“It’s is NOT about the Money anymore.”
Photo by: Hannu Lammi. Sitting on an invisible chair at the Koskikeskus Shopping Center (Kaivuriskaba - via Facebook)
Hannu Lammi is a buss-driver from the city of Tampere, Finland. He enrolled to a competition called “Kaivuriskaba” (Digger-Competition) the year 2011. There where six competitors. They competed over “who could sit for the longest time in a mini-digger”. The winner would receive it (priced around 32 000€). The competition was organized by Jukka “Kaivuri-Jukka” Mutanen who drove across Finland in a mini-digger the year before. He had made “a page” on facebook with the title: “If 50 000 people like this page, I’ll drive from Hanko to Kuusamo”. In a short time the page received near 100 000 likes. His performance was streamed online on the bambuser.com service and noted on national television.
The competition begun simultaneously in six shopping centers, in six cities across Finland. Each digger had a webcam mounted, which streamed video of the men sitting, sleaping and eating. They where allowed to have a daily 30min break, so in all they where confined to their diggers for 23hours and 30min each day (not allowed to lift their behinds). One after one the competitors quitted the race. At the end two men Hannu Lammi (age 36) and Kimmo Frisk (age 21) sat in their diggers for 6 months. At that point the competition was stopped by the organizer. By that time they had sat for some 180 days.
The organizer had expected the competitors to sit for some two months but had underestimated the mens durability.. In an interview he explained that his underestimation of the mens durability was the biggest mistake he had made. The contesters where donated the mini-diggers in which they had sat for some 4320 hours.. It was not about money but if they where able to sell them for the starting price they would have earned 7,40€ per. hour of sitting. Both contesters developed serious back problems due to their prolonged sitting. As blogged before sitting is the worst thing one can do for a living.
We met mr. Lammi when working with the xxx_group for the Landing Points festival organized by Jussi Koitela in Tampere. For Landing Points we conducted a study of shopping centers of Tampere. We looked at their environmental design and the designs impact on customer behavior. This was achieved by conducting various sorts of field exercised and interviews. We made the study incognito in places like Ikea, Tampere. In all some 58 separate experiments in shopping centers where made during a day. One of them being an interview with Mr. Lammi. At the time we met him he had been sitting for 149 days and the competition had three finalists. The competitors had bad-mouthed each other the month before and where filing law suits against each other “for threatening” (Details in Finnish)
The interview was made at Koskikeskus. Christmas was approaching and the contesters where committed in sitting in their their diggers indefinitely.
As I attempted to reach Kosuth..
Talk to any conceptual artist out there about the NO-CHAIR-DESIGN campaign and what they’ll think of is “One and Three Chairs” by Joseph Kosuth (1965). Kosuth is a pioneer of conceptual art and “One and Three Chairs” is portrayed as groundbreaking artwork for the movement. The piece was backed up by his essay “Art After Philosophy” (1969). He made a series of artworks with the same concept (“One and Three.. this and that”) but the chair one is most cited in art-history books.
NCD-C has challenged mr. Kosuth to NOT design chairs but so far we have not received a reply. I send an email to a gallery which is representing him, but I`m betting it was not forwarded. He’s busy for sure. I understand that well. It’s difficult to contact famous artists even though your intentions are good.
When it comes to communications inside the creative industry, people are constantly sabotaging each others efforts. Contacts are equal to money . If you as a curator or a gallerist have “the contacts” you have the keys to success. Concerning how competitive the industry is, it’s uncommon to share information. The same logic applies for crafts, design and music too. I would argue that the creative industry is the most competitive business in the world.
I was in Berlin last year for the first time and I met an artist who said that he had Billy Viola’s phone number.
“He was bragging about having a phonenumber! What is so cool about a number?!”. I thought to myself.
At the time I didn’t understand what kind of benefits having a famous artists phone number can have in a city like Berlin. Now I can imagine that the guy is being treated with dinners in fancy restaurant by all sorts of gallerist and art dealers, who are trying to gain access to that magical number of mr. Viola. I bet the guy had never called the number and that none of the people he has forwarded it to will either. They all just enjoy having it. Like a precious gem they can boast about.
