Air Cushion

Authors’ Comment

LINKS and BINDINGS

Plastic toys everywhere. In the bazaar, in the market, at the corner store, at the mall, in the bookstore, at the kiosk in the park. Brightly colored plastic with (or without) lights spilling over the shelves and from the shelves right in the sight of the children. Soldiers, scarecrows, useless tools, weapons, cars, and UFOs. Many are single-use or useless. Toys that are at least theoretically recyclable. But they inevitably end up in the trash because if they don’t break immediately, they might get boring very quickly. At the same time, technology is constantly producing waste. We change our phones every 2 years (if not every year), a laptop lasts around 3 years, a new printer costs as much as the cartridge you’re supposed to replace (so you change the whole machine).
How does a fax fly? How many propellers does a wooden hand plane have? What’s a winged compass? What about a jar with a two-meter handle?
A compendium of texts about other potentially collectible toys. Made from whatever one could grab in the garage, from whatever friends would give you, from what you could collect (from what’s thrown away). Aggregate pieces from what others have dismantled. Components that stubbornly refuse to fit together and end up at opposite ends of the same assembly.
Toys made from (re)cycled pieces from half – way – there - projects. Quarters of furniture pieces that end up on the ceiling after older bindings have been (re)assembled.
Recycled rabbits and cases with light bulbs.
A mix of everything you gather with everything you have, in many ways (not in any way) but with the same ornamental meaning. Families of shapes try not to seem ordinary (or maybe not). Testing the limits of uncertainty in meaning versus the certainty of the uselessness of prefabricated components extracted from their technological context – non-mechanisms with decorative meaning and fragmented expression.
Imprecise images of objects flying where you least expect. Not everything that flies can be configured. You set traps for thoughts and wait. From time to time some things bind together and frozen shapes of mischaps appear that - hanging from the ceiling - no longer fly anywhere (even though they have propellers).

It seems like they are flying through bedrooms, production halls, cafes, living rooms, offices, festivals, or receptions. But they first got there in the trunk, and afterwards they got there by the stairs or with the elevator (or both). Some flew for real, in the hold of a cargo plane; plane within a plane. Others flew through the center, around Amzei or Inter. That’s why we managed to scatter around a vacuum cleaner (famous brand) through Dalles Hall, above which scanner parts were flying (held by thin fishing line). Paradoxically, an object built to gather particles from the floor ended up scattered on a table full of prints.
Old converter on the ceiling, hidden in a cockpit made of a sewing machine drawer. Phone charger with a fan. The (every time) important moment when you dig through boxes and the voltage written on the fan matches with what’s written on the charger. 5V with 5V. 6V with 6V. 4V more rarely. You plug it in, and it spins. Some time ago, after Christmas, I (temporarily) had a dismantling workshop in the room facing the balcony. For someone who takes apart toys without ever managing to put them back together, it’s always a surprise when you can get both the light and the fan to turn on at the same time.
It’s not a book about design or DIY. Nor about decoration in space. It’s more of an escape.
Escape into the decor or rather through the decor, when ideas start sliding down and there is no chance they could stop, because they’re on skis with a fan.
Mesta with propeller. Made of plastic.
To be continued, where the cartridge flies.