How Michiel Schwarz creates space by providing sights and insights
Happyplaces Stories (video)
Ever since I heard about ‘sustainism’ and saw the beautifully designed language accompanying it, I was fascinated. The independent cultural thinker, curator, sociological writer and consultant Michiel Schwarz, who is interested in how the future is shaped by culture, coined the term. With graphic designer Joost Elffers, Michiel created this beautifully and thoroughly designed ‘Sustainism is the New Modernism. A Cultural Manifesto for the Sustainist Era’ (DAP, New York) was ahead of its time in its form and content. Later, he also published ‘Sustainist Design Guide: How sharing, localism, connectedness and proportionality are creating a new agenda for social design’ (co-authored with Diana Krabbendam; BIS, Amsterdam) to make the principles and thinking more practical, next to ‘A Sustainist Lexicon: Seven entries to recast the future’ (Amsterdam; Architectura & Natura Press, 2016).
We had the pleasure of presenting and launching ‘Sustainism’ at the 2010 edition of the PICNIC Festival, and I have had the pleasure of occasionally having wonderful conversations with Michiel since then. We recorded his take on ‘space’ in different dimensions while enjoying perfect espressos and beautiful views over the Amsterdam canals.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.
Opening up how we look
It’s an interesting question you’re asking. How do I make space? When I started to think about it, I realised that this whole idea of space triggered many thoughts. In its multiple meanings, space plays a significant role in how I look at the world, what I experience, and what I find fascinating. Also, in my professional work as a sociologist of the future, I call myself lately, but a lot happened before I got to that point.
I make space by opening up how we look — our lives, ideas, and ideals. Often, this involves creating space by presenting a different perspective on what’s going on in the world and what we perceive as reality and important.
The first entry point is that I make space by opening up how we look. The way we look at our planet, the way we look at our lives, our ideas, our ideals. Often, it involves creating space by presenting a different perspective on what’s going on in the world and what we perceive as reality and important. ‘Point of view’ is a nice word. Filmmakers use it; they put POV when it means the camera’s position. That only partly covers what I mean by it. Where you stand when you look at something will determine what you see, how you look at it, defined by the angle, how high the camera is, and so on. It gives you a certain perspective. I think I make space, whether it’s making books or things visual; through my research or lectures, I give inspiration to open up a space for different perspectives, sights and insights. That would be a way of saying that’s how I make space.
I think I make space, whether it’s making books or things visual; through my research or lectures, I give inspiration to open up a space for different perspectives, sights and insights.
I also realised that I often subconsciously use the word ‘perspective’ in my work. Perspective is also a nice word because it could mean what perspective I see in a situation, in a room, or when looking outside or on a landscape. However, certain things are left out if you think of a perspective through a lens. So this whole discussion on what you see and think you see and different perceptions is a thread that runs through much of my work.
Space matters
Another thing that immediately comes to mind is that many people don’t know about me, although they know my work or I know me. I don’t mention it so much that the word space also has a completely different connotation, which is not so much about making space but almost like going into space. As a teenager in the late ’60s and ’70s, I was fascinated by space travel. I followed that in great detail, the pioneering age of the Apollo moon landings. Even when I was 20, I was still studying; I became a space correspondent and a space journalist writing for Dutch newspapers and magazines about space travel. I did that for about ten years, but the idea of space and going into outer space is an important element in my outlook.
I’m busy with a book I haven’t written yet, A Personal History of the Future. The subtitle starts with that episode in which I was fascinated by outer space. But to link it to, I think, what I have to say about changing that perspective or creating space for different ways of looking at things is the following. When you think of the Apollo moon missions, the one iconic image at the heart of it for me is not so much that of the first footprint on the moon by Neil Armstrong in July 1969. But a photo from six months before that, taken during the Apollo 8 mission, when the Apollo astronauts took a picture when they saw the earth rise over the moon’s surface. It was the first time human eyes could stand somewhere and see the moon in the foreground, see the planet in the distance as one image, and see the earth rising far away.