I live in Finland where there are some 4000 “professional artist”. Meaning people who fund their practice with culture related jobs and art grants. Only a few of them (~40) get their income solely from selling art. (These statistic are a rumor. I heard them in a bar – So don’t go quoiting them). So the scene here is very different from global art business. In Finland you can find contact details to just about every artist on their homepages or “the yellow pages”. People from Berlin think we are naive here.. They told me this them selfs.
Non-profit contemporary art museums don’t share contacts either nor do they delegate messages. I attempted to reach Kosuth though a museum he has presented work at. But they where blunt: “No. It’s not in our policy to release contact information of artists we have worked with”. At least I got a reply. Institutions work this way to protect the artist from bad business proposals. If you work in a museum you’ll learn there is an etiquette on how communications are handled.. Typically you have to travel and meet the right people involved in order to be trusted.
I enjoy the idea that meeting a person in RL certificates that s/he can be trusted. This makes art less business like.. It’s not about the quality of products. It’s about the durability of networks we build.
But protecting artist from the online world and “amateurs who do not know the etiquette” (like myself) can have drastic consequences: The art market and institutions are censoring what kind of feedback and responses the artists cause in the audience. As communications are handled through gallerist, curators and managers, the artists have very little possibilities to learn how and if the general public is being influenced by their work. Like with musicians. They only meet fans.
Hence they are dependent on the media, like politicians. By controlling this feedback the industry can manipulate what kinds of artworks the artist “thinks are worth producing”. I’m betting this already has an impact in the aesthetics artist deploy. Every time communications are controlled it is done to preserve the status quo.
Also.. The “One and Three Chairs” is a conceptual piece of art: A set of instructions which any person could use to build the installation. If I understand this correctly… It would mean that I have the possibility to build the artwork into my home. Despite the effort I cannot reach Kosuth and validate this. Institutions are controlling the communication for a purpose. If I’d have a Kosuth consent to build the installation I’d do it in my home tomorrow! We looked in his work in detail when preparing for our exhibition in Jyväskylä and our installation bears a resemblance to “One and Three..”
I’d also like to know how he feels about wikipedia. The “One and Three..” series is dependent on dictionary definitions of the objects portrayed. How would he feel about showing a wikipedia definition of a chair?
Is his intent to play with the art markets and to create IKEA like tutorials which people use to build their own art? So that they have free and unlimited access to conceptual art? If the artwork can be build by anyone who follows the artist idea, it cannot be sold. But again.. I cannot reach Kosuth to validate this (Nor can I find links online dealing with this issue).
I hope that mr. Kosuth would have enjoyed the NCD-Campaign.
Happy Birthday Stefan Lindfors
Acclaimed designer Stefan Lindfors threw his birthday party at the Helsinki, White Hall. Lindfors is undoubtedly the best known designer in Finland and has caused a stir with his controversial design and public statements. In the framework of “design terrorism” Lindfors has branched outside the role of a mere industrial designer and has worked with performance art and directed short movies.. While he was greeting guests at the door something very different was being performed behind his back.
Lindforses colleague and friend artist Pekka Niskanen decided to give the birthday boy (who has designed everything from adult toys-to-buildings) something intangible. Niskanen gave the man who has designed it all.. An “invisible chair performance” as a gift. Talk about less is more design philosophy! A performance a gift is a novel idea. Special thanks to the birthday party planning team for finding the time to fit this into the tight schedule! I hope that this will serve as a good example for people interested in investing to performance art. Sometimes the act of giving is best served by giving an act.
This gift was only topped by Lindforses gift to himself.. Turning 50 he quit smoking. Congratulations mr. Lindfors!
When it comes to sustainable design Lindfors caused a scene some years back when designing the “Plup” bottled water container. Soon after he was attacked by environmentalists left-to-right. The issue was that the round (and as musician Ville Valo described “erotic and quirky”) container did not meet the returnable bottle industry standards. Hense Plups where deemed non-returnable to shops, by Palpa the “Finnish Returnable Container Company”. So, unlike with standard bottles which you get 20cents per bottle when returning to the shop (which are then grinned to shreds and remade into new bottles), people where stuck with their round and quirky Plup flasks.
10cents from every Plup sold was redirected for environmental organizations working to protect the Gulf Finland. But environmentalists argued that consumers purchasing Plup bottles where doing more harm then good. I think that at the time the product was misunderstood. As Lindfors himself stated the bottles where not meant to be recycled.. They where meant to be owned. To be refilled and reused indefinitely.
