MuloNyse, Alt-Treptow (2024)

11/02/2022

The Productivity Commission has released proposals to bolster Australians’ right to repair. But do they go far enough?
2021 has been a milestone year for advocacy for a right to repair. In November, Apple announced its Self Service Repair program, through which it will offer parts, tools and manuals for consumers to repair their iPhones.

The announcement was cautiously welcomed by advocates, who have highlighted the company’s lacklustre record on repairability, and monopolistic strategies that force consumers to seek repairs at registered outlets.

The Australian Productivity Commission has also released the findings of a major inquiry that found “significant and unnecessary barriers” to consumers’ right to repair. It has recommended a range of measures on this front.

So what is a right to repair? And to what extent do the new recommendations address consumers’ rights, and manufacturers’ responsibilities?

Productivity Commission’s proposed reforms to overcome barriers to repair. Right to Repair Productivity Commission Inquiry Report Overview and Recommendations p5
The Right to Repair movement
Over the past decade, a coalition of tech entrepreneurs, farmers, repair enthusiasts, vehicle owners, designers and environmentalists have formed a global Right to Repair movement. They argue that a right to tinker is essential to owning technological devices.

The movement pushes against barriers such as commercial strategies that limit spare part availability, proprietary fittings, confusing warranty conditions and the increasing sophistication of products. Repair is also increasingly recognised as an urgent response to reducing global e-waste.

Read more: US and EU laws show Australia's Right to Repair moment is well overdue

The recommendations
The commission has stopped short of recommending a clear “right to repair”, which advocates may see as a missed opportunity.

That said, many recommendations have significant potential to ensure consumers are provided durable products in the first place, or can get them repaired, replaced or refunded under existing Australian Consumer Law consumer guarantees. If enacted, consumers will likely benefit from requirements for:

product package labelling that sets out how durable or repairable a product is
warranties that say consumers won’t lose their rights to a repair, replacement or refund just because they used an unauthorised repairer or spare parts, and
software updates to be provided for a reasonable time for products with embedded software.
The proposed product labelling scheme would be particularly useful on bigger-ticket products such as washing machines. Properly implemented labels would allow consumers to compare products based on durability before buying them – similar to labels disclosing a product’s electricity or water-use efficiency.

Another significant set of recommendations would make it much easier for consumers to enforce their existing rights. This includes the introduction of more dispute resolution options as alternatives to making complaints directly to a court or a tribunal. They propose:

the ability for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to seek “pecuniary penalties” (a type of non-criminal fine) against suppliers and manufacturers
a “super complaints” process that will allow consumer organisations to take action on behalf of consumers, and
enforceable decisions by state and territory fair trading agencies.
There were also positive proposals for independent repairers, particularly in removing certain barriers to repair posed by the Copyright Act. The commission recommended a “fair dealing” exception that would allow repairers to copy and share repair information, as well as a ban on contractual terms that attempt to restrict these rights.

Also, diagnosis and repair information is currently often hidden behind “digital locks” in devices, or technological protection measures that aim to prevent outsider access and copying. The commission recommended changes to the Copyright Act’s technological protection measures regime, which would let repairers access this “locked” information.

Concerns raised about premature obsolescence in devices were doubted, and the commission didn’t support proposals to directly prevent this. It also wasn’t convinced competition in repair markets other than agricultural machinery were being hampered by manufacturer restrictions.

Read more: Are our phones really designed to slow down over time? Experts look at the evidence

The commission merely recommended evaluating an existing information sharing scheme for motor vehicle repair, and further inquiry into repair markets for mobiles and tablets, medical devices and watches.

In the context of the international debate on the right to repair – which has centred on farmers’ rights to fix their tractors – the most radical proposal has been for the agricultural machinery repair market.

The commission recommended mandatory access to repair information and diagnostic software tools for all owners and repairers in this market “on fair and reasonable commercial terms”.

Tractors on farm crop
The agricultural machinery repair market has long been a battleground in the right to repair debate. Shutterstock
E-waste and the climate transition
Importantly, the commission considered right to repair issues in the context of wider e-waste concerns. Here the recommendations were that:

e-waste products which had been repaired and reused should be counted towards annual targets of the national TV and computer recycling scheme and
the government should use more tracking devices to figure our where e-waste ends up.
A striking feature of the report is the relatively brief treatment of “green” technologies. It notes the growing significance of solar waste, and that solar panels and lithium-ion batteries nearing their end of life will likely generate significant e-waste in coming years. Yet no specific recommendations are made for rights to repair renewable technologies.

