Objectual companionship?

Intimating with objects at the end of their lives

Blanca Callen, BAU Design College of Barcelona

Daniel López, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

“You know that we are living in a material world

And I am a material girl”
Madonna

1.- INTRODUCTION

[Slide 2]

Most of the everyday objects that surround us end up, many times, inside a draw, in our box
room or set aside in a corner. Other times, we forget about them, give them away, donate
them or resell them. If we finally take the step, they end up in the bin. This process has speed
up to an extend that we seemed to live in a de-materialised present (Gabrys, 2011), where
discarding practices appear disconnected from their consequences in the form of waste, and
resources and raw materials seem to be considered infinite and unlimited.

In this context, this paper aims to pose a question how objects matter, what kind of intimate
entanglements we constitute with them in this dematerilised present? We will show that it is
when objects are discarded that the ways in which objects matter can be brought to the fore
more clearly. This seems to be paradoxical because discarding practices are normally pointed
as the expression of a materialistic approach to the world and of the spurious (utilitarian, at its
best) relationships we tend to establish with objects.

Drawing on an artistic project about donation of discarded objects, we will show how
discarding practices can be turned into an heuristic device to make sensible, thinkable and
talkable various forms of intimate entanglements with objects. This paper will show some of
the various forms of objectual intimate entanglement to reflect upon a non-anthropocentric
ethics of waste management.

2.- Tasting attachments

[Slide 3]

In this inquiry, the notion of attachment {2012} has been very inspiring. This concept has
been deployed to explore how things like music {Hennion}, wine {Teil} or drugs {Gomard}
matter of those who are passionate about them, the amateurs. The notion of attachment puts
the thingness of the thing, as a material relationship, together with the activity of
appreciation, as a reflexive, situated, equipped and corporal activity, in the centre of the
analysis of the amateur. From this pragmatic perspective, the objectual intimation is not
something that belongs to the subject or the object, it is a mattering process, a material-
relational activitfy. The activity and experience of appreciation of a particular object is
crucial because this mattering is rendered sensible but in a de-subjective manner. As Hennion
says, “it entails letting oneself carried away, overflowing with the surprise that arise through
contact with things” {Hennion 2007@109}. At the same time, in this mattering process
things gains the capacity to respond and surprise. When we intimate with objects such as in
the amateurish tasting practices, objects “are not already there, inert and available at our
service. They deliver themselves, unrobe themselves, impose themselves on us”.{Hennion
2007@105}.

But this objectual intimation does not happen naturally. For the taster to let themselves be
“surprised” by a particular object and for the object to have this capacity to captivate it is
crucial to set an appreciation device. This has an important ethical dimension: it requires a
sustained engagement with the thing which demands building up new capacities and skills:
learning to appreciate. This is what the amateurish tasting is all about and what we attempted
to produce as method for this inquiry.

3.- Methodology as an appreciation device

This method was part of an artistic project called OBJECIONES, that Blanca coordinated in
the Fundación Tapies in Barcelona. The project started with a call for donors of objects.

[SLIDE 4]

In response to this, we collected 20 objects from donors that were almost going to discard
them. We interviewed the donors about the reasons of the disposal and the biography of their
relationship with the donated object, their use and function, their value, and about other
objects that, on the contrary, they would keep forever.

[SLIDE 5]

In terms of process, the interview the with donors was a situation that made them explore the
attachment to their objects in two ways: on one side, by paying attention to what the object
meant to them; and on the other side, by handling and touching the objects directly while
talking about them. This was important because as a participant said: “The attention that you
can pay to an object makes it appreciated. The attention it reclaims, makes it valuable. Then,
it can suddenly make me upset to get rid of the object because I’ve discover that they have a
history that I will like to remember” (Corn, 26:10).

As a result of this donation process, we came across different sorts of objectual intimate
entanglements where objects count in different ways. I will try to give you a few illustrative
examples.

4.- Results

[SLIDE 6]

I. Matter as a form of living

A traditional clay pot was found on the street by Celia, who picked it up because of the
matter: clay. She used to make pottery and loves cooking too, so the object met the
requirements for being rescued and reused. As the base is dented and it can’t heat up food
uniformly, Celia was storing it inside the oven waiting for an alternative use. It was used as a
fruit ball but the dented base avoided the casserole to be settled. She also likes the clay pot
because it is an object FOR learning: clay is a matter of knowledge as it helps to understand
the process of cooking. “This is one of those materials that help you understand the time of
cooking. Transforming food from raw to cooked or cooking it in certain ways takes its time.
But nowadays, the process is accelerated because we don’t have time, because there are
microwaves… but it’s cool to understand how, in origin, the process of cooking works and I
think that everybody should have the experience of eating some rice or a stew with a wood
spoon on a clay pot. (...) Actually, it obliges you to understand that you don’t have patience”
(Celia, 33:25). If clay pot operates as an archaeological trace of an endangered life (to cook
with clay pots) then she wouldn’t like to find this object in an ethnographic museum. Because
it would mean the end of that way of life. “It would make me sad” (28:10).

