Mathieu Lehanneur
The first seven days and the last seven days of your life
Workshop June 8 - 11 2010
Public lecture June 8
Download workshop booklet (coming soon)
See and download Mathieu Lehanneur’s interview (coming soon)
Mathieu Lehanneur
Born in 1974 in Rochefort, France
Lives and works in Paris, France
Graduated from ENSCI-Les Ateliers (French National School for Industrial Design) in 2001, Mathieu Lehanneur opened that same year his own studio dedicated to industrial design and interior architecture.
Very soon has he been developing a real passion for interactions between the body and its environment, living systems and the scientific world. Combining advanced technologies and natural elements (such as plants, seaweeds...) in his creations, he came up with exploratory design projects within the pharmaceutical, biological or astrophysical fields. In 2006, he got the Carte Blanche from the VIA and he was awarded the Grand Prix de la Création from the city of Paris. In 2008, he received the Talent du Luxe Award and the Best Invention Award (USA) for Andrea, its air-cleaning system using plants.
Between 2004 and 2008, Mathieu Lehanneur was also the “Design and research” post-graduate manager at ESAD in Saint Etienne, France.
In 2009, he founded in USA Everything But The Molecules, a company specialized into pharmaceutical design solutions.
His projects are part of several permanent museum collections : MoMA in New York, FRAC in Paris, Musee des Art Decoratifs (Paris).
Workshop brief
However hard I search and try to go back as far as I can in time, I can't remember the first object that I saw. Nor can I recall the first one I took hold of, or the first one I loved. I must have been a few minutes old or a few hours at the most, so I've forgotten which object it was that initiated my contact with the world.
People say that first impressions are lasting. That they're fixed in your mind, or at least condition your knowledge of a person, a place or a thing. We've all had the experience - all thru our life -, of those first contact zones with beings, objects or situations that imprint those instants indelibly.
So what was my first impression of the world?
After the contact with my mother's body, after the careful technical contact of a medical team, what were my first relations with the world of objects?
What I see, hear, or touch during the first days, everything that may potentially condition an early state of knowledge of the world is important.
From the first impression to the last, there is just one step, or more precisely there's only a lifetime. What will my last objects, my last things be?
The 7 first days and the 7 last days of your life.
What this workshop focuses on is our ability to question ourselves about the symbolic and fundamental objects that link us to the world of things: the very first objects and the very last.
There are several ways of getting a handle on this theme. To begin with, we should extend the meaning of objects to all the contacts and interactions possible with what surround us. An object may be a thing, a sound, a shape, a sensation or even a story.
As well, the objects of the beginning (life) and of the end (death) form a continuity, and we might even say that they are identical. (The doorknob we turn to enter a room is the same or about the same as the one we turn to leave it).
In fact, everyone is free to concentrate on one extremity of life or the other, or on both.
Today, most of the objects of the first 7 days and of the last 7 days are either for pure fun or strict function. They're either 'toys' or 'tools'.
Clearly, the aim here isn't to propose another new toy for the newborn or another device for the elderly, but rather to try to see objects as forming the zone of sensual, symbolic or metaphysical encounter with the world.Our existence is occupied by countless objects (functional, decorative, futile…). From the most rudimentary to the most technologically advanced, they accompany and shape our relation to the world. We can see them as tools for understanding and/or acting on our environment. So during these four days let's investigate the extremities of existence and let's try to make the first impression the best and the last the most beautiful.
THE END IS WHERE WE START*
By Nina Due
Start
With life having a start, a middle part and an end, regardless of how long that lifetime may
be, the way in which humans connect with the material world during that time will have a
profound impact on how we as individuals relate to our physical surroundings.
How we connect with objects and things throughout life are more often than not closely
linked to our socio-cultural environments and religious or non-religious beliefs and values.
But perhaps more pertinent now than ever before, mankind exists in a world where cultural
differences are becoming more and more blurred, thus to unpick the meaning of
(contemporary) ‘things’ has become quite a different task to what it used to be.
The meaning of objects has been addressed and interpreted in a number of different
contexts, challenging the notion of value, cultural and historical importance, heritage, status
and ephemeral significance. Historians have written endlessly about where objects sit within
‘systems’, what they mean and what they may tell us. However, the area which is arguably
the most difficult ‘system’ in which to place an object is in relation to personal significance:
who is to judge what meaning an object has to an individual but the individual him or herself?
