soylent green-vase edition

soylent green is an edition of 19 unique glass vases.

The glass objects are produced within a flexible mould. A specific designed production process is connecting the traditional craftsmanship of glass making with an innovative production concept. The highly flexible mould allows to manufacture in series by embracing the natural behaviour of the formed glass.

The design of the glas bodies is not entirely controlled by the mould or the glass maker. It is a correspondence between craftsman and the movement of the melted glass. Through that innovative process the glass itself is becoming an autark formbgeber.
Therefore all glass bodies are unique specimens which can be seen as frozen snapshot of the ability of this synthetic material to become an autark formgeber.

Soylent green is produced in cooperation with traditional glass makers at Niessenglas in Switzerland. The edition is an example for the highest quality of material and craftsmanship.

Contemporary design should not strive for innovative industrial production only. It needs to be seen as a way to innovate and integrate traditional craft. Traditional craft itself contains the knowledge and innovations of centuries.
Objects made by craftsman are sediments of our cultural development. They silently contain sociological, political and technical ideas of their times.

The title of this edition is a reference to the dystopian Sci Fi movie `soylent green´. Even though the movie was produced in 1973 it is picturing an all too familiar vision of the exploitive human behaviour towards our environment and self. Interesting is the basic foundation of the movie to understand human made objects as a tool to connect to humanity itself.
The sci fi drama is placed on an overcrowded planet earth in the year 2022, a world which has run out of things.
The only available resource to satisfy the human urge to consume is ´soylent green´, a substitute produced by the government. That results in a constant, uncontrollable and relentless strive of the people to get as much of the green soylent as possible.
Even when the truth of Soylent greens secret ingredients is revealed- it is made of human bodies- does no one care.
The movie soylent green is building an interesting hypothesis in its last scene- in a world without objects, the individual human subject does no longer hold value. Our urge for objects and the lack of them is ending (last scene spoiler) with consuming one another.