It also had little to say about electric cars, despite the acknowledged repairability issues in the electric vehicle market.

Overall, the recommendations will help propel debate on the right to repair. But focusing on encoding these rights in already established sectors risks obscuring important repair issues associated with transitioning to climate-friendly technologies.

These problems will only become more obvious, as more households adopt rooftop solar and electric vehicles become the norm.

11/02/2022

𝑬𝒗𝒆𝒓𝒚𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒈𝒆𝒕𝒔 𝒉𝒐𝒕𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒖𝒏 𝒈𝒐𝒆𝒔 𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒏🌅🧡

🌀 Netherlands

📸 van b

10/02/2022

Biden restores protection for national monuments Trump shrank: 5 essential reads
On Oct. 7, 2021, the Interior Department announced that President Biden was restoring protection for three U.S. national monuments that the Trump administration sought to shrink drastically: Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, and Northeast Canyons and Seamounts in the Atlantic Ocean. President Trump’s 2017 orders downsizing these monuments, originally created by previous administrations, ignited debate over whether such action was legal. Here are five articles from our archives that examine this controversy.

1. A law rooted in presidential power
Presidents can designate lands as national monuments quickly, without seeking consent from Congress, under the 1906 Antiquities Act. Congress passed the law to protect historically valuable archaeological sites in the Southwest that were being looted.

But as the late John Freemuth, a public policy scholar at Boise State University, observed, presidents soon were using it much more expansively – and affected interests pushed back:

“Use of the Antiquities Act has fueled tensions between the federal government and states over land control – and not just in the Southwest region that the law was originally intended to protect. Communities have opposed creating new monuments for fear of losing revenues from livestock grazing, energy development, or other activities, although such uses have been allowed to continue at many national monuments.”

Freemuth predicted in a 2016 article that “future designations will succeed only if federal agencies consult widely in advance with local communities and politicians to confirm that support exists.”

Read more: How the Antiquities Act has expanded the national park system and fueled struggles over land protection

2. Can presidents alter monuments their predecessors created?
Many environmental advocacy groups and tribes opposed President Trump’s order to remove large swaths of land from these three monuments and sued to block it. The Antiquities Act is silent on this question. But when The Conversation asked environmental lawyers Nicholas Bryner, Eric Biber, Mark Squillace and Sean Hecht, they argued – based on other environmental statutes and legal opinions – that such acts would require congressional approval:

“Courts have always been deferential to presidents’ use of the law, and no court has ever struck down a monument based on its size or the types of objects it is designed to protect. Congress, rather than the president, has the authority to alter monuments, should it decide that changes are appropriate.”

Read more: President Trump's national monument rollback is illegal and likely to be reversed in court

3. Monuments have scenic, cultural and scientific value
National monuments protect many unique resources. For example, Bears Ears conserves land where Indigenous people have lived, hunted and worshiped for centuries. The Bears Ears designation was requested by an intertribal coalition and approved by President Barack Obama after extensive consultation with tribal governments.

Many national monuments contain scenic lands and areas that are critical habitat for endangered species, such as desert tortoises and California condors. The underwater canyons of Northeast Canyons and Seamounts house sponges, corals, squid, octopus, numerous fish species and endangered s***m whales.

Monuments also can have important scientific value. President Bill Clinton designated Grand Staircase-Escalante partly to protect thousands of unique fossil sites, most of which had yet to be studied. Many were located in areas near potential shale gas, coal or uranium extraction zones.

“Decades of ongoing research in this region have literally rewritten what scientists know about Mesozoic life, especially about the ecosystems that immediately preceded the final extinction of the dinosaurs,” Indiana University earth scientist P. David Polly writes. “Paleontologists like me know that the still-pristine Grand Staircase-Escalante region has divulged only a fragment of its paleontological story.”

Read more: Shrinking the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument is a disaster for paleontology

Scientists sitting in the dirt brush soil away from fossilized bones.
Researchers dig for fossils in Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which has emerged as one of the most important paleontological reserves in the world. Utah Museum of Natural History, CC BY-ND
4. How a Native American Interior Secretary sees it
The stark difference between the Trump and Biden administrations’ public land policies can be summed up by comparing their respective interior secretaries.