So when FABRICA and Mathieu Lehanneur invited me to attend the presentation of the
workshop ‘The 7 first days and the 7 last days of your life’, I was instantly intrigued and
curious as to how the students would respond to creating objects or interventions that
address what Lehanneur highlights in his design brief as “…our ability to question ourselves
about the symbolic and fundamental objects that link us to the world of things: the very first
objects and the very last”.
How could one expect the students to interpret this brief; how literal or abstract would their
responses be and at what ‘level’ would they enter a discourse about life and death?
Middle Part
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start.
T.S. Eliot, extract from ‘Little Gidding’, ‘Four Quarters’
The sense of time, belonging and human’s connectivity with the material world were central
elements when T. S, Eliot wrote the Four Quartets, a series of poems written before and
during the Second World War.
Although Eliot was a deeply religious man and his poems were firmly placed in the struggle
between man’s relationship with the material world and the divine, the beginning of ‘Little
Gidding’ strikes me as a poignant departure to Mathieu Lehanneur’s workshop brief at
FABRICA regardless of religious relevance or not. Where does life start and end and at what
point in life do objects serve a purpose – whether they are of a functional, emotional or
spiritual nature?
As the workshop was made up of student from various design disciplines the projects were
bound to take on different propositions, which made for a much more interesting discussion
than had it been, for example, only students in product design. The best example of this was
the duo made up of a journalist and filmmaker. With their short film called ‘Things that are
hard to tell’, they conveyed the very fundamental problem about how society and individuals
deal with how life starts and ends in relation to explaining it to children. The film was simple
in its execution, but as far as its message goes, it captured the anxieties and even
awkwardness when an adult explains how babies are conceived and then born and what
happens when you die. The inaptness to tell it as it is was instead told through illustrations
by the adults on film; drawing scenarios of the birds and the bees, the stork, angles and
other divine intervention to circumnavigate the real terms in which we all enter and leave this
world. The film would be a great tool in education, by which I mean a ‘thinking piece’ that no
doubt would question how we as adults wrap up the challenges of life in cotton wool as a
way to ‘protect’ children and indeed ourselves.
A more common strand from some of the other groups was tangible results in the form of
objects, whereby new typologies of both functional and more narrative products were
proposed.
‘Death in everyday life’ managed to address our mortality in a humoristic way, yet gave the
objects a subtle and delicate spin on the notion that life is fragile and one should cherish
what we have here and now. In a series of three, the birthday card adapted a graphic
language where it showed in a gentle way the age to be celebrated through repetitive
pattern. The idea was not to shout about how old one becomes but rather bring to ones
attention that we are all mortal and should enjoy life whilst on Earth. The second piece was
based on the organ donor card but with a sleek design and produced in platinum, inspiring a
sense of legacy and the value of life. The third piece was an epitaph clothing label, which
would be applied to a deceased person’s clothing and sold in second hand shops to
commemorate the person’s legacy – a bit like park benches in Britain where a plaque is
applied to a park bench to celebrate the lives of the deceased.
As the presentations went on, I felt that the age of the participants (early to mid-twenties)
probably played a big part in the way that the respective groups interpreted and worked with
the brief. A great sense of innocence and at times humour was played out, where it didn’t
seem that any of the students dwelled on their own cultural, religious background or heritage
as a way of responding to the brief. This didn’t make the projects necessarily less interesting
but it reminded me that as you get older life’s events play on your mind in a much more
cynical and even pessimistic way and that the material world – both in relation to birth and
death - do form intricate relationships with each one of us.
Two groups managed to address this relationship in a very poignant manner; the first group
doing so in a conscious approach, the second one I think more by default: ‘Transition’ was
one proposal by a group that had investigated how ill people in hospitals are often closed off
from the real world, where their existence revolves around purely man-made objects to do
with their health and well being. So what would happen if you attempted to bring the
outdoors inside, to introduce a more vibrant and real world to the person being sick and
treated in hospital? In a clever and thought provoking way, ‘Transition’ proposed a family of
objects that played with our senses whilst being bed-ridden: a Reflector that visually brought
the outside inside; a Camera Obscure that brought events from the outside to the patient
and a Recorder that brought in sounds of everyday life. On reflection, this series of objects
addressed something much more profound than inventing objects for the beginning and end
of one’s life. It brought to one’s attention the sensory needs one has when lying in bed ill and
not being able to connect with the outside world. It highlighted that this proposal would add
most value to the people who are not at the beginning or end of their lives but who are
patients who spend long periods in hospitals during treatments – whether they are children
or adults. This group of people seem to be the group in real need of what ‘Transition’ would
ultimately offer. It would give a sense of connecting with the world outside whilst being inside
a hospital and thus the distance between these two entities would be brought somewhat
closer together.