The Apollo astronauts took a picture when they saw the earth rise over the moon’s surface. It was the first time human eyes could stand somewhere and see the moon in the foreground, see the planet in the distance as one image, and see the earth rising far away. (…) That literal shift of perspective was revolutionary.
The term ‘whole earth’ was also coined then, and the Whole Earth Catalogue was published in that period, too. It triggered environmental awareness, awareness of the earth’s fragility, and the debate around sustainability we still have today. That literal shift of perspective was revolutionary. That is a good example of what I mean when taking on a different point of view literally and what perspective it creates. There is this anecdote that you may know of one of the astronauts walking on the moon in that period. He would have held up his gloved hand like this with his thumb and said: ‘Hey, look, I can block out the entire earth just with my thumb. The earth disappeared from view, putting his thumb in front of it. How revolutionary can an image be? These things fascinated me, and later, they kept coming back.
Sustainism space
If you fast forward 30–40 years in the many things I’ve done, the new perspective on the earth, the whole earth, came back in my idea of ‘sustainism’. Fifteen years ago, I created a book with Joost Elffers, who is a book producer, culture producer, and graphic designer from New York, who is an old friend. I made a manifesto about ‘sustainism’ or a ‘sustainist culture’ where sustainism was presented as the next cultural era, the next paradigm after modernism and post-modernism. We had all kinds of aphorisms and slogans to sketch the beginning of a new way of lifestyles with different values. At the heart of it was how the world was changing and how we looked at it. We signalled a shift in how people related to the earth, nature, food, or their body. It was, in a true sense, a cultural shift, a cultural paradigm shift. In lectures on sustainism, I often begin with this iconic space image from a different perspective.
One of the slogans, if you call it that, at the beginning of this visual graphic manifesto is ‘to say that to bring new culture and existence, we first have to rename the world’. Renaming the world has everything to do with re-seeing the world, and that goes together. And, of course, there’s a good reason that this manifesto is full of new symbols. It is the way Joost Elfers said: ‘If we’re talking about the emergence of a new culture, it should have its own symbols. So, we have to at least begin with symbols that fit a different way of viewing the world.’
I don’t know whether I created the space, but maybe it’s better to say I gave people certain lenses so they started seeing that space. It helped them see the space they’re in in a different light. They see things differently and realise that they are different or that there is a different point of view you can take.
This sustainism was not a worked-out idea because we knew what the future would be like. We saw when you looked at farmers’ markets or ethical concerns about the planet or the rise of the commons and collective things, there were a whole host of things that all represent bottom movements in cities and place-making, all sorts of phenomena that we now have accepted in the last 15 years. If you add those up collectively, it’s a different outlook and culture. I don’t know whether I created the space, but maybe it’s better to say I gave people certain lenses so they started seeing that space. It helped them see the space they’re in in a different light. They see things differently and realise that they are different or that there is a different point of view you can take. So, that space thing triggered me when you asked what space means to you and how you make space for yourself, others, or the world.
Holland creates space
There’s also another, maybe a bit anecdotal, story. Still, I think it’s relevant, also immediately, to the work I did as a content advisor in the year 2000. That is already nearly a quarter century ago now, shockingly. At the Expo 2000, I was a content advisor to the Dutch Pavilion at the world’s exhibition in Hanover. The given slogan was ‘Holland creates space’. ‘Holland schept ruimte’ in Dutch. ‘Holland makes space’ if you want. I was asked to write different storylines that the exhibition designers and the filmmakers could use to show how we think about Holland being a country that makes space.
