Dit is werk van onze leerling Thomas Wielinga uit vwo 6 voor het eindexamen kunst beeldende vormgeving.
My message is that we live in a society where consumers buy more and more buy stuff and most of it is mass produced. Do we really know how things still work? What is inside? Mechanical parts have been replaced by microchips. We seem to be alienated from the production process and don’t see the value of hand-crafted products any longer. Also none of the products we buy seems to last longer than 2 years and then requires another software update, the design is too old to be cool or it is simply broken and we throw it away because we lack the knowledge how to repair it.
I was partly inspired by Maarten Baas. A Dutch artist and artist who wants to get away from mass production and make hand-crafted products himself. Maarten Baas: “Mass production does not appeal to me.” It has no soul. That is how he came up with the idea of making furniture out of clay, making every piece of furniture unique. Maarten says about his own work, “The people who [appreciate] my work are a kind of soul mates. They recognize the humor in my work. It has a kind of lightness – without becoming superficial. ”
As a graduation assignment I made a film of an employee who comes in the morning and, before he types his report, assembles a typewriter himself. After he is done he dismantles the typewriter again at the end of his working day, A day in the office. He may use the parts in a different way next time…!?
The typewriter is placed on a clay table designed by Maarten Baas.
