The action goes on elsewhere. We witness idle artefacts of a busy world, carelessly abandoned, in all cases. Their silence is a prompt to think.
Modern Mobility
Aerosol Art
Ruptures appear, we hit the wall. No phantasys to shape the future of our World. Too many competing narratives.
Today, we tell ourselves stories that we wouldn’t believe in the future.
Entrenched in bipartisanship, unable to sense the emerging space of possibilities. My bike as a silent observer, an epitomised option for an utopian alternative modernity. Contours of those realities already appear to exist, in pictures.
Outside the Box
We put everything into boxes. Our stuff, our thinking. By using boxes, we establish routines to simplify our life. Boxes are replaceable, and so becomes our thinking.
But what if those routines fail us? There is potential to act. New thinking offers ways of stepping out of our boxes.
System Constellation
Perhaps the voices of those who kept asking whether my initiative was economically viable and who would pay for my experiments were very loud. Or the new just didn’t want to come into the world.
It seemed to me that in 2021 I was moving in a space of efficiency, where a constant “more of the same” commercialized cargo bike usage; a drive for efficiency that requires you to optimize existing systems. We are happy about cargo bikes in the cities, but actually those very inner cities cry for help; cry for a new thinking.
But there was another space, that of functionality. In there, cargo bikes are a multiplier of sufficiency and regionality. But apparently there were no doors from one room to the other.
In a system of me (A), the public hearing (B) and the narrative (C), which moved in the field of tension between a sportive recognition of cargo cycling, the search for commercial realization and an integral claim, surprising results emerged:
B is stubborn; B thinks A and C are messing around. B is unsure who is leading: A who focuses on sportive recognition, or C who stresses an integral claim? C is completely on the side of A.
B complains: “A doesn’t manage to put the matter into words so that B understands it”. A’s behavior makes B angry. A invited B to come along, gets a swatter.
What is needed?
For C: put your fist in your pocket, explain, offer. For B: A and C can do what they want. For A: A would have to dissemble if it got involved in B’s language
An option?
The grass is always greener…
… on the other side of the fence“, goes a popular saying. I decided to check it out in The Netherlands.
Both sides of the border: Green, lush meadows; flat land, at least in the north, in Friesland. Where’s the difference? My interest in the sweet specialties of our neighbours is pretended; actually, the food is only a side issue of my request to cycle sensibly again: When it comes to cycling, the Dutch are actually greener – in the truest sense of the word!
A biker’s paradise – the paths are wider and the surface smoother. A permanent embodiment of a real appreciation as a road user.