Then it was the group that proposed perhaps a rather ill performed demonstration of a
sensory breathing device for a newborn baby. The object was an electric blanket with a
cushion within it that would be placed in the baby cot on the mattress to mimic the way in
which the mother was breathing whilst the baby was in the womb. For a baby that is born
within term and not premature, I would argue that once born the infant would embark on
life’s journey and move on to the next level of interaction with mother, other carers and the
material world without prolonging the sensation of still being in the womb. As much as this
device might have given the child comfort, the intense contact with the mother will form
security and comfort that arguably is of a higher currency than what this device would give.
On the other hand, this device could prove its real strength and purpose with pre-mature
babies. When an infant has to spend the first weeks of its life in an incubator, hooked up to
drips and oxygen and other monitoring devices, its first encounter with the human world is
largely based on mechanical and medicinal instruments. Therefore, the proposition of the
breathing blanket to mimic a mother’s breathing seems a much more viable offering to an
infant when during its first weeks the child has limited contact with its mother on every
sensory and emotional level. One can imagine that the breathing blanket could offer comfort
and reassurance for the baby in the midst of the medical intensity that they are surrounded
by.
An End
Although coincidental, I’ve only recently given birth to my second child parallel to my father
dying on the same day as my daughter was born after battling with illness. Of course in
neither of these scenarios was I the central character and how can I judge what objects or
things would have had meaning to either of them? However, using my maternal instinct I
would argue that as a newborn there is the fundamental presence of mother and father or
carer that will ultimately link the child with the material world as it rapidly gets used to its
surroundings. I feel uncertain if any objects or interventions can add the same ‘value’ or
even replace the physical presence of carers at the very beginning of life, and the sensory
importance of smell, sounds, touch and sight seem to be much more relevant than what any
object can offer so early in life.
As life comes to an end, there is of course a much stronger argument for linking one’s
lifetime with objects, ‘things’ and memorabilia. With T.S. Eliot’s words in mind: The end is
where we start, it reminds us that as humans we cling on to the safe and easily
understandable notion that life has a beginning and an end, yet it seems that with many who
are knowingly dying, they sense that life is about to reinvent itself, but on a different plane
perhaps.
The story goes that after battling with poor health over a long period, my grandfather told his
wife on his deathbed to pack his suitcase with his favourite suit, shirt and tie as he explained
that he was about to embark on a new journey. It wasn’t the first time my grandmother had
heard similar requests. As an ex-nurse she had treated many patients with similar visions as
their time on earth was nearing the end. She duly complied with my granddad’s wishes and
once the suitcase was ready, she sat by his bedside, held his hand and said her
goodbyes. It was a calm farewell and despite the sorrow of losing her long life companion,
she felt peaceful, knowing that her husband was reassured by having the suitcase by his
side containing items that had significant meaning to him that would support him on his
onward travels.
Yet, I find the most interesting discourse about proposing ‘tools’ to enhance life to be in a
similar vain to the group who proposed ‘Transition’. The idiosyncratic nature in which
‘Transition’ was proposed reminds us of how everyday events are intrinsically linked to our
senses and that without being part of these events we can easily become outsiders -
whether we’re hooked up to a hospital bed or being cared for at home often on a long term
basis – and that with the objects that this project suggest there is scope for a much more
organic and fluid interplay between humans, nature and the man-made.
Nina Due, Design Museum, London
Nina Due is Head of Exhibitions at the Design Museum in London, one of the first museums in the world to be devoted to design, architecture and fashion. She joined the museum in 2007 as a curator during which time she curated five large-scale exhibitions including Brit Insurance Designs of the Year, retrospectives on British architect Richard Rogers, the British graphic artist Alan Aldridge and Spanish artists and designer Javier Mariscal.
Nina was appointed Head of Exhibitions in April 2009, a role that largely focuses on delivering the overall exhibitions program at the museum as well as her continuing work in curating exhibitions.
Before joining the Design Museum, Nina worked at the British Council in the Design and Architecture Department as a curator and with the Contemporary team at the Victoria and Albert Museum, curating the Friday Late events.
A graduate in Curating Contemporary Design from Kingston University’s joint MA with the Design Museum, she also holds a BA (Hons) in furniture and product design.
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