on luggage, desire, death and responsibility
The Objet app, and the films of Hirokazu Koreeda, After Life, Shoplifters, and Broker
18 Mar 23 | Vol 2 Issue 9
Last week I bought a washing machine. This week I didn't buy a suitcase.
But I do have a broken suitcase. To be precise a suitcase with a broken wheel.
My friend Ollie hates suitcases with wheels. He yearns for a simpler life. He may be right about wheelie cases. I would have agreed with him but I lived on Lamma Island in Hong Kong. It has no roads, no cars, and is made of hills. A wheelie case is essential. Ironically I ended up on Lamma because of Ollie, and dragging it through jungle paths is probably what broke the wheel.
A wheeled suitcase is the perfect metaphor for the human condition. (We're not discussing suitcases with a broken wheel, that's really just a little too exaggerated.)
For a while I lived on a council estate (government housing for non Brits), two flat fronted blocks facing each other, made of concrete and glass. At first I wanted to sleep with no curtains. To let the daylight wake me in this modernist cube. Between these two sheer cliffs, fashioned from windows and the type of panels now considered a fire hazard, lay a paved path bordering each side of a run of grass, a token concession to nature in the utilitarian landscape. Six AM, every morning, someone would pull their wheeled suitcase along. Clunk, clunk, CLUNK, CLUNK. Over. Every. Paving. Stone.
"Why can't people just carry their stuff in a shoulder bag?" complained Ollie. That 6am cleaner with their case — for some reason I came to the conclusion it was a cleaner, carrying their detergents, bleaches, mops, overalls — cured me of wanting curtains, and created a longing for double glazing.
A suitcase too heavy to lift any distance. The human appetite. A hunger for more than we need, while not wanting the responsibility to carry it any distance.
Consumerism right there. Driving to the gym. Plastic bottles. We attach wheels. Instead of being self-sufficient passengers travelling silently, we broadcast our avarice with the clunk clunk clunk sound of surplus.
Consumerism's other great sin is disposability. So, now I have an unwheelable suitcase. Yes, I can hear you loud and clear — Well, just carry the fucking thing Julian. But I only use this suitcase for one purpose — moving country. Like moving house except it's when you pack your home into a long distance flight luggage allowance. Then wheel it across an island.
The obvious option is to buy a new replacement. Throwing the intact except a wheel one away. Consumerism at its height, reaching the level of landfill. Old school says repair it. This wasn't cheap luggage either, so I messaged the company — Antler — enquiring about their ten year guarantee. Of course sir, as long as you have the receipt.
Who - the - fuck keeps a receipt for ten years? Especially one for luggage, which does, by the nature of the beast, imply moving. Anne does, it seems. Who produced a photo of said receipt. This is rabbit-out-of-the-hat miraculous. Since the luggage was purchased she’s got through three laptops, and who do you know that owns the same phone for seven years? Anne does, it seems.
Modern times means that even if you have the receipt, the thermal printing will have receded to such an extent you're left with a square of shiny, slightly brown tinged blank paper. I'll wager no one keeps their receipt photos in the cloud family album.
What is needed is an app. An app that has a slot for receipts. I can't rabbit-out-the-hat since you'll already have guessed this is coming next. Meet Objet.
apps.apple.com/app/id1637894429
I came across Objet via their Substack newsletter while the app was in beta, and begged them to include the proposed receipts function. It's still early days, the app is already invaluable in training you to photograph your receipts and store them. With promised features like a loaned-to tag it's shaping up to be an invaluable tool for the maintenance of your possessions.
They run a Discord server, where you can ask about potential purchases, and a library of consumer, design, life-style articles. I spoke with Kev about the how and why, who answered on behalf of the other two creators, Mathilde, and Maxime Cattet.
Julian: How did the app come about? The origin story.
Kev: Mathilde, Max and I have lived and travelled together since 2014. Back then we were working on creating digital tools for skateboarders and got lucky enough to pack our whole lives and move from one country to another every 6 months on average. In 2015, 2016 and 2017, it involved some very long-distance moves; from the US to Europe, to Australia, back to the US via Europe.
We saw ourselves as thoughtful consumers, very aware that our happiness didn't lie on the accumulation of useless stuff. So we were proud to follow and impose this constraint on ourselves: travel light and never - ever - ship anything. Our whole life had to be contained in the carry-on and checked luggages. While we educated ourselves on how to buy dramatically better over the years [and felt how powerful it was in our daily lives], still, 9 months in Brisbane, when we decided it's time to move, we got more stuff to pack than space in our luggage. We felt angry. If you ask me what I remember about this time in Australia, it'd be all about the people and the experiences. And yet - even for folks like us - we got dragged into buying some stuff we regretted right after.
That's where the idea of Objet came from. We started to obsess over our relationship to objects. Why do so many people feel dissatisfied all the time? Disconnected from their surroundings? Always craving for what's next and feeling miserable in the process? Where do our desires come from? How could we break free from this rampant vicious cycle? Bring intentionality in our lives and consequently feel more at peace?
