The 6th issue of Leida Travels in the Consumption Zone guides the reader through consumer culture
On May 23, the new issue of the design journal Leida, titled Travels in the Consumption Zone, was released. The authors take readers on a journey through different facets of consumer history and present contemporary design projects that create new ways for consumers to engage with both existing and future objects, services, and environments. Travels in the Consumption Zone discusses the contradictory relationship between our desires and our actual needs. On the one hand, consumption can be seen as an activity necessary for survival or as something enjoyable that shapes our identity; on the other hand, we need strategies to help us question the rules imposed on consumers.
“Humans surround themselves with objects and environments they have created in order to become what they already are, and to belong to a place they have never left,” writes the editor-in-chief of Leida Taavi Hallimäe in the preface. “Traces of consumerism can be found in our inner thoughts, deep in the oceans of the world and in outer space. Wherever modern humans go, their traces have already arrived ahead of them. A human who has managed to break free from earth’s atmosphere remains firmly tied to consumer society. The popstars, athletes and businesspeople, and the Tesla electric car that has now been floating out there for seven years – all sent into space by Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin or Elon Musk’s SpaceX – demonstrate how in our search for extra-terrestrial life we are increasingly likely to encounter human phenomena that we sent out there long ago. Earth may have been left behind, but consumer society is already waiting to welcome its travellers.”
The issue opens with an interview with architecture and design historian Rebecca Carrai, who presents to Taavi Hallimäe the history of the Swedish furniture manufacturer IKEA and its carefully cultivated decades-long relationship with its clients. The visual essay by Estonian Academy of Arts graphic design master’s student, Laura Martens, describes how the user experience of various maps of Tallinn, created with different aims and in various ways, has over several years shaped her connection with the city. Artist Urmas Lüüs, prompted by his recent exhibition, writes about the emergence and performance of the middle class and links this to history and the present day. Fashion designer Liisa Kanemägi looks at the unseemly bodily process of sweating as one which should not be hidden, and nor should we be ashamed of it, but can think of it as a participant in ‘continuous design’. Based on the afterlife of her own artworks and that of other artists Ulvi Haagensen discusses the problems of defining the uses of an object and unfolds options for queer use. Artists Aurelie d’Incau and Lígia Fernandes present a project about a fictional travel bureau created in a metro station in Portugal, which together with the participation of metro passengers was an intervention into an environment with clearly established rules of behaviour. Master’s student Ginevra Papi, from the Service Design Strategies and Innovation (SDSI) programme maps out the challenges and opportunities in contemporary design education and highlights the contradictory goals of consumer society and the pluriversal university. Designers and design researchers Kristi Kuusk, Azeem Hamid, Paula Veske-Lepp, Nesli Hazal Oktay and Zaur Babayev present an overview of their remote grandparents’ project, which offers opportunities for grandchildren living in different geographical locations to play and meaningfully interact with their grandparents in a world where people are required increasingly less to be settled in one place. Travels in the Consumption Zone concludes with an article by culture critic Tõnis Kahu, who recalls how newly re-independent Estonia of the 1990s was suddenly exposed to Western consumer culture, long idealised from behind the Iron Curtain, and authors who shed light on its darker aspects.
Leida’s graphic designers are Haron Barashed and Fernanda Saval. The cover image for Travels in the Consumption Zone is by Eva Claycomb.
Leida is an online journal published twice a year. Leida is initiated by the Faculty of Design of EKA, the journal is supported by the Architecture Endowment of the Cultural Endowment of Estonia, the Research Fund of EKA and the Faculty of Design of EKA.