Masha du Toit

Christien Meindertsma spoke on the last day of the Design Indaba 2010.  She has a quietly confident style and a subtle sense of humour.  Her talk was thought provoking and intriguing.

Christien is fascinated by the link between products and the materials they are made out of. Even when we have some understanding of what something is made of – the emotional and physical link is lacking.  Christien attempts to remind us of this link.

For example, the “One Sheep Cardigan” project, in which she knitted a cardigan made out of all the wool of one specific sheep.

The cardigan is accompanied by the sheep’s identity ear-tag (the small yellow object) a “passport” of the sheep in question, and a trophy ribbon:

In the “Aran Rug” project, she knitted a carpet.  Notice the scale model on the table in front of her (images from Christien’s site):

And here is the finished rug:

I was particularly fascinated by her book “Pig 05049”.

The book traces all the products that are made from a particular pig.

The book has an “ear tag” identifying it, as the pig would:

It is branded:

The index shows the connection between the pig and all the products in the book:

And then each page is a photograph of a product that contains some aspect of the pig:

Such as:

• liquorice (in the shape of farm animals)
• heart valves
• bullets
• cigarette filters ( pig blood !)
• bread (pig hair!)
• biodiesel
• concrete
• puzzles
• bone china

And many more startling and unlikely things.

Here is Christien talking about Pig 05049 at TEDxAmsterdam:

And another video:

More interesting links about Christien:

• a video interview.
• an interview on we make money not art.
• Christien’s own site – very informative.
• A project based around rope making.
• a video on an eye-tracking project.

This post was first published on www.designindaba.com