"TOUCH IS THE BODY LANGUAGE OF FURNITURE"
MYSTERIES OF THE IKEA AVANT-GARDE, AND THE JOY THEY CAN BRING YOU
IN THIS ISSUE:
The mindset of INFINITESIMAL OPPORTUNITY
IKEA AND THE AVANT-GARDE: we draw a lineage via MARCEL DUCHAMP through to FOR SCALE diva of choice JULIA FOX
Reappraising the DOG ASS WALL HOOK
The NOT-IKEA IKEA, that is worthy of your research, hailing from Italy
An enviable ALL-IKEA-styled dinner in London
Dear Snoops,
The titular quote here is fundamental to our philosophy on interiors: i.e. this shit we call “furniture and objects” isn’t just for the eyes (or the camera lens). Daily, we submerge ourselves completely in “home”, ergo it can’t be made just for eyes, but we must think of butts and hands and feet.
And, ipso facto, we should be compelled to each do “home” our own way, since it’s kinda a big deal for our bodies.
The titular quote here, also, has an origin that might surprise you. That origin is IKEA. (For the life of us, we can’t find the precise source; just one of those really sticky quotes though. Trust us.)
TANGENT
“TOUCH-AS-LANGUAGE”-RELATED PET PEEVE:
The archi-disease of extremely fancy and expensive “architecturally significant” buildings that have shitty factory-standard doors. Example: L.A.’S / FRANK GEHRY’S WALT DISNEY CONCERT HALL, $274 million to complete. ARCHITECTURE VS DOOR SELECTION:
THE IKEA SPACE-TIME WARP AND “EXPERIMENTATION”
This is a critical experience that relates to home. It is the sense both that time stops when you enter, and also that by the time you’ve left, you’ve aged years.
This is the ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ worm hole effect. In both IKEA and 2001, you end up here:
This is a critical inspiration for home because what IKEA suggests through its maze-ified, wormhole of stuff is the infinite, or rather the sense of infinitesimal opportunity. Infinity arrangements that seem to have every possible product ever but are also in a constant state of evolution.
IKEA’s infinity allows your mind to access:
The experimental and absurd
The banality of too much “plain”
IKEA is an object lesson in how boring “boring things” can be, but equally, it is the context of those boring things that allow you to approach the insane.
You’re both:
Numbed by the volume of “plain”, and so you are attracted to the “different”
Driven mad by the inescapability of IKEA, and ergo on the same wavelength as something like this:
N.B. Both boring things and insane things of IKEA’s past have been subsequently elevated to IKEA AS COLLECTIBLE status - we shan’t be giving you a list.
Some of the absurd has been detailed by our IKEA Correspondent Harry Stayt a.k.a. BILLY.forsale. This is fundamentally insane:
It has the essence of the avant-garde, a Duchampian / dadaist quality reminiscent of:
Also new for IKEA in 1997:
CLOCK SHOTS
The clock is an exceptional accessory because they have a direct function (time keeping), which we have also pretty much made obsolete through digital devices. Ergo, every clock is a conversation piece, i.e. “Why do you have that?” And, coincidentally, IKEA really f*cking thrives in the clock department.
A selection of FOR SCALE favorites sold by IKEA Correspondent Harry, which are/were available via his website, depending on how quickly you get there:
OLD IKEA DISCOVERABILITY:
It’s easy. That’s the bonus.
NON-IKEA IKEA, A REPORT BY “RANDOM KNOWLEDGE” CORRESPONDENT DAVID PLAISANT:
ITALY’s “KIT”
OTHERS HAVE AND WILL EXIST. IKEA is not guru, it’s savvy business-person. It’s the Bikram, not the yoga. It’s important to note that IKEA gives us the best lens through which to explore the theme of infinitesimal opportunity, but that I.O. exists everywhere.
GIVING DIMENSION TO THE MINDS OF IKEA DESIGNERS: the case of Monika Mulder
OR: DOG ASS AS SUBVERSIVE AVANT-GARDE
Ok, we also believe that for a fluid IKEA experience it is important to also gaze upon each object with the knowledge that some human (a Swede, likely) filtered some corporate IKEA brief through their own likes and interests.
Example: MONIKA MULDER, who is a fave of our Correspondent Harry S., and has amassed an exceptional oeuvre, including but not limited to the Hasslo chair, which you definitely know:
But, she is also responsible for the canon item DOG’S ASS WALL HOOK, for those who appreciate that the DOG ASS is really a portal for olfactory communication and want to use it to hang up coats of dog leashes, etc.
But, it gives some interesting dimension to DOG ASS WALL HOOK to recognize that Ms Mulder is very keen on animal-shaped things in a kind of odd meta way. Peep this CAT BED she designed (not IKEA):
“CAT” CAT BED brings greater charm for us to DOG ASS WALL HOOK, and makes us think Mulder was a bit of a subversive. Given a “hook” brief and she delivered an ass, simply because she likes pet-anthropomorphism and maybe was mad at her boss. She operates on her own agenda = feminism.
THE FULL IKEA FANTASY
We end with more HARRY S. because he is the IKEA maestro, and hosted an ALL-IKEA-styled dinner in London some months ago, which we peeped via his Instagram and it looked EXCEPTIONALLY CHIC – and we don’t like to use that word. But it was:
Until next week. LOVE AND GOOD LUCK,
Can we agree that Steph Mantis gets credit for Cat Butts as hooks? In this case, 2009 > 2013
https://stephmantis.com/Animal-Butt-Magnets-1