Julian: What do you hope the app will achieve?
Kev: We're building a journey towards a better relationship with objects. The app itself is only one part of the mix. Content and community are also part of the whole 'product' (if we can call it this).
We see the app as your companion; your first ‘personal shopper’ truly incentivised on your satisfaction. So there are two things we want the app to achieve:
- what we call an 'education path'; and the best analogy here would be 'Duolingo'. Most people are currently bad at shopping. Hence they’re always dissatisfied, so Objet will help them learn to be dramatically better
- what we call a 'management hub' vision; building your library of possessions, present, future and past. Objet becomes the whole interface with your objects where you can interact with them in one click. Here you can think of it like 'Revolut but with objects' instead of money; a space where every action on your objects is one click away [think insure, repair, discard, sell, lend, find your best dining table ever, meet passionate curators].
Julian: Has creating the app taught you anything (about people of things, not making apps)
Kev: Saying that this journey taught us anything would be an understatement. Which is also why we feel so passionate about Objet, and our mission. We embarked on a life-long journey. Saint Augustine said: "Happiness is to continue to desire what one possesses." And this doesn't apply to things only by the way. I feel that Mathilde, Max and I truly embody this; being together and nurturing our relationship for so many years, with all the usual ups and downs. Why do people want XYZ [and act accordingly or not] is to me one of the most fascinating topics. And also one that - if we know & understand way more about - could lead to a dramatically more peaceful society; with happier people.
Today's heroes are Chow Yun-Fat and Javier Bardem, island sons, born on Lamma and Gran Canaria respectively, the two homes furnished by that three wheeled suitcase. Drawn with the usual panache by our artist in residence, the meat loving Fatima Fletcher. Show Fatima your appreciation by following fatima.fletcher on Instagram. Her work is for sale at fatimafletcher.com, where she’s available for commissions. Her wonderful orchid place mats are for sale at fatima-fletcher.square.site/s/shop.
I haven't read this week. Blame the 'picante' eye drops as the optician referred to them. Or sting like fuck and leave you unable to open your eyes in the blinding sunlight drops as I refer to them. Dantiel W. Moni's Milk Blood Heat has rekindled my desire to write fiction and for the past few issues I've been meaning to mention Kore-eda Hirokazu's new film Broker.
Broker directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
I can merge these two disparate facts into a sly segue introducing Hirokazu Koreeda, as he calls himself when directing. Originally wanting to be a novelist he ended up making films, including what has to be my favourite of recent years, Shoplifters. A film of such aching beauty (IMHO) — no clumsy broken wheeled suitcase metaphors for the human condition — it portrays love, society, belonging, and giving up the thing you love the most in order to set it free, told without sentimentality as the heir to Italian neorealism. A film simultaneously devastating and beautiful, life affirming and tragic. Think Beasts of the Southern Wild and The Florida Project, if you want to be left an emotional wreck I can heartily recommend these three as a triple bill.
Shoplifters directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
[I deliberately haven't included a trailer as this requires viewing knowing as little as possible, the resonance created in the unfolding narrative is a masterclass in storytelling]
My recommendation is his 1998 After Life. It's part of the Criterion Collection but apart from there you may have to scramble about to find it streaming. I loathe giving the plot away but it's impossible to describe without doing so. It's not too much of a spoiler since the reveal occurs in the first few minutes.
After Life directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
In a dilapidated building guides have to assist the dead in filming a single happy memory, which allows them to pass on through purgatory. I've seen it referred to as feel-good and even a rom-com. It's not. It's perhaps the saddest film I've seen that actually fills me with warmth.
It's captivating, and feels very akin to reading a collection of short stories. You can sense a novelist's hand in it. After Life reveals where Hirokazu Koreeda honed his naturist style, the moments the dead cherish are sourced from the real memories collated during hundreds of interviews he did with non-acting members of the public. Some of which were invited to be in the film. While it's slow and slightly dated in style, there wasn't a single scene where my attention wandered. The central premise — what is our most precious memory — hovers over the film with a metaphysical presence.
I couldn't get on with Toshikazu Kawaguchi's novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold, bailing halfway through. The whimsy began to grate, I wonder if the translation was also a factor, Haruki Murakami's work varies wildly depending on the translator. In similar fashion, while After Life on paper sounds sentimental, poignancy is a better descriptor, capturing the word's meanings of both deeply affecting and pleasurably stimulating. The beautiful sting of life.
This week features
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirokazu_Kore-eda
Buy me a coffee at www.buymeacoffee.com/vfnIE9P0Ta
this "A wheeled suitcase is the perfect metaphor for the human condition." made me think of a point made by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in one of his books (don't remember which one exactly tho) Sapiens waited 4k years to put a wheel on a bag and avoid him the pain of lifting up XYZ. Kinda crazy when put this way.