Bottled water is undoubtedly the most ridiculous commodity you can consume in a country like Finland, with fresh water running trough every tap. Lindfors made a strong statement with the Plup.. It was not about the water at all. It was only about the design. People could buy a design object for 2,50€ and use it indefinitely. It is design which places design markets in an awkward position. If every product out there would be made form the same ideological mindset.. The market value of design as a collectable would drop and consumers would soon have nothing to consume (The only thing left to invest in would be performance art..). As a statement Plup made a mockery of the bottled water industry in general.. For a while it made selling water in small bottles seem like a dump idea.
If someone out there still has a Plup in use please let the world now about it! I guess it was the marketing which caused Plups to flunk. Not to say Lindfors and friends didn’t try. Here is a video backed up with top of the line dancer (now singer) Jorma Uotinen and jackass Bam Margera.
Homage a David Weiss&Peter Fischli.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/apr/30/david-weiss-dies-aged-66
Economic Chaos Illustrated With Chairs
Here is a link send by Finnish curator Jussi (One of the person responsible the all so funny Transsexual, Bareback, Lesbian, Chairs Remix video). Jussi’s link guided me to a prototype chair “PLASTIK FANTASTIK” (2012) by REFUNC which is to presented at Manifesta 9.
REFUNC is a group which “..operates on the borders of architecture, art and design and creates new products from old materials” and Manifesta 9 call it’s self “the only itinerant european biennial of contemporary art...”.
In making representations of the “PLASTIK FANTASTIK” the REFUNC crew has used workers as models sitting on their chair.
I hope those are the artist dressed in their working uniforms. The elderly man has “REFUNC” written on his working jacked. For the NCD-Campaign we have also used “the contemporary worker uniforms” in our invisible chair representations.
Our reason for showing the invisible chair with a worker sitting on it was to: Illustrate that the economic crisis is forcing workers to “sit on thin air”, or that the workers have had “their chairs pulled from underneath them”. Investments and retirement funds are being destroyed by the global banking crisis. If the worker where to look down and notice that there is no chair, he would fall on his ass. And yes, it’s me in the photo and Jesse is behind the camera.
On their website REFUNC gives a description for their artwork. It’s stated to be an “adaptation of PVC garden chairs model ‘succes’ to social network arrangements”. I don’t understand this well. There is a typo in the description and it feels like a fast translation.
Judging from at the pictures it’s apparent that the artwork acts as a statement: The maneuvers and steps taken to fix the economic crisis are mostly effecting the working classes. That workers are forced to live in tight corners and their space is being reorganized by top-down-design.
The current economic chaos illustrated with chairs. The logic is the same as in an artists decision to use chairs as actors in a horror story – This leaves more room for the imagination. Image of a person sitting on thin air was also used in YLE - TV news when talking about the housing crisis of Spain. And as a final proof here there is this:
A Coronation Chair used for Miss Finland competitions is being auctioned. It is owned by the first commercial broadcasting company in Finland. The depression is forcing the commercial broadcasting companies to fund their business by selling iconic furniture. Oh the irony of it all…
The chair where the asses of the most beautiful women of Finland have rested is being sold to pay for the salaries of the TV staff.
An other group working with economics, attending Manifesta 9 is the Estonian Visible Solutions LLC which seems to mimic a business entity of a sort. Their own site is currently down (http://http//www.visiblesolutions.eu). Wonder if it’s a statement? It appears that mock-up companies like Ore.e Ref. are growing popular. But so far it seems that only a few of these artist run companies are really attempting to live trough their business.
News from the Swingers Club for Mature Chairs.
Ore.e Ref. and Turntable joined ranks to promote urban farming and sustainable design in mid Pasila, Finland. On a cold weekend some 12 persons attended the “Swingers Club for Mature Chairs” - workshop during which people where guided how to fix worn chairs and some basic handicraft techniques like chiseling and sawing. The group succeeded in building seven tables, ten benches and some five Adirondack Chairs. The design of the Adirondack Chairs was based on models used in Chair-bombing actions (initiated by do-tank-brooklyn) in NY. The workshop was hosted at a greenhouse build by Dodo ry’s, Kääntöpöytä crew. The greenhouse opened for audiences this weekend.