President Trump chose U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana to head the agency, which manages more than 480 million acres of public lands, including national monuments. Zinke, who supported opening public lands for oil and gas development and mining, led a review that proposed shrinking the three monuments Biden has just restored.

President Biden’s interior secretary, former U.S. Rep. Deb Haaland of New Mexico, is the first Native American to head the agency that maintains government-to-government relationships with and provides services to Native American Indian tribes and Alaska Native entities.

“For Native Americans, seeing people who look like us and are from where we come from in some of the highest elected and appointed offices in the U.S. demonstrates inclusion. Indian Country finally has a seat at the table,” writes Arizona State University Indigenous studies scholar Traci Morris.

Read more: 'Indian Country' is excited about the first Native American secretary of the interior – and the promise she has for addressing issues of importance to all Americans

Utah Native Americans support President Biden’s decision to restore Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante to their original boundaries.
5. Monuments aren’t always beloved at first
Some of the most popular U.S. national parks initially were protected as national monuments, then expanded and given national park status by Congress years later. They include Acadia in Maine, Joshua Tree in Southern California, and Arches in Utah.

But a site’s merit may not be obvious at first. As Arizona State University’s Stephen Pyne writes, the first Europeans who explored the Grand Canyon in the 18th and 19th centuries thought it was unremarkable or worse; one called it “altogether valueless.”

Then geologists working for the federal government traversed the canyon, and wrote rapturous accounts that recast it as a marvel – a shift that Pyne calls “an astonishing reversal of perception”:

“The geologic mystery of the canyon is how the south-trending Colorado River made a sudden turn westward to carve its way, cross-grained, through four plateaus. This is also more or less what happened culturally. Intellectuals cut against existing aesthetics to make a place that looked nothing like pastorals or alpine mountains into a compelling spectacle.”

President Theodore Roosevelt agreed. After making multiple visits to the canyon, he designated it as a national monument in 1908.

10/02/2022

Our North African ancestors were making handaxes earlier than previously thought
More than 1.5 million years ago, a new era dawned for our human ancestors, Homo erectus: the Acheulean culture. This period was marked by the ability to produce large cutting tools, mainly handaxes, manufactured using different kinds of rocks and used for a variety of activities.

These tools were all longer or wider than 10 cm and clearly shaped for different purposes. The previous “culture” – referring here to an archaeological industry – was the Oldowan, which dated from 2.6 million years ago up until at least 1.7 million years ago. Oldowan tools were small and medium-sized flakes, detached from a cobble or a block of raw material.

The Acheulean is considered a turning point in human evolution. That’s because it marked a new level of technological complexity linked to the appearance of Homo erectus, who become able to sculpt a block of stone to shape large objects with one or more standardised characteristics, such as a pointed form. This innovative skill first emerged on the African continent between 1.8 million and 1.6 million years ago, in East Africa. It appears to have reached South Africa somewhere between 1.6 million and 1 million years ago.

Until now, it’s not been clear when the Acheulean appeared in North Africa; estimates have suggested it was around 1 million years ago. Our research, conducted at an archaeological site called Thomas Quarry I in Casablanca, Morocco, changes this. We used the latest technologies in geology and dating methods to establish that the Acheulean likely first appeared in North Africa around 1.3 million years ago.

This is important information. It adds to scientists’ understanding of when Homo erectus spread across the African continent from its homeland (East Africa) and which cognitive and technological level allowed the species to disperse.

Technological advances
Two main Acheulean sites have been discovered in North Africa. One is Tighennif, near Mascara in Algeria. Thomas Quarry I (and specifically its unit L in the lower part of the stratigraphic sequence) is the other. Stone artefacts at both sites had been dated back to about 1 million years ago before our research.

Thomas Quarry I was one of several quarries opened in Casablanca at the dawn of the 20th century. They were to be used as construction sites, but it soon became apparent that Thomas Quarry I represented an exceptional geological, palaeontological and archaeological heritage. It became globally famous in 1969 thanks to the discovery of a human fossil dating to the Middle Pleistocene, about 500 000 years ago.

Since 1978, a joint Morocco-France research programme, “Préhistoire de Casablanca” has led to many more discoveries. In 1985, the first evidence of early Acheulean industry was found in two archaeological layers of Unit L.

First analyses suggested an age for this evidence of around 1 million years old. Since then, technology has advanced a great deal and our interdisciplinary team composed of Moroccan, French, and Italian scientists was able to use various approaches to pinpoint the site’s age.