The building was designed by MVRDV architects in Rotterdam. It was a collection of four or five ‘stacked landscapes’, and the building had no facade. The building consisted of big slabs, I think, that were 25 by 25 meters or something like that. Each was a floor and represented ‘Made in Holland’ land and landscapes. There was an artificial pond with windmills on the top. And below was a real forest with trees you could walk through, down to artificial dunes and semi-digital landscapes. It had different senses of space, which all had a role in my storyline. Holland makes space, of course, by making land out of the sea, which is obvious. But Holland also makes space for nature, new ideas, or liberation in people’s lives. I even had a whole section about the liberation of gay rights or gay living — possibly one of the few things I’m truly proud of when I say I’m Dutch. There are not many things I’m proud of being Dutch, but I mean, for the country being a pioneer of that kind of liberation, I am a proud Dutchman. And, of course, creating space for innovation and so on. I had this whole list. It was interesting that in the architecture of that building, because there were no facades, it was almost literal that it went into open space from there on. That would be an architectural icon of thinking about how we can make space and what space can be.
Future-making
If I now look back on the last 15 years since sustainism, I got more and more interested in those different ways of approaching our lives, our living environment, how we design our cities, and how we relate to our living environment, both social and the physical one, but also the idea of my more recent work on what I call ‘future-making’.
We should make space to think about the future in a very different way, that the future is something that we collectively make.
When I say ‘future-making’, I borrow it from the idea of place-making, city-making, or ‘stadmaken’ in Dutch, which is the shift from a planned top-down city with predetermined designs and technologies, where it’s all drawn out, to a shift which is more the citizen, the civic view of making a city or an environment. So, from city planning to placemaking. Similarly, I started to think this idea that the future is out there and it comes rolling our way, and we have to be scared of it and ‘we don’t have to deal with it because we can’t predict the future’ is that we should shift it.
We should make our future, especially from this bottom-up civic point of view, and not the future that is a forecast for us, that is being made for us and created by big tech, big business, and big government. (…) It creates space for a shift in perspective. From us as passive bystanders of the future coming at us to active participants and acting creators of our future.
We should make space to think about the future in a very different way, that the future is something that we collectively make. The subtitle of an essay I was commissioned for by Marleen Stikker, the director of Waag Futurelab, was ‘From future shock to future making’. She asked me to write about the future, or futures, a couple of years ago. The work is called ‘The future is a verb’. That subtitle, ‘From future shock to future making,’ proposes that we shouldn’t be shocked. ‘Future shock’, for people who know, is a term from the early ’70s to the late ’60s. In Alvin Toffler’s enormously influential book, he said that things are changing so fast that we’re continually in shock that the future comes at us almost like a meteor on the earth, and we can’t deal with it. To turn it around, I said we should make our future, especially from this bottom-up civic point of view, and not the future that is a sort of forecast for us, that is being made for us and created by big tech, big business, and big government.
In that essay I wrote, I would say it’s creating space for a shift in perspective. From us as passive bystanders of the future coming at us to active participants and acting creators of our future. Therefore, back to your question, creating space for the question, what kind of future do we collectively want? To quote the Transition Town pioneer Rob Hopkins in his latest book, he says: ‘From what is, to what if?’ That title, ‘From what is, to what if?’ is for me about creating space, starting with mental space to look at things in a very different way. With this mental space shift, you also start to do different things.
The thread in many of my work and ideas is collective perceptions, and looking at things through different viewpoints and lenses creates a different space to think and act. (…) If you put it in one line, I make space through sights and insights. It’s sight lines, lines of sight where you look. It also provides insights into where we may want to go.
The recurrent thread in many of my work and my ideas, going back to my PhD at the University of London on ‘The sociology of technology’, also looks at collective perceptions of how we deal with technology, what the risks are… The thread is collective perceptions, and looking at things through different viewpoints and lenses creates a different space to think and act. This is what now is prompted by your question: how do you make space, or what does space mean to you? That is, for me, the entry point for all these things. Maybe it’s all about that. If you put it in one line, I make space through sights and insights. It’s sight lines, lines of sight where you look. It also provides insights into where we may want to go. That’s the big story if I’m trying to connect my ideas, my work, and my outlook on creating a better world, whatever that is, concerning your question on making space concerning your question on making space.