Turntable, the urban farming center of Helsinki is run by Dodo and they have begun to convert the old railway infrastructure of Pasila into an active community driven urban farming test lab. Alongside farming experiments and upcoming gardening workshops, the place has a cafeteria which opens in a couple of weeks. It will serve vegetarian dishes made from food farmed in the Pasila district. Like Prinzessinnengärten in Berlin. The “Swingers Club..” workshop was initiated, produced and co-run by Turntable active, designer-artist Päivi Raivio and aided by other members of the Turntable team. Special thanks to Kirmo for feeding the workers.
Ore.e Ref’s, NO-CHAIR-DESIGN Challenge team (Which in this case means me, as Jesse was at a class reunion in Turku) was invited to run the practical part of the workshop:
- To teach people how to repair stuff and expand awareness on crafts.
- To teach how to use power-tools and special tools (like dozuki saws and planers)
- To give some insight on wood as material (joinery)
- To oversee that people didn’t get hurt when using circular saws..
The tasks the attendees where engaged in where pretty complicated for starters. Some where compiling stuff using big screws for the first time and others had their first go at chiseling. I’m happy to say that the workshop succeeded in it’s targets. People had a fun time (despite the +3 Celsius temperatures on the first day) and learned something practical.
The furniture we made during the week-end is intended to become the infrastructure of upcoming cafeteria. People tagged the benches, tables and chairs they made with their names. When they visit the cafeteria they will have the possibility to dine using furniture they made them selfs! Like with the tactical urbanism movement of Chair-bombing this was a process of building a community – by re-imagining and modifying salvaged pieces of city infrastructure. Junk wood was converted into permanent furniture with labor and these objects are likely to have a positive effect on the local community. There are designer studios, indoor pétanque arenas, festivity spaces for rent etc. in the same premises as the Turntable Urban Farming Center. Unlike with graffiti - which is simply beautiful, furniture like this is useful and hence acceptable for very different kinds of audiences. The boys at the pétanque arena already showed interest spending some time at the table.
As the furniture is tagged by their makers; they will possibly be treated more respectably and fixed autonomously by the community if they happen to break. Identifying the makers protects the objects from vandalism. Sustainable design logic.. Also the bench design is beautiful which will ultimately help it to last longer. People enjoy maintaining beautiful stuff. The design was copied from an old bench found on the site. This also gives the furniture an interesting story. It’s areal design – Possibly the beginning of a Pasila spesfic style of woodworking. The tables mimic the same look and structural solutions. The doors used as table tops where found at a nearby renovation site.
All of the wood was junk wood collected by Kääntöpöytä crew from nearby construction sites.. The wood was dirty, wet and partly rotten (used as support when making concrete structures) and people possibly didn’t get the best idea on how to really work with wood. Chiseling dry wood is much more accurate the chipping junks of wet wood. There are surely some maintenance tasks ahead once the wood dries and the screws start popping out. The wood for the benches was dried for a month in advance but the table legs where as wet as.. well as wet wood can be. Possibly the most rewarding part of the workshop was teaching people how to use power-tools like angle grinders, jigsaws and hand-held circular saws. People seemed empowered after finding the courage to use these tools.
The event was also interesting as it was an operation where a project (TURNTABLE) supported by the World Design Capital Helsinki venture and a project supported by Alternative Design Capital group (NO-CHAIR-DESIGN) where working side-by-side in hopes of transforming the city to a jollier space.
Thank you very much for attending and please come again!
A community is needed to run a farm and a farm to run a community – To eat they need a big table.
Do you recognize the designer on the left? Well if you have been following up on the NO-CHAIR-DESIGN Campaign you ought to! And the girl on the right? She’s in the game! And below here is me boasting about after a full work weekend.
Last photo by: Kirmo Kivelä / dodo.org
Science proofs it: NO! NOT SIT.
An article on NY Times covers a studies conducted in Finland and Australia which proof that “..prolonged inactivity, a practice known more familiarly as sitting a lot, is … unhealthy..” and that health problems resulting from this cannot be compensated with daily exercise.
They found that the more hours the men and women sat every day, the greater their chance of dying prematurely. Those people who sat more than eight hours a day … had a 15 percent greater risk of dying during the study’s three-year follow-up period than people who sat for fewer than four hours a day. (Via NY Times)
Parts of the study where made at the “Neuromuscular Research Center, Department of Biology of Physical Activity, University of Jyväskylä, Finland”. Where we recently performed with the NO-CHAIR-DESIGN Campaign.
