Timelab, Walden, H. D. Thoreau
Excerpt from Henri David Thoreau's Walden on the wooden fence at Timelab, Ghent.
The chosen fragments are Thoreau's bookkeeping for a self-sustainable life in a cabin in the woods.
In the context of the fablab and it's strong inclination towards ecological and urban problematics,
the work attempts to point to the salient tensions in recent economical and political (thought) movements.
Thoreau’s example speaks, amongst other things, of the problematic cohabitation of science and economy,
individuality (e.g. DIY) and collectivity (a ‘community’, P2P). His two year retreat from society
near Walden Pond in Massachusetts questions the ethos of our newly acclaimed ’maker society’ and confronts the
evermore pervasive idea of innovation, which seems to occult our past societal achievements…