The Thomas Quarry I site in Casablanca, Morocco. Jean-Paul Raynal
We used two main kinds of technology in our work. One was magnetostratigraphy, which registers the polarity of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time a stratum was deposited. This process dated our research area, Unit L, at more than 1 million years ago. We also geochemically analysed the sediments to see when they were first deposited, which is a good way to refine the age model. This approach generated two sets of dates: either between 1.3 and 1.35 million years ago, or between 1.29 and 1.23 million years ago.

Read more: Finds in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge reveal how ancient humans adapted to change

By combining and analysing all our data, we were able to propose an average age of 1.3 million years ago for the site. This, we believe, is when the Acheulean had already appeared in North Africa.

Technical know-how
Another exciting element of our work was ascertaining how Homo erectus diversified their tool-making practices in different parts of Africa. Around 5,000 artefacts have been found in Thomas Quarry I’s Unit L, among the largest collections from the epoch.

Most of the tools are of quartzite, a rock largely abundant in the Casablanca cobble beaches; there are large handaxes and picks, as well as cleavers (though these are rare). These share several technological traits with their East African counterparts and are rather typical of the early stages of the Acheulean.

Read more: Archaeology in West Africa could rewrite the textbooks on human evolution

But there’s a technical process that is, as far as we can tell, unique to the North African site. In parallel with large cutting tools, knapping (the process of breaking or chipping flint and other kinds of stone) produced micro tools of flint such as very small elongated flakes using the bipolar-on-anvil technique – using a hammer to strike a cobble, which is positioned on a stationary anvil.

Use-wear analysis to understand their use is underway. Our hypothesis is that these micro tools with a very sharp cutting edge like that of flint were used for extreme precision works. However, such technology is unexpected for these ancient periods, especially in an Acheulean context typically characterised by the production of large cutting tools rather than by micro-tools like this one.

It demonstrates that Homo erectus had the technical know-how to create new solutions when the need arose. They weren’t just making tools: they knew how to diversify their tools as necessary.

09/02/2022

All fired up: Clay Stories is a triumphant display of contemporary Indigenous ceramics
The exuberant exhibition Clay Stories: Contemporary Indigenous Ceramics from Remote Australia is part of the 2017 Tarnanthi Festival of Contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art. While pottery making and firing were never part of the pre-contact repertoire, the pulse of tradition infuses these ceramic artworks.

Held at the JamFactory’s Seppeltsfield Gallery, Clay Stories is a collaboration between the Remote Communities Ceramic Network and Sydney’s Sabbia Gallery. The spacious, light-filled gallery on Seppeltsfield’s winery estate is the picture perfect setting for displaying these strikingly variegated bodies of work.

The ceramic artworks in Clay Stories have been sourced from remote Indigenous Art Centres located on the homelands of Indigenous people, from island to inland. These centres, controlled by members of local Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander communities, represent optimal practice in the field, with profits routinely re-invested back into the organisation, providing grassroots infrastructural support for younger or emerging artists.

Sabbia Gallery - Clay Stories - Lynette Lewis - Tjala - Honey Ants - 2017 stoneware with sgraffito - 450 h x 162mm d. Private Collection. Photo Sabbia Gallery.
Clay Stories includes works by ceramists from Hermannsburg in Central Australia, Ernabella Arts on the APY Lands, the Tiwi Islands, the Torres Strait Islands and the Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre in far northeastern Queensland. They have been grouped on the basis of their regional provenance, thus capturing the distinctiveness of each body of work.

A sensible curatorial decision, this allows visitors to understand the specific zeitgeists and socio-cultural contexts that have given rise to the works, in terms of location and terrain, whether land and/or sea, and each group’s unique pre- and post-contact historical circumstances.

The works of Tiwi potter Jock Puautjimi, equally esteemed for his sculptural Pukumani (funerary) poles, are those of an artist at the top of his game. Puautjimi’s Tiwi Bird is a re-creation of an episode in Tiwi oral tradition chronicling events that brought death to the Tiwi Islands.

Sabbia Gallery - Clay Stories No 80 - Jock Puautjimi - Tiwi Bird - 2017 - hand built carved and glazed stoneware 580 h x 200 w x 150 mm d. Photo Sabbia Gallery.
Two Ancestral Beings, the adulterous lovers Bima and Japara, contravened Tiwi Law. Their sexual transgression led to the death of Bima’s baby Jinani, the demise of these two star-crossed lovers and their eventual transformation into Other Beings. Tiwi Islanders became forever mortal thereafter.

