Guus van Leeuwe, Domestic Animals: Cervus Elaphus, Vulpus Lagopus & Ovis Aries, 2008 - Photo by Guus van Leeuwe

Sayaka Yamamoto & Boaz Cohen; Photo by Jacob Hohmann

“It should be like a teddy bear. It should be round and it should also be able to host all members of the family. It should be like a sort of family friend.’”

The degree to which Edelkoort is able to see round temporal corners is partly a question of faith, but what about her latest predictions? This is where “Post-Fossil” comes in—the entire show features designers whose work she believes is the shape of things to come.

Somewhat counterintuitively, the reference point for much of the works is Stone Age man. The exhibition catalogue talks about breaking with “a materialistic mentality and replacing it with the crafted materialization of modest earthbound and recomposed matter,” and describes the new designers as “contemporary cavemen” and “Fred Flintstones of the future.”

“In the turn-of-the-century period, we saw the emergence of a new group of designers,” Edelkoort adds. “They were working with their hands [and] working with technology, as well as with very low-key materials, using technology to sort of craft materials, and very much interested in scientific processes, especially bio technology. In this exhibition, if you look at each single piece, the way the designer comes to the conclusion is very different from one to the other. Everybody has his own vision and way of doing things. However, when we put them all together in the gallery, then it suddenly feels like it’s a movement.”

In addition to its aesthetic primitivism, this movement involves a shift away from the visual to the tactile; greater emphasis on the local than the global; and a more visceral
connection to the natural world rather than a vacuous environmentalism built on flawed rationality.

Marijn van der Poll, Do Hit, 1999 - Photo by Marijn van der Poll - click image to enlarge

“I think ‘ecology’ and ‘sustainability’ are words which are used so much that they are losing their strength,” she says. “All these young designers are more like animists. I feel that society at large is longing for a more intimate relation with nature and natural materials and animals, and that’s why there’s so much use of animal skins and emphasis on bones and skeletons. They seem to be going back to the beginning of time instead of making futuristic statements.”

This element provides a natural fit with Japanese culture, something Edelkoort was keen to point out during a recent seminar at Bunka Women’s University.

“Basically, we are entering a moment in time when mankind is looking towards the world with more animism in mind,” she said. “Of course in your country you still have animism as a part [of your] religion. I think you are very lucky because it is going to be a future theme for the world.”

Edelkoort also pointed out that the recent disruption of global air travel by the eruption of Mt. Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland—which almost scuppered her plans to come to Japan—showed the importance of nurturing local sustainability.

Crystal Virus, 2007 - Photo by Pieke Bergmans - click image to enlarge

“The ash cloud has been a very important warning for all countries,” she said. “If we don’t have our own local production, there comes a day in the future when you cannot get food, you cannot get flour, you cannot get rice, and you cannot import anything. So, it’s a wake up call, I believe, for all countries…. Have your own cottage industries, return the golf courses into rice fields, do the minimum amount of things so that you can, in times of crisis, at least survive. This is what I felt very, very strongly, because one day I thought maybe it was going to take two months that we couldn’t fly. Imagine if you can’t transport things for two months, the disaster it is going to make.”

The disruption to Edelkoort’s travel plans was especially ironic in light of the fact that her seminar used birds as its main theme and was titled “Taking Flight.” But the overreaction by aviation authorities to the ash cloud also reflects the mood of fear we have been living through for the last 20 years—a situation that Edelkoort predicts is now coming to an end.

“When you analyze [the years] 1990 to 2010, which we did because we made an exhibition on it, you see that it had four economic crises, ecological issues, super fear of viruses, super fear of GM food, the millennium bug and, of course, terrorism,” she says. “So, all in all, it has been a dismal 20 years. It was a very difficult turn of the century. But I’m pretty sure that people are now reaching the point where the fear will simply dissipate.”

Although the present may still seem bleak from an economic and ecological point of view, Edelkoort remains confident about the future as long as we take strength from the past. Stone Age man, after all, survived much worse than anything we’re going through.

For more information about Li Edelkoort, see http://trendunion.com.