I no longer wish to talk about design
Extract of a conversation between Philippe Starck and Pierre Doze, Paris, December 2002. Exerpt from the book 'Starck by Starck'.
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What I'd like to offer here is a distillation of certain images. These are patterns, conclusions that I have reached, but they don't amount to a system. I shall probably get around to adding to them. They are the materials of a conversation conducted while still on the road.
(...) I no longer wish to talk about design. Objects are no longer a concern; they are more like an unavoidable secretion of a slightly shameful kind, like sweat or ear-wax. I never stop producing. You might say I produce out of sheer idleness. Nowadays, it's mainly the broad outlines of things that interest me. But the outlines are entirely personal, and all but fantastical. They have no claim to truth, except for me, as tools. Thought-bubble by bubble, an instrument of greater or lesser coherence is constructed, allowing me to continue my enterprise: the exploration of our wonderful animal space.
Here I put before you some of the tools of my work.
Contradiction?
I have grown closer to the stars by acknowledging the little hillock of mud on which I stand.
As a major producer, I am alert to the nauseous side of that role. It helps prompt the desire to see what else there is. Access to matter immediately triggers the desire for non-matter. That's where I am coming from. I'm aware of the apparent paradox. But no one more intensely aspires to honesty than the robber, no one covets austerity so .ercely as the rich man, no one desires wealth as unconditionally as the poor man.
History abounds in those in.nitely perverted beings whose sole motivation is a quest for the ideal. Instead of denying these apparent contradictions, we must use them to accede to some elsewhere.
I know that what made me originates in family heritage and the contingencies of professional life: self-transcendence by creation, religious upbringing leading to abstraction, and career happenstance leading to production. No doubt the production derives from some sense of lack.
The configuration of these three parameters makes for a pro.le apparently paradoxical, but in my eyes extremely coherent.
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6
What I'd like to offer here is a distillation of certain images. These are patterns, conclusions that I have reached, but they don't amount to a system. I shall probably get around to adding to them. They are the materials of a conversation conducted while still on the road.
(...) I no longer wish to talk about design. Objects are no longer a concern; they are more like an unavoidable secretion of a slightly shameful kind, like sweat or ear-wax. I never stop producing. You might say I produce out of sheer idleness. Nowadays, it's mainly the broad outlines of things that interest me. But the outlines are entirely personal, and all but fantastical. They have no claim to truth, except for me, as tools. Thought-bubble by bubble, an instrument of greater or lesser coherence is constructed, allowing me to continue my enterprise: the exploration of our wonderful animal space.
Here I put before you some of the tools of my work.
Contradiction?
I have grown closer to the stars by acknowledging the little hillock of mud on which I stand.
As a major producer, I am alert to the nauseous side of that role. It helps prompt the desire to see what else there is. Access to matter immediately triggers the desire for non-matter. That's where I am coming from. I'm aware of the apparent paradox. But no one more intensely aspires to honesty than the robber, no one covets austerity so .ercely as the rich man, no one desires wealth as unconditionally as the poor man.
History abounds in those in.nitely perverted beings whose sole motivation is a quest for the ideal. Instead of denying these apparent contradictions, we must use them to accede to some elsewhere.
I know that what made me originates in family heritage and the contingencies of professional life: self-transcendence by creation, religious upbringing leading to abstraction, and career happenstance leading to production. No doubt the production derives from some sense of lack.
The configuration of these three parameters makes for a pro.le apparently paradoxical, but in my eyes extremely coherent.
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