Birds figure prominently in this foundational Tiwi narrative. Tiwi Bird is an elegant, deceptively simple work, masking the true art that conceals art. Puautjimi’s marvellous visual poetry is also evident in his Open Vase. Adorned with classical Tiwi geometric designs, the clean lines, bold design and skilled craftsmanship informing this work confirm Puautjimi’s status as an Old Master.

Erub Islander Jimmy Kenny Thaiday evokes age-old Torres Strait Islander tradition in his dramatic ceramic rendering titled Le Op. In this magisterial sculptural piece, Thaiday re-creates a type of ceremonial mask originally carved from turtle shell and worn by Torres Strait Islander men. Thaiday’s younger countrywoman, Ella Rose Savage, also demonstrates in her ceramic works how the richness of Islander tradition and cultural practice continues to serve as an abundant source of creativity, regardless of medium used.

Artistic renaissance at Girringun
Cardwell, a small township some 1,500 kilometres north of Brisbane on Queensland’s north-eastern coast, is the home of the Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre, a collective representing nine distinct language groups. Girringun has very quickly become a hothouse of constant, bubbling artistic activity. Ceramic works are at its forefront.

Sabbia Gallery - Clay Stories - Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre - Emily Murray 60 h x 17 w x 8 cm d. Photo Sabbia Gallery.
The local people, mostly descendants of rainforest tribes, traditionally carved Bagu figures, ochre-painted Fire-Spirit Beings, from slow-burning wood, typically the milky pine (Alstonia scholaris). These curious little wooden homunculi have deep cavities in place of the eyes from which licking flames and smoke would leap. Traditionally, jiman (firesticks) were attached to the Bagu (fireboards). In the old days, these enchanting, mercurial beings were regarded as having sorcery power, but their practical use was paramount. Fire was a precious commodity to be transported everywhere, lest flames be extinguished in that damp, dank rainforest environment.

An exciting artistic and cultural renaissance is currently taking place at Girringun Art Centre. People are making ceramic Bagu figures ranging in size from diminutive to monumental. Major artists include Sally Murray, Emily Murray and Eileen Tep, all of whom have Bagu ceramic works on display in Clay Stories. Something else very powerful seems to inhabit these charismatic Bagu re-creations, partially related to the force field that these figures seem to exert. In equal measure this is a result of the artists’ sheer brilliance.

Moving inland to Ernabella Arts, another ceramics workshop and business is thriving. Based in Pukatja in northern South Australia, and located on the homelands of the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara people, the Ernabella potters have been collaborating with the JamFactory for some years now.

Sabbia Gallery - Clay Stories - Rupert Jack at work at the Ernabella Arts Ceramic Studio 2017. Photo Ernabella Arts.
Rupert Jack’s stoneware with sgraffito work Ili evoking the native, desert or rock fig (Ficus platypoda) is among the standout exhibits on show, along with terrific work by Lynette Lewis, Alison Milyika Carroll and Derek Jungarrayi Thompson.

The Hermannsburg Potters
Hermannsburg, now known as Ntaria, is where the first modest foray of Aboriginal people into making and firing ceramics began on mainland Australia in the early 1960s. Two local Western Aranda men, Joseph Rontji and Nahasson Ungwanaka, worked with the mission gardener Vic Jaensch to construct a rudimentary kiln. They fired small, rather kitsch figurines.

Nahasson Ungwanaka (left) and Joseph Rontji at the Hermannsburg Mission, Northern Territory, working with clay to make ceramic figurines, photograph courtesy of Denise Mossel [née Kuhne], 1962.
After Jaensch departed the Mission there was a long hiatus in making ceramics until 1990 when the professional ceramist Naomi Sharp arrived. Sharp stayed for 16 years during which time the ceramists acquired professional skills.

Today’s Hermannsburg Potters are nationally and internationally acclaimed. Rahel Kngwarriya Ungwanaka, Nahasson’s widow, has work in Clay Stories, as does Rona Panangka Rubuntja and the current and long term Chairperson of Hermannsburg Potters, Judith Pungkarta Inkamala. All three women began working with Sharp from the very beginning of what has now become a major enterprise.

