"MOVE IN WITH NOTHING": THE 'FLAT EARTH' OF DÉCOR
DISCUSSED: "NO PLACE LIKE HOME0001" EXCEPT EVERY OTHER HOME0001; JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE; FLAT EARTH OF DÉCOR; WALTER BENJAMIN
Dear Snoops,
On today’s agenda: an attack on décor (and its purpose and pleasure) care of "the “SILIC*N VALLEY MINDSET” (yet not Silicon Valley itself), producing an uncanny mindf*ck of a suggestion as to how we should relate to our own domestic sphere. And we rebut, via Goethe.
GENERAL DÉCOR PHILOSOPHY:
IDEAL: no matter how temporarily you’re somewhere, you modestly domesticate it according to your own individualized tastes
NEW ATTACK ON IDEAL: home is meaningless, other than as “fully equipped” enabler of fantasy lifestyle
Let us explain:
We are advocates of the mainly-analog home – a controversial stance, yes – and we present here a new adjacency:
The curiosity of not a ‘digital’ pr*duct, but of a new strain of ‘FULL FURNISHED HOME’ (décor included, down to the sheets) but, rather than the typical hellish rental, it is one that you BUY AT A PREMIUM. It emerges from the “SILIC*N VALLEY MINDSET” (which we shall explain briefly in a moment): it is the home-as-product, highly-finessed, and graphic-designly tight “HOME0001”.
SUMMARY OF CONCEPT:
i) A fully furnished home is purchased; ‘modern’ and minimal. It sits within a complex of its décor-identical-twin homes (square footage varies)
ii) This home is not only ‘home’ but A KEY, entering you into a network of others who’ve bought your home’s twins in far-off cities/lands (currently L.A. and N.Y.C., and soon in London, Berlin, Paris, Mexico City)
iii) Home and geography are now detached. You and your HOME0001 comrades are intercity-ly, international-ly enabled: HOME001 command center facilitates your within-network house-swappery, so you can temporarily relocate to an Effectively-Twin home (only, the oregano will maybe be in a different drawer. HIGHLY UNCANNY!) (Airb*b BE DAMNED!)
SUMMARY OF OUR CONTENTIONS:
HOMEOO1 asks us to admire a life lived amongst a décor not of your own choosing. BELOW: two different homes, in two different cities, in two different climates, with two different PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING, where the prospective buyer is asked to shed ALL of their possessions and enter accept a life as essentially ASSET CUSTODIAN masquerading as “STYLISH INDIVIDUAL”:
And, if FOR SCALE stands for one thing, it is that décor is a crucial expression of INDIVIDUAL identity, and what is mostly exciting about décor, hence, is that it is for YOU YOURSELF as the primary audience (i.e. compared to the more public display of ‘Wardrobe’). HOME0001 is designed for swappable anonymity.
NOT SILIC*N VALLEY (OR IS IT? YOU TELL US!) BUT CERTAINLY THE “SILIC*N VALLEY MINDSET”:
The Silic*n Valley Mindset is consistently attempting to “unlock” the potential of home. Examples:
Digital slaves (Alexa, et al.)
Panopticon-ality i.e. FORTIFICATION (Ring, August, et al.)
The ‘mindset of unlocking’ and the ‘unlocking of mindsets’ are the dual M.O. of the contemporary technology industry. Here is what it looks like when Venture Capital*sts ask you to dinner:
And, importantly, when the S.V. Mindset recognizes its hollowness it must “THROW SPAGHETTI AT THE WALL”. HOME0001 approaches décor as spaghetti, “What,” it asks “will stick?”:
“Fully equipped with everything you need, ready from day one, including contributions from leading designers such as New Tendency and Moroso, with ceramics by Hasami, bedding by Tekla, lighting by Flos, and audio equipment by Teenage Engineering.”
— HOME0001
The result is very “GLITCH”-inspired, déjà-vu-but-void, floating signifiers of ‘taste’, etc. And, to quote the incredible, indelible WALTER BENJAMIN and his DÉCOR-APT ESSAY “ART IN THE AGE OF MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION”:
“Humanity’s self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.”
— Walter B.
So, the ALIENATION AESTHETIC is one thing – and, of course, it doesn’t seem to be stipulated that you can’t alter the décor of your HOME0001. But that is not what they are selling. They are selling: “BUY ONLINE. MOVE IN WITH NOTHING. READY FROM DAY ONE.” (DIRECT QUOTE).
It is YOURS, but none of “you” needs to be in it.
CONTROVERSIAL OPINION: in fact, a lot of “top-tier” décor-ators kind of also create spaces void of their inhabitants but exploding with “taste”.
There is, ergo, something slightly more complicated happening here, and that is kind of the denial of décor as human imprint.
We turn your attention to:
HOME0001 AS THE FLAT EARTH OF DÉCOR
The FLAT EARTH OF DÉCOR is to deny the observable world, and in décor terms, that means to deny that we don’t want to live in someone’s Business Idea.
Yet, a final kicker awaits – that this flattened Earth vision of fully-furnished homesphere popping up in several cities of distinction is frag*le as f*ck.
You buy into a fantasy of ‘access to temporary non-disruptive escape’; “YOUR” home everywhere, almost literally. And yet:
Owners can rent their HOME0001 out, removing it from the network
Owners can sell their home however they want, to whomever they want (and so maybe also to people who have no interest in their “collaborative” ideals)
And, not to completely rip apart HOME0001, but we simply have a diametrically opposed philosophy about DÉCOR and what constitutes worthy investment and aspiration.
We turn now to one very small, very human moment in a very crucial HOME MUSEUM in Germany, that of JOHANN VON WOLFGANG GOETHE:
“COVETABLE” DÉCOR vs. COVETABLE DÉCOR'
HOME0001 leans into ‘covetable décor’, but it doesn’t care if YOU covet it. It says “THIS IS EVERYTHING YOU NEED,” without asking you for your needs.
And, of course, you can amend it. But, you’ve just paid for everything; you’ve been told to “MOVE IN WITH NOTHING”.
As a quick counterpoint, Germany’s most romantic polymath JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (b. 1742, d. 1832), who reminds us:
“ONE’S HOME IS HALF OF ONE’S LIFE”
His life is OVER, of course, but his home is a museum, in Wiemar. And, within it, one can see the TRUE CHARM OF DÉCOR, which does not use the crutch of “covetable furniture” (even if some might be). One covets Goethe’s home because of how absolutely personal it is: painted according to a color theory he developed; rooms dedicated to personal obsessions (i.e. collections), and small moments of IDIOSYNCRATIC DÉCOR CHOICES, for example THIS:
This is a pillow Geothe had stationed on this table in his study (library adjacent… does HOME0001 give you a library?), meant to elevate pressure on his elbows during extended periods of reading.
He has HIS TASKS, which may not be yours. But, this is why one tours his home with greater curiosity than one tours a hotel room, décor’d for the common denominator.
We ask you consider RECOMMITTING to your idiosyncracies, and not pay someone to obliterate them.
Next week, we’re at FRIEZE ART FAIR (probably), but we promise to be more optimistic.
Until then. Love and good luck,