matching diverse things and designs, is the American Artist Elizabeth Briel. She recently sent a message, moving furniture into her new place in Paris, arriving from Hong Kong. I recognized items which she carried for a long time, probably since we met the first time on Lamma Island, or later in Beijing. It’s a mix of all kinds of styles, materials and colors. Some years ago she even integrated the wild structures of old TV antennas into her rooftop in Mongkok. I guess, every item either is or is made iconic, and this is what it holds it all together. In real live it’s better to have a curation than a design. I don’t regard highly “interior design” when it comes to residential spaces. Even though, I do like some industrial design work, like for example some works by Dieter Rams, which became so iconic that Johnathan Ive picked up on them designing Apple products and software UI designs. But many iconic products were not made by designers: from the Volkswagen Beetle to the bikini, “designed” by the French engineer Louis Réard. Perhaps, it is the employment of designers which makes the Teslas so ugly. Franz von Holzhausen, joined Tesla as designer in 2008 and before was involved in designing the Volkswagen New Beetle, one of the most terrible vehicles Volkswagen ever launched. It was a retro-designed car on a PQ35 platform. This thing had nothing to do with the Beetle at all, but was just an unpractical and disproportionate Volkswagen Golf (Rabbit) with extremely bad driving dynamics. That feature actually fits Tesla. Anyway, please catch my drift. I genuinely hate anything “retro”. It’s usually, trying to keep some advantages of technical development and put them into a costume compromising them. And then comes putting more technology in to compensate for these disadvantages. Retro design is just kitsch. Real icons are timeless.
Good. So, now there are items in a storage in Germany, which are waiting to be transported to Malta. With necessary breaks driving down the whole length of Italy, it is about a 50 hour drive, one way, one driver, including two ferries through Sicily. If you add a few hours more, this could be a marvelous adventure, going down some of the most beautiful landscapes. It is definitely one of the things you do once in a lifetime: bringing your belongings over such a large distance. And it would be adding another story to the things themself, which would then find their (for now) final destination on a rocky island in the Mediterranean. This was not planned like that. Like nothing on a larger scale, which ever happens, is planned like that. Another option goes through Genoa. I have not decided yet, how to do it. Most importantly, I hope, I picked the right items to bring down: iconic enough to be worth it, durable enough to withstand the transport, and lastly integrating in a diverse environment of materials, colors and styles, without having me fall into the Diderot “trap”. I guess, the whole point is how to get some harmony in the diversity of things. It’s like with people.
(Picture source: Dmitry Levitzky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)