studio katharina ruhm

soylent green ⌈2021⌉
vase edition

Soylent green is an edition of 19 unique glass vases.

The vases are produced within a flexible mould. This intern allows for a production process that merges traditional craftsmanship of glass making with an innovative production technique. The highly flexible mould allows these objects to be manufactured in series that reflects the many nuances in the natural behaviour of the formed glass.The design of the glass bodies is not entirely controlled by the glass maker, nor is it fully controlled by the mould. It is a correspondence between craftsman and the movement of the melted glass. Through that innovative process the glass itself becomes an autark formbgeber.In this respect all of the glass bodies can be seen as unique specimens; frozen snapshots of the ability of this synthetic material to become an autark formgeber.

Soylent green is produced in collaboration with highly trained, traditional glass makers at Niessenglas in Switzerland. The edition is an example for the highest quality of material and craftsmanship.Contemporary design should not strive for innovative industrial production only. It needs to be seen as a way to innovate and integrate traditional craft. Traditional craft itself contains the knowledge and innovations of centuries.Objects made by craftsman are sediments of our cultural development. They silently contain sociological, political and technical ideas of their times.

The title of this edition is a reference to the dystopian Sci Fi movie `Soylent Green´. Even though the movie was produced in 1973 it is picturing an all too familiar vision of the exploitive human behaviour towards our environment and self. Interestingly, at the core of the film lies the understanding that human made objects can be used as a tool to connect to humanity itself. The sci-fi drama is placed on an overcrowded planet earth in the year 2022; a world which has run out of things. The only available resource to satisfy the human urge to consume is ´Soylent Green´, a substitute produced by the government. That results in a constant, uncontrollable and relentless drive of the people to get as much of the green soylent as possible. Even when the truth of Soylent Green’s secret ingredients is revealed (it is made of human bodies), no one seems to care.

The movie Soylent Green is building an interesting hypothesis in its last scene- in a world without objects, the individual human subject no longer holds value. Our insatiable urge to possess objects and subsequent lack thereof ends up (last scene spoiler) with us consuming one another instead.

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