Josephine M. Schulte
Josephine M. Schulte
Josephine M. Schulte
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<strong>Josephine</strong> M. <strong>Schulte</strong><br />
Email: st2644@burg-halle.de<br />
Dear OpenDesign User!<br />
Thank you for downloading my atomic_doily file!<br />
This doily was generated in an OpenDesign project at my University and is part of my collection named „neo_<br />
Babbitism“ (german title „neo_Spießichismus“). It is about the culture of smugness or „Spießigkeit“, as we call<br />
it in Germany. It should be a homage or a parody (as you like) on this kind of phenomenon.<br />
Therefor I used the looking of oldschool handmade lace (as you probably know it from your grandmother) took<br />
typical items which you connect with smugness and transfer them into a special, ironic and ambiguous meaning.<br />
The result should be playful, humorous, critical, maybe shocking, definitely astonishing and also decorative.<br />
For showing you which thoughts and suggestions have played a role in my working process there is an essay<br />
enclosed, which I wrote.<br />
I hope you enjoy my work!<br />
Kind regards,<br />
<strong>Josephine</strong> M. <strong>Schulte</strong><br />
Production instructions<br />
For my atomic_doily I used the cutting plotter method. You can go to any printing shop which offers you this<br />
method. It is very cheap by the way, usually you just pay the adherence foil. So select any colour you like and<br />
stick the ready doily on any interior in your appartment! please be creative!<br />
Please note that you can use this design as many times you like, change it, send it to others, and express<br />
through it any personal point of view and creativity, as long as you follow the Creative Commons licence<br />
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/).<br />
I would like you to write me about your experience with this product and read your suggestions. In case you<br />
made modifications or found nice applications to it, I would be curious to see them!
In Germany there lives a human genus called Spießer. It is a typical phenomenon in some parts of german‘s society. I<br />
looked the word up in my english dictionary, and found the word „bourgeois“. After more research i don‘t think that this is<br />
a proper translation, so I used the german word in the following essay. I hope you will figure out, what i mean when I use<br />
this term.<br />
The common Spießer owns a wall unit made of dark oak, decorates his TV with lace doily and crystal vase including fake<br />
flowers, gives his pillows the right looking with the help of a accomblishly placed slap of his hand and upbraid the kids<br />
who are playing in his fresh mowed front garden full of lawn gnomes. In his freetime he collects stamps and polishes his<br />
car obsessivly. Inside his car there are lambskin upholsteries and a crocheted cover on a toiletpaper roll placed on the back<br />
shelf.<br />
Under general suspicion have always been officials, caretakers, opel drivers, allotment holders, building society savers,<br />
rabbit growers, owners of tapestries with belling stags and fizzy mountain streams. The typical Spießer wears suspenders<br />
and white socks with sandals.<br />
Wikipedia offers following definition:<br />
Spießbürger or Spießer are narrow-minded people who are charachterized by intellecutal immobility, conformity to social<br />
norms, antipathy to changes of familiar ambience and strong need for social security.<br />
Well, nobody wants to be called narrow-minded, but social security and a bit mainstram once in a while does not hurt,<br />
does it?? A little bit conservative does not mean automaticly to be spießy!<br />
And shouldn‘t we call the ones of all people Spießer, who adjudge the supposed Spießer in their neighborhood??<br />
The german actor Christian Ulmen who performed „Herr Lehmann“, the ultimate Spießer, thinks, that a Spießer is somebody,<br />
who is not able to look beyond his own nose. Ulmen says: „If someone is intolerant and does not allow anything else,<br />
he is a Spießer. I think that many people who do not want to be Spießer anymore, do that in the same way as a Spießer.<br />
They become the new Spießer or Neo-Spießer, as i would call it because they are so afraid of being spießy that they are as<br />
spießy and as intolerant as the right Spießer.“<br />
Seeing this definition there is one business which seems to be full of Spießer: Policy. Anyway the term Spießer has several<br />
politically meanings. Especially the left-wingers in the 68ies loved to use this term on dissidents and over the years society<br />
used to peg the Spießer as a Nazi. It turns out that today mostly the left-wingers are called Spießer.<br />
So today‘s Spießer, the Neo-Spießer, as Christian Ulmen calls him, how does he look like today??<br />
He lingers at Starbucks at Cologne Centralstation together with his macbook. He wears trendy glasses and a bluetooth<br />
headset. He does not care about the horrendous price of his Cappuchino because he is called with his first name, when<br />
the coffee is ready. He could also buy his drink for takeaway, so he could walk on the street with a paper cup to show<br />
everyone how bussy he is.<br />
After work he goes into city park where he does nordic walking, a trendy sport which promises vitalisation of arm and<br />
back muscles.<br />
That‘s the new german Spießer, but can you call this phenomenon an exclusive german one??<br />
By the way, since a while old-fashioned spiecyness undergoes a revival. Again it is hip to buy second hand interior or accessoires.<br />
In today‘s student appartments you often find retro kitchen cabinets and once in a while a modified deer antler on<br />
the wall. Somehow spießyness is becoming cool again. Maybe it is the way of today‘a young people to show and underline<br />
their anti-spießyness.<br />
Anyway, isn‘t it granted only to young people under 22 not to be spießy?? Actually you automaticly become a Spießer<br />
when you get older. At least if you think in stereotypical way.<br />
The human needs stability and structure by nature, something which he can hold on. This has also something to do with<br />
conformity and cosiness. Something which shows you the certain way of living.<br />
<strong>Josephine</strong> M. <strong>Schulte</strong>: atomic_doily
CAD file of the atomic_doily as downloaded from the site.<br />
The design is published with a Creative Commons attribution-non commercial-share alike licence.<br />
atomic_doily, <strong>Josephine</strong> <strong>Schulte</strong>, cc 2010<br />
<strong>Josephine</strong> M. <strong>Schulte</strong>: atomic_doily
<strong>Josephine</strong> M. <strong>Schulte</strong>: atomic_doily