When the muscles are inactive for long periods, the fat metabolism, for example, can change into being disadvantageous to one’s health. Because of this, it is extremely important to pay attention to the amount of exercise and to reduce the amount of sitting. (Via Daily Science)
“Your chair is your enemy” states Olivia Judson in a NY Times in an article 2010 and looks at the science of the “Standing desk” phenomenon. Sitting makes your metabolism slower and you end up burning less fat. You may also find some details on the Wikipedia article on standing desks. Any way you look at it chairs cause more problems then they solve. Sitting is a nice act but unwanted for anyone else then royalty.
I have personally worked up-right when editing video since 2007. I think this results to different kinds of aesthetics. More dynamic and punchier. Compared to standard editing routines – When taking breaks I sit down and relax and stand up to do the work. I started to edit up-right because I like a potato while sitting. I felt sleepy.
Last year I learned that academy awarded movie editor Walter Murch also works up-right.
Unlike most film editors today, Murch works standing up, comparing the process of film editing to “conducting, brain surgery and short-order cooking”, since all conductors, cooks and surgeons stand when they work. In contrast, when writing, he does so lying down. His reason for this is that where editing film is an editorial process, the creation process of writing is opposite that, and so he lies down rather than sit or stand up, to separate his editing mind from his creating mind.[4] (Via Wikipedia)
Virginia Woolf also worked up-right (and some company is selling standing desks baring her name) and there is and according to this blog post also Sir Winston Churchill, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Jefferson worked at stand-up desks. Oddly enough even Donald Rumsfeld works up-right. So we can argue that people from very different political mindsets have found the upright standing position to be better.
Here is an infograf going trough the story using bright colors:
Using Chairs to Squat Public Spaces.
The name of the video is explicit. The concept is simple and affective. In this case chairs are used as infrastructure to construct social space. These chairs are infraffiti (infra-graffiti) design made with the intent of reclaiming public spaces.
A chair in the right spot of the room can help people socialize (Sofas work even better for this). The same socializing occurs when chairs are placed outdoors. With this kinds of chairs you can convert any site into an easy going “beach lounge”. Design wise the chairs presented on the video are pretty cool. They resemble a soft lounge chairs while being robust in construct. They emanate an easygoing attitude.
The Chair bombing act by DoTank: Brooklyn has caught on and inspired others to do the same. It has also evolved into a digital culture project when a website design company went on to make a decent amount of similar chairs and ditch them to public sites (http://punkave.com/build-a-chair). Each chair was marked with a qr-code and people can follow their movements online. Kind of the same way as Book Crossing (http://www.bookcrossing.com/) does.
Funny how these kind of “tactical urbanism” projects emerge around the globe relatively at the same time. I noticed that both projects rely on the expertize of “real designers”.. The DoTank design is made by Shelton Davis from http://www.repurposedgoods.com and the P’unk Ave events where made possible with “Pallet Chair Lo - Chair” by http://www.studiomama.com/
If you happen to be around in Helsinki next week please look this workshop up!
Swingers Club for Mature Chairs!
Turntable, urban farming center run by Dodo in mid-Pasila is looking for chairs that are suitable for outdoor usage. The chairs will be used at the Turntable cafe and it´s happenings, which opens this spring. Forget about plastic chairs and sitting down for work – we are looking for your wooden chairs! You can donate chairs on the site on the time that suits you best during week 15 or on the fay 14.4.
Turntable together with Ore.e.Refineries is organising a chair workshop where the chairs will be fixed to meet outdoor usage requirements and chairs and benches will be made of waste wood. People joining the workshop have the opportunity to learn the usage of hand operated power-tools and about the surface treatment of wood. The workshop does not cost a penny and is run by Ore.e Refineries staff, known from the awe-inspiring “NO-CHAIR-DESIGN” Campaign.
If you do not wish to donate your favorite chair – You may use this opportunity to fix it and take it back at the end of the day. First 15 fit in the workshop, make sure to register by sending an email: pasila@kaupunkiviljely.fi
Open Doors Workshop
14.4. 10-17
Donations are collected:
(vk15 9.4-14.4)
Tips for people donating chairs: Avoid chairs which, have complicated hindges (office chairs etc). or are overlayed with textiles.
