Things That Matter
In the feudal society before the Industrial Revolution, man was directly connected with the material world from cradle to grave. The person’s belongings were usually acquired through inheritance and when the time came, they were passed over to the next generation or “put to death” (buried, burned, destroyed) with the owner. Jean Baudrillard calls the culture in the pre-industrial era symbolic. The objects and buildings reflected the actual social relations and positions with their meaning fixed, the usage ritual and the owner established.
This universal symbolic order of things began to change in the 18th century.
*
Essay, written together with Kristel Niisuke
Keywords: new materialism, industrial revolution, industrial design
Maja, spring'19
3 pages