Sabbia Gallery - Clay Stories No 67 - Rona Panangka Rubuntja - Nuka Pmere - My Country - 2017 - hand built terracotta and underglaze - 330 h x 270mm d. Photo Sabbia Gallery.
Rona Panangka Rubuntja’s Nuka Pmere (“My Country”), in which she portrays a mare and her foal, reveals this artist’s impish sense of fun. Peeking around the pot’s circumference, one can’t fail to notice that the foal’s mother is in fact taking a massive dump, graphically and humorously represented, in an understated way. This sent children (and many adults) off with big smiles on their faces as they moved through the gallery space.

The women’s ceramic works are mostly comprised of rounded bellies, a direct influence of Pueblo Native American pottery. Their lidded tops depict Dreamings, and/or local fauna and flora, historical scenarios, or scenes drawn from everyday life or other subject matter meaningful to each individual artist.

“Bush creatures” lovingly created by Judith Inkamala perch atop her rounded bowls. Inkamala’s ceramic magpie, for instance, seems poised to take flight, either to swoop down to gorge an attractively bald pate or take off skyward.

A brave new world
The works in Clay Stories also materialise to a greater or lesser extent the brave new world imposed upon their makers by British colonisation. But collectively, they serve to retain each group’s long-term social and cultural memories, standing against cultural and political amnesia.

Sabbia Gallery - Clay Stories No 37 Jimmy Kenny Thaiday - Little People - 2015 - hand built carved wood fired ceramic - tallest 360mm h. Private Collection. Photo Sabbia Gallery.
Not only are these ceramic works grounded in everyday living, but they’re also connected to country, and to narrative. Whilst many other contemporary Australian artists at times struggle to find inspiration for their artwork, these artists never angst about their choice of subject matter.

Clay Stories is a triumph. (It also exists at a fortuitous crossroads where art meets business.) These ceramic artists’ specific histories, Dreamings, and their country constantly replenish and refresh their artistic vision. Drawing on rich repositories of narrative these visual traditions continue to flow through the current generations. For this enduring source of cultural and visual fluency the artists have their Ancestors to thank. It isn’t just a matter of “mining the archive” but a means of representing their living cultures.

08/02/2022

Kintsugi and the art of ceramic maintenance
Kintsugi is the traditional Japanese craft of repairing broken ceramics with “urushi” glue and gold or silver dust. It expresses the Japanese principle of “mottainai”, a concept for the regret experienced from waste. It’s significant for being a rare traditional form of “transformative” repair, or repair that intentionally changes the appearance of an object.

Photo of a school yard in Sendai city after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. K_TN72/Twitter
The visual style of ceramics with gilded cracks is highly regarded in Japan, and has been said to “diagram” the forces that shatter them. In a recent paper, I argued this recalls and develops from the Japanese experience of earthquakes. This suggests there is a new way of understanding the emerging international interest in contemporary forms of transformative repair as a response to cultural and environmental conditions of waste.

The appreciation for visibly repaired objects contrasts with Western repair practice. In the West, repair is typically intended to be hidden. One can understand that if you crash you car, you might not like it repaired with its repair visible. It might reflect poorly on your driving skill, for example.

However, the problem is that a stigma of repair has stuck to the fixing of all sorts of objects. I suspect it reinforces a requirement of the consumer society: a desire for box-fresh, scratch-free products. To avert the considerable contemporary problems of waste and landfill, we should become more tolerant and appreciative of repaired products.

A kintsugi repaired tea bowl from an unknown Raku ware workshop, c. 19th century. Courtesy of the Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.: Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1894.16
This is the lesson of kintsugi: through the careful addition of gold and silver, objects becomes more beautiful than they were before they were broken, reversing our expectation of repair. This is the rationale behind my current research project and exhibition, Object Therapy, a collaboration between the UNSW Art & Design, the ANU School of Art, and Hotel Hotel’s Fix and Make program. We have connected the owners of broken objects with professional artists and designers working to an open brief of “transformative repair”.

Kintsugi mainly developed from the beginning of the early 17th century Edo period, but its use of urushi – a glue-like sap extracted by tapping the lacquer tree Toxicodendron vernicifluum – to repair ceramics dates back to the the pre-historical Jōmon period.