Analysis 1

This object matters as an ecology under threat of extinction. It enacted a form of living. It is
not only a piece of clay but a mode of cooking and eating which is under threat. Cooking
with it means bringing all these elements to live, contribute to keep this living form alive, as
well as producing an interference with the world the participant lives. Keep using clay pots
despite all the difficulties, at least from time to time, is a way to make the ecology that the
object brings count in our daily life and reconnect our way of living with others (fire, clay,
food…) in particular manners (slowly cooking and eating).

II. Matter as a potential reserve

[SLIDE 7]

MAKEA is a collective of designers who work with residues and whose name comes from
the semantic gesture of reusing, hacking and appropriating IKEA’s standardization by DIY
making practices. Guided by their trained “skilled vision” (Grasseni, 2004), they create their
works by recovering, reusing and mixing different discarded objects and materials. “Waste is
a state of mind”, they say during the interview. Because what it someone’s residue is other’s
resource. They donated a metal lamp trim to the project that, originally, was part of an
IKEA’s lamp. From their point of view, this was an awful superficial element. They were
keeping it inside an umbrella stand on the hall because of its form and material: the
aluminium piece was composed of three long squared tubes joint between them by a very
interesting type of bolts. MAKEA had been keeping it because its characteristics made of it a
very interesting and useful potential piece for creating new designs: “just in case of future
uses”, they said. Despite of its potentiality, after more than a year, they still have not used it
and need to clean and free some space in their small house. That is why they donated.

Analysis 2

In this case, the object matters as a reservoir of potential affordances. It is not the actual
design or function what counts but its capacity to be combined with other elements to become
other possible designs, with new uses and functions. This is how this piece is valued and the
reason why it is stored and preserved rather than discarded. But its potentiality is not an
intrinsic feature of the piece but rather an attribute that emerges, and thereby may decrease
and increase, depending on the relation it establishes with other pieces, objects, designs in a
very specific ecology of practices which is the maker-space of MAKEA. Drawing on
Ingold’s ecology of matters {Ingold 2012}, we could even say that this object becomes
matter as part of this very specific equipped form of appreciation: the skilled vision {Grasseni
2004} of the MAKEA people. To perceive it as an object implies to take it for what it is – a
fait accompli – while when perceiving it as a sample of materials, nothing is ever finished:
“everything may be something, but being something is always on the way to becoming
something else” {Ingold 2011: 3}.This perspective unfolds the possibility of putting in
practice repair, reuse, hack or recycle gestures that try to overcome vulnerabilities and
brokenness by bringing new forms, functionalities and entities through caring, attentive and
creative efforts.

III. Matter as arrangement

[SLIDE 8]

Marta is a designer but also an activist for the rights of functional diversity people. She has
several illnesses too, like rheumatoid arthrosis. That’s why her environment and many of the
objects around her have been carefully selected and modified in order to respond to her body
needs. She donated a metal footrest that was part of a dentist stool that she bought for resting
while cooking on standing during her periods of arthrosis crisis. Because of her particular
physical needs, she mounted the stool without the footrest, which was more an obstacle than
an aid. In the case of many illnesses that break out with crisis, the body suffers quick changes
and people need to adapt the space and turn objects into technical aids. For her, these kind of
objects are very operative for very specific actions and gestures. “It’s an object that allow me
to do something, an activity, and without it I couldn’t do it. Sometimes, it’s not the object
itself but the strategy how you use it or how do you plan to use it. “The tap water that used to
be here was not bad but it was not useful for me. Then, I discarded it. [...].

Analysis 3

In this case, as Winance {Winance 2010} has explored in her paper about the wheelchair
trials, what is at stake is a particular arrangement comprised by emotions, corporal
dispositions and sensitivities, technical aids and other domestic technologies, and spatial and
temporal configurations. These arrangement is at the same time an agencement: Marta’s
agency and independence, as everybody else’s, depends on the attachments with these objects
and the way they are arranged at home. As Latour said, “we can substitute an attachment for
another, but we cannot move from a state of attachment to that of unattachment {Latour
1999@27}. However, Marta’s functional diversity bring to the fore something that is usually
disregarded: the vital importance of caring these material intimate entanglements. The
constant attunement work that Marta undertakes in her daily life reveals objects as forms of
material and ecological relatedness that need to be maintained and cared.