Tips for partisipants: Bring you protection gear… umh… I mean
earmuffs and eye protection.. Sunglasses will do nicely.
www.kaantopoyta.fi
Map: http://kaantopoyta.fi/yhteystiedot/
Ore.e Refineries: http://oree.storijapan.net/NCD-C/
Contact:
Turntable: —- (not on tumbrl)
Workshop: 050 57 29743
Grasping Conceptual Art trough the Net.
I bumped in to article about Luis Gispert’s (http://www.luisgispert.com) “All Oyster, No Pearl” exhibition in OHWOW Gallery on Huffington Post. There was an image about a chair and after some clicking I ended up on the artists site attempting to figure what the work is about. Bio on his site offered little if any information on what the chair pictures relate to… But there was a link to a video called Block Watching (2003) which I think is brilliant.
There is a greenscreen in the background which makes it possible to imagine any background or no-background to the girl confusing car alarm sounds to dubstep. I think she is dressed up like a cheerleader and the artwork addresses many of the same features of north-american youth culture as Offspring’s “Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)” (1998). I saw that on MTV when I was a kid. Apparently the joke is that youth from black and hispanic groups see young white kids, identifying to rap and street culture to be pretentious or just lost. White kids identifying to rap culture are in the wrong context.
Gispert’s exhibition in OHWOW is analyzed to a degree on the Huffington Post article and the Wikipedia article does not fall short either. Particularly the artist style of combining items from different cultural contexts together is talked of. This re-mediating process it a common practice for post-modern artists. The strategy is that when gold-is-merged-with-shit and ghetto-brought-to-museum the end result offers the audience a possibility to reconfigure their values. Seeing a cheep chain (used as material in iconic rapper gems) pushed trough a design chair allegedly gives the audience the possibility to deconstruct previously fixed notions of social class and taste.
”..objects we all recognize are removed from their usual function and relabeled as art. The works bring a conceptual resonance to the cliche “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.” (Huffington Post)
There is a clever joke going on with these new works: The gesture of placing grayish stuff into a grayish background is laughing at the clichés of fine art. The green non-context backdrop he has used previously was useful in separating the dancing girl from her historical space. To show that this figure has no background to anchor her self to – North America youth clishé. In these new works, arbitrary objects (chairs) are photographed agains a gray background and these photos presented as art. In the gallery setting they function under the same mindset as the dancing girl.
If you have a grayish backdrop you may put anything in the frame and it’ll look smart. Just like cheep golden chains make anyone look lost.
So instead of playing with the binaries oppositions of stereotypes (ghetto-to-museum) he’s amplifying the existing conventions of post-modern art.. A little bit like what he did with the “hip-hop baroque pictures” (show on website under projects 2003-2004). He is clearly criticizing the hip-hop culture for glamorizing materialistic and consumption based lifestyles with those works.
In these new works… I guess the reasoning is to illustrate how western taste if crafted and manipulated. Hope he sells the work. This is how much you can figure out of conceptual art trough the net.
“The works play with cultural currency and the invisible hierarchies that divide art from low culture and utilitarian objects”. (Huffington Post)
Anyway. Love the golden ghetto blaster chair he made back in the day.
“The Murder Chairs tells seven stories about violence and memory. Experimental film from the year 2010.” by Nalle Mielonen. Again with using chairs in narratives as representatives of people.
Please someone help me figure out what this phenomenon is about!
Chairs as people – There is no sense in this but artists from Ai Weiwei to Nalle Mielonen to Jan Hakon Erichsen work in the same aesthetic framework. I would accept this more easily if this where a society under heavy censorship and portraying humans in narratives would not be acceptable or the subjects of these works would be such that using “real” actors would not be possible.
All of these artist are telling stories which would appear naive if they would have actors in them. Chairs representing humans give a sense for horror for these films. It’s possibly a logistical and practical reason why chairs are used - And not shoes, clothing or kitchen appliances. A director can easily find different kinds of chairs and transporting them to the set is easily done. Chairs also have an uniform design.. You sit on them and their proportions are such that only humans can do this. Using a coffee mug would appear more ambiguous as such may be used for a variety of liquids and used by all sorts of animals. But chairs are for humans only.
An important observation is that chairs are unisex and hence serve narratives well.
Chair to push spikes ups your ass. I found images of a bench which spikes online and this technology reminded me about the urban development in the suburb of Malminkartano, Finland. Now I found a clip online which explains the project further. Pay-to-sit, Steve Mann, 2001.
