Mikey Sklar & Wendy Tremayne
Drop Facebook and Imagine Something Beautiful
Doug Ruskoff announced today that he is dropping his Facebook account because, "participation on the site is simply too inconsistent with the values I espouse in my work." His statement prompted me to reflect on my start on Facebook and first introduction to Doug. This summer I asked Doug to write a foreword for my book of the feelings we share about how the commodified world affects us.
Intrigued by stories of gathering community I signed on to Facebook. Later when I learned about the site's real goals and my role as a data provider for corporations that Facebook sells my information to, I stayed. Like Doug I saw FB as a tool to promote the book I'd just written.
I met Doug in NYC in 2001. I was Creative Director for a pop-culture marketing company, he had a new book out. We lunched on Avenue B and discussed him becoming my client. I was realizing that my job was inconsistent with my values. I knew I was about to quit so I never tried to close the deal. It was during the frenetic dot com days that the firm recruited my having noticed my work. I produced a variety of events in the city like a Free Mumia benefit, a think tank exploring art and commodifcation of culture, and I did community development that sometimes gave young artists a start. Once part of the firm my creativity was aimed at promoting MP3 players, DJs, trendy magazines, and occasionally a great author like Doug. My job shifted from developing culture to commodifying it. Seeing that I was off course I quit.
Given that everything I've done since then has been focused on the goal of decommodifying culture, self publishing my book would have been consistent with my intentions. But a first time author I figured a publisher gave me a chance at reaching the mainstream where I might have an affect. With book stores disappearing I chose one with expertise in non-book retail, Storey gets into feed stores and trendy clothing stores like Anthropologie. Meeting art director Alethea Morrison presented the exciting possibility that my book could be art. Then came reasons to print in China, these having to do with details like the book's stitched bind. Each small compromise had a reason and took me nearer to being commodified. Writing and releasing a book even turns me into a product. When it comes out in June readers in the pages I ask readers to contemplate the notion that to be alive today we are each the problem and the solution. It is a time of paradox. Mikey and I run a PV solar system that generates clean power. We use the power it creates to run manufactured tools that caused destruction to resources to produce. They aid us in transforming waste into domestic goods that allow us to consume less resource intensive new goods. Problem solution. The freedom comes in what's being born right now, tomorrow's options. The commons and open source are examples of the good thinking of some of those in our generation. More important still is that we know that what exists tomorrow follows what we imagine today. We can imagine something beautiful and then build the way to get there.
In the past decade my life has gone full circle. When my book comes out in June I will go on tour and present it with hopes of having an affect. I'll burn jet fuel to get from here to there and eat out instead of making food from my garden. I'll consume in ways I haven't in a long time because it'll be easier to do so while traveling. The day that I signed a contract I detached from my garden and a list of projects I meant to start: a workshop, humanure set up, evaporation pond for hot mineral spring water. I've been clawing my way back to the lifestyle that I wrote about ever since. Now I know that a book is never done. There is editing, art, marketing, distribution, and selling. I get a day or a few to inch back then I'm pulled back into the tornado of business. Too often these days my gaze is a dead stare into a bright computer screen. A pain in my neck reminds me that this use of my body is not natural. I notice a gap between my life and the life of this world. For a while nature did not seem out there. Under a vast desert sky building a homestead it was a source of wisdom that I felt, it was in here. Facebook can't do that. It'll always be out there. I'm not complaining as much as you might think. This is all meaningful to me, a wish fulfilled. I like knowing the compromises as I am making them. I've decided that for myself it is OK to make them for the gain of something that matters. Being separated from what I learned to love helped me to remember the preciousness of what I discovered since leaving the commodified world. Value is restored.
One day after the book has had its day in the world I hope to follow Doug's lead and quit Facebook. It will be a good day. Meanwhile Mikey and I have been transformed into cute silk screen images that are about to be squeegee'd onto used clothes gathered at Swap-O-Rama-Rama's around the world. People who attend will have prevented those duds from hitting landfills, they'll reclaim their creativity from industry too, even though many will have driven petroleum burning vehicles to get there. Maybe some of what is learned will shape what is to come. Is it time to revolt against trend as a measure of conformity and trigger to waste good materials? Is it time for makers to take back the world and refuse to let their creations be diminished by something as cheap and common as money? I sure hope so!
