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In this show, we discussed with Restarter Dave Lukes the “Big Fix“, Hackney’s festival of repair taking place this Saturday, featuring a Restart Party, as well as bike, furniture, fabric repair workshops and much more.
We then spoke to Restarter Orsetta Hosquet about a US laptop refurbisher turned artist, inspired by the glitches produced by faulty video cards he was substituting. This made us think about perfection and appreciating faults, when possible. But this story also made us think about the patience that the repetitive work of commercial repairers requires, which is why Restarters love the variety of gadgets they get a chance to try repairing at our events.
We then talked about the wave of consumerist events leading us to the end of the year, the infamous Black Friday and more. More retailers this year are announcing their special deals weeks in advance, even giving details on why it’s better to shop in the middle of the night. We were inspired by news that Alibaba broke all records of online shopping earlier this month during China’s “Singles Day”. Orsetta shared her experience working in a large store during sales: people’s anxiety and often buying products they don’t really need, just because they’re on sale.
For background reading, in order of our discussion:
- Motherboard on the professional Macbook refurbisher creating glitch art
- Quartz on Alibaba’s record sales during China’s largest online shopping day
- The Mirror on how big Black Friday really is
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> We were inspired by news that Alibaba broke all records of online shopping earlier this month during China’s “Singles Day”
Lisa Ma wrote an interesting post about that day (11/11) at https://fringejoyride.com/2015/12/12/cashing-on-fairy-dust/ pointing out:
‘I wouldn’t be surprised when 11/12 becomes the day of the Chinese Regretsy. When singletons gather to mourn their mis-purchases together. As microblogs fill up with viral feeds of hilarious mispurchases we laugh at the colour-stained feet from cheap knock-off shoes that they should have known would have been too cheap to be real Nikes, or Pradas, or leather, or even shoes.
And about the smog generated in part by all the manufacturing: ‘Traditionally the word ‘consumption’ was used to describe pulmonary tuberculosis because the disease would waste away the body. This is consumption 2015. However, I am still in awe that we’re now living in an era where I would lungs might wear out faster than my purse.’