Andrea Zittel.

It’s time to continue our little category “precious dwellings”, this time more related to the art department: The first time i came across Andrea Zittel was at the Documenta X in Kassel (again..) 10 years ago. I think her work fits perfectly into the precious dwellings category of this blog. Andrea Zittel mainly deals with the subjects customisation, flexible everyday living and mass production. Her objects are somehow hard to define: they are not stylish enough and too rough to regard them as design objects and they are also too much functional, pragmatic and useful to meet somehow the classical idea of art. She says: “I thought about becoming a designer but designers are responsible for making products that best serve the greatest number of people, and i don’t think that’s so liberating.” That’s true, of course! Being a designer myself i know that this can be a real pain in the ass sometimes. When it comes to selling a product “the elitist and idealistic designer” sometimes is forced to give in on his higher aims in order to meet the common mainstream standard, no matter what.. the daily inner conflict in a sensible designer’s life that is turning us into alcohol and drug addicts sooner or later! :-)

Anyway, Miss Zittel’s most interesting works for our category are the so-called A-Z Escape Vehicles (1997) and the A-Z Wagon Stations (2003), that she creates and sells based on the personal taste and getaway phantasies of the buyer and that are functioning as little mobile retreats/refuges. Whenever you want to escape enter the object and close the hatch. It is just the opposite of what people normally do to get away from it all: travel to exotic far away places. Retreat to your innermost!