(lllustration by Rachel Soloman, excerpted from The Good Life Lab)
Drop Facebook and Imagine Something Beautiful
Doug Ruskoff announced today that he is dropping his Facebook account because, "participation on the site is simply too inconsistent with the values I espouse in my work." His statement prompted me to reflect on my start on Facebook and first introduction to Doug. This summer I asked Doug to write a foreword for my book of the feelings we share about how the commodified world affects us.
Intrigued by stories of gathering community I signed on to Facebook. Later when I learned about the site's real goals and my role as a data provider for corporations that Facebook sells my information to, I stayed. Like Doug I saw FB as a tool to promote the book I'd just written.
I met Doug in NYC in 2001. I was Creative Director for a pop-culture marketing company, he had a new book out. We lunched on Avenue B and discussed him becoming my client. I was realizing that my job was inconsistent with my values. I knew I was about to quit so I never tried to close the deal. It was during the frenetic dot com days that the firm recruited my having noticed my work. I produced a variety of events in the city like a Free Mumia benefit, a think tank exploring art and commodifcation of culture, and I did community development that sometimes gave young artists a start. Once part of the firm my creativity was aimed at promoting MP3 players, DJs, trendy magazines, and occasionally a great author like Doug. My job shifted from developing culture to commodifying it. Seeing that I was off course I quit.
Given that everything I've done since then has been focused on the goal of decommodifying culture, self publishing my book would have been consistent with my intentions. But a first time author I figured a publisher gave me a chance at reaching the mainstream where I might have an affect. With book stores disappearing I chose one with expertise in non-book retail, Storey gets into feed stores and trendy clothing stores like Anthropologie. Meeting art director Alethea Morrison presented the exciting possibility that my book could be art. Then came reasons to print in China, these having to do with details like the book's stitched bind. Each small compromise had a reason and took me nearer to being commodified. Writing and releasing a book even turns me into a product. When it comes out in June readers in the pages I ask readers to contemplate the notion that to be alive today we are each the problem and the solution. It is a time of paradox. Mikey and I run a PV solar system that generates clean power. We use the power it creates to run manufactured tools that caused destruction to resources to produce. They aid us in transforming waste into domestic goods that allow us to consume less resource intensive new goods. Problem solution. The freedom comes in what's being born right now, tomorrow's options. The commons and open source are examples of the good thinking of some of those in our generation. More important still is that we know that what exists tomorrow follows what we imagine today. We can imagine something beautiful and then build the way to get there.
In the past decade my life has gone full circle. When my book comes out in June I will go on tour and present it with hopes of having an affect. I'll burn jet fuel to get from here to there and eat out instead of making food from my garden. I'll consume in ways I haven't in a long time because it'll be easier to do so while traveling. The day that I signed a contract I detached from my garden and a list of projects I meant to start: a workshop, humanure set up, evaporation pond for hot mineral spring water. I've been clawing my way back to the lifestyle that I wrote about ever since. Now I know that a book is never done. There is editing, art, marketing, distribution, and selling. I get a day or a few to inch back then I'm pulled back into the tornado of business. Too often these days my gaze is a dead stare into a bright computer screen. A pain in my neck reminds me that this use of my body is not natural. I notice a gap between my life and the life of this world. For a while nature did not seem out there. Under a vast desert sky building a homestead it was a source of wisdom that I felt, it was in here. Facebook can't do that. It'll always be out there. I'm not complaining as much as you might think. This is all meaningful to me, a wish fulfilled. I like knowing the compromises as I am making them. I've decided that for myself it is OK to make them for the gain of something that matters. Being separated from what I learned to love helped me to remember the preciousness of what I discovered since leaving the commodified world. Value is restored.
One day after the book has had its day in the world I hope to follow Doug's lead and quit Facebook. It will be a good day. Meanwhile Mikey and I have been transformed into cute silk screen images that are about to be squeegee'd onto used clothes gathered at Swap-O-Rama-Rama's around the world. People who attend will have prevented those duds from hitting landfills, they'll reclaim their creativity from industry too, even though many will have driven petroleum burning vehicles to get there. Maybe some of what is learned will shape what is to come. Is it time to revolt against trend as a measure of conformity and trigger to waste good materials? Is it time for makers to take back the world and refuse to let their creations be diminished by something as cheap and common as money? I sure hope so!
(lllustration by Rachel Soloman, excerpted from The Good Life Lab)