Kintsugi also has a basis in the re-evaluation of broken objects that took place during the tea ceremony development of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. In one story a guest, Shō-ō, arrived for a tea ceremony with a small hammer smuggled inside his robe. With this hammer he intended to smash off the handle of a flower vase he had seen purchased by his host, the famous tea master Sen No Rikyū. He knew Rikyū would display the vase, but thought the handle lacking in taste. Upon arrival, he discovered that Rikyū had already broken the handle himself.

The story of Shō-ō’s hammer is remarkable for the tolerance shown to a guest intent on wilful damage to a host’s possession. (I sometimes wish I could use a hammer to inflict similar damage to my friends’ Ikea furniture).

The story is also remarkable for the radical re-appreciation for broken objects it illustrates. In the context of the East Asian region, broken objects were traditionally considered inauspicious. Such aesthetic reorientation was a response to the terrible emotional and material consequences of the Sengaku period of war (c. 1467–1603). It is the pre-condition for the later popularity of kintsugi repaired ceramics.

Repaired karatsu ware teabowl c. 16th century. Courtesy of photographer Tomasz Samek and Gallery BachmannEckenstein
However, the enduring success of kintsugi is based on other factors. Firstly, the wholly Japanese process “rebranded” imported Chinese and Korean ceramics. These imported ceramics were often made with unknown techniques. Kintsugi counter-techniques, such as infilling missing shards with bulk urushi decorated with Japanese patterns, augmented its rebranding.

Secondly, and not coincidentally, the rising popularity of kintsugi corresponds to an increasing awareness of seismic activity in the region. This cultural understanding of how Japan was beset by earthquakes is documented in government record keeping.

This torn kimono-style gown was worn by Fiona’s mother and found among her possessions after her death. It was remade into a pillow by Louisa de Smet and Steven Wright of Corr Blimey. Author provided
There is a visual similarity to the cracks of kintsugi and the cracks of earthquakes, but this is not the basis for the relationship. More consequential is the “affective” similarity they share. This is the general “sense” of a breaking force mediated by the appearance of cracks. Dressed with gold and reduced in scale to a small object that can be held in the hand, the force of the earthquake becomes manageable and less dangerous in perception.

This miniaturisation of natural forces is an aesthetic theme of the tea ceremony. It connects the wider, expansive qualities of nature outside the tea house. The power of mountains, rocks and fire, and the surge of rivers and waterfalls, are, for example, captured by the rustic texture of tea bowl glazes and the delicate rituals of boiling and pouring water.

Kintsugi ceramics are traditionally used in tea ceremonies too, at the beginning of winter, after the last tea harvest. This is a time when villagers help each other prepare for winter, such as by collaboratively re-thatching roofs. This is sensitive time for the Japanese. It connects to the aesthetic of “mono no aware” or the impermanence of life.

In this regard, kintsugi ceramics act as a device to ameliorate the fear of catastrophe and fortify a desire to prepare for it. It was illuminating to discover during the research for my paper that one contemporary kintsugi practitioner has seen an upturn in business since the devastating earthquakes and tsunami of 2011.

This toy action figure of Steve Austin, the 6 Million Dollar Man, with missing limbs and more, was repaired and dressed up by paper artist Benja Harney. Author provided
As part of the human research for Object Therapy, we interviewed members of the general public that had submitted a range of broken objects. With repair industries on the decline, people are in more need than ever for new ways of fixing things. Our research shows such a lack of repair options can be troubling for some people.

While DIY, home-based repair, has become increasingly popular in recent years as a response to the pressures of hyperconsumerism and waste, it is not a viable option for all. It can take time to learn technical and creative skills of repair. Polished results may be hard to obtain. But professional artists and designers have such skills already, even if they are not necessarily familiar with repair. So we we asked artists and designers to transformatively repair the broken objects we collected. This includes transformation of these objects’ appearance, but has extended to include changes to the objects’ function, or social or contextual significance.

Our 31 Australian and international “repairers” have worked on a range of objects for the upcoming exhibition (and eventual return to their owners) that reflect a cross-section of products in the consumer landscape. They include many speculative approaches to transformative repair. Informed by interviews with owners, our repairers have responded with propositional works that span from the thoughtful, refined and beautiful, to the provocative, critical and radical.

Such works go well beyond the traditional stylistic constraints of kintsugi. They may not yet form any culturally embedded practice. But my hope is that they inspire new solutions to waste and obsolescence that are both practical and appealing, and redress the troubling affects of living in the era of hyper-consumption.