VI. Matter as a companion

[SLIDE 9]

Axel requested his old car to last for 400.000km and he got it. That car died right after. If he
had known it, he would have asked for 100.000km more, he jokes. He thinks that it’s not a
casualty. “When the tow carried it, I expressed my gratitude and said goodbye”, he says. He
donated the car’s key with its keyring. He had kept them because they had accompanied him
in “thousands of urban adventures” and it takes him a lot to get rid of them as they are part of
his life. “My relationship with them is like if they weren’t an object but as if they be alive”.
He continues: “I’ve had intimate relationships with objects. There is a very strong bond that
avoids to separate from them, like with the key”. He works as a cameraman and film-maker
and he explains how he used to sleep with his new cameras the first days after buying them.
“The bond, the intimate relationship (with objects), let’s say so, is like a relationship more
similar to the established with a live being than with an object. There is a point when it stops
being an inanimate object and turns into… I think that the difference is that I talk to some of
them but not others. I keep those which I’ve probably talked to previously. Or those which
I’ve had a reciprocal relation, a dialogue with them. Not because I’ve used them, but because
I’ve received their messages and they’ve talked to me, they have responded me”. Now, he is
glad of having his new car because it works better than the older but “we are still there, we
have not yet fallen in love… we need time”.

Analysis

This later case is the one that better shows how an object can matter as a companion. It
seemes to materialises a kind of a process of mutual constitution, almost a co-becoming. The
car and Axel respond to each other, or better said, they seem to give the opportunity to the
other to respond in their own terms. That is the reason why Axel defines these relationships
in terms of “falling in love”. It is a relationship which takes time, it requires sleeping with the
object, carrying it on you, using it everyday… For him the relationship must be built up but
in order to do so it is crucial to recognise and respect the object as a “partner”, which entails
giving the chance to it to be listened and respond in its own terms. Only by doing this, the
object can seduce Axel, and have a relationship.

We came across other types of objectual intimate entanglements, such as objects that matters
as memory machines, the so-called biographical objects, but we haven’t included in the
presentation for the sake of time.

Discussion
[Slide 10]

As we have seen, when it comes to reflect upon our discard practices, the appreciation device
revealed the various ways in which objects come to matter intimately in different set of
ecologies of practices. In light of the respons-ability that the donors had with respect to these
objects we asked ourselves if this artistic research wouldn’t be better consider as an
experiment of non-anthropocentric ethics in the age of the waste.

As Maria Puig de la Bellacasa pointed, “naturecultures’ cosmologies require a form of ethical

commitment that learns from the decentring of the human”. This appreciation device was
certainly a way to decenter the human by putting in the centre the various manners in which
we are intimately entangled with objects and committed to their existence. But in contrast to
Puig de la Bellacasa, this experiment seemed to point towards the possibilities of sustaining a
non anthropocentric ethics with objects rather than with organic or living agents and entities.
In a way, the experiment posed a question concerning how to live together with others when
these “others” are objects, apparently more silent and inert than animals and living
organisms.

In her discussion of the category of non-human, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa pointed to the
different interferences that paying attention to artefacts or animal/organic entities produce in
specific ethical and political problems. Drawing on Van Dooren (forthcoming) and Haraway
(2007), she considers “that semantics of naturecultures when they concern bios might
then be less those of networks and connections than those of ecologies and relations.
{Puig de la Bellacasa 2010: 158-159}. This is because “in engaging with alterities that are
capable of responding to human intervention – with pain, death and extinction (Van Dooren,
forthcoming; Bird Rose & Van Dooren, forthcoming) and by creating affective and life-
sustaining interdependencies (Haraway, 2007) –acknowledging agency and liveliness is not
the same as recognising that machines are ‘alive’.

Our modest experimental inquiry on the modes of mattering of mundane objects at the end of
their life seem to show that this clear-cut distinction between the repertoire of ecologies and
networks becomes at least blurry when it comes to address how objects matter for our
participants. But this is not a metaphysical discussion but a pragmatic one. Thus, we wonder
what kind of interferences an intimate and human decentred approach may produce in the
ethics and politics of waste management. In this regard, we think that the distinction between
ecologies and networks, or living-beings and artifacts, have less possibilities than the
repertoire of intimate entanglements with objects.

Waste management policies treat objects in a detached way, as mere outputs or inputs in a
linear cycle of production, consumption and discard. The main concern is how much gets in
and out and at what pace. The message then is that we should stop being so materialistic. We
should refrain our consumption and discard impulses to slow down the pace of the buy-
discard cycle by being more rational about our needs and more environmentally aware of its
consequences.

But what if such policies would be informed by the ethics of the intimate entanglements
explored in our artistic research project? Then, being materialistic might have a completely
different meaning. It would mean to be entangled with objects in such a way that they can
matter very differently. From this perspective, the waste management policy, would not be
focused on reducing the inputs and outputs of the buy-discard cycle, as if it was a pipe where
the thing that matters the most is what comes in and out of the pipe, but to facility and
promote the proliferation of objectual intimate entanglements with objects. The image of the
waste management policy should be closer to a house full of objects, like the ones we have
seen through our experiment. The consequences might be the same, the reduction of waste,
but the way to achieve might be different: it would entail to cultivate a sensibility towards
objects, rather than only blame on people for being materialistic.

[Slide 11]