The axeness of an axe

September 11th, 2009

You’ve gotta love that headline. Sadly I did not write that headline but leonora did from Treehugger,

The axeness of an axe? What on earth does that mean I hear you ask? Well it’s about starting with the essence of something, stripping things down and taking away anything that is superfluous. As Gabriel Branby, the Swedish axe manufacturer told us at The Do Lectures last weekend “Less is More”

Leonora however explores the themes of other speakers who brought their own axeness to Do. She mentions Ben Hemmersley editor of Wired magazine

if you are making a magazine, make it the very best magazine you can and make sure it does all the things that only a magazine can do.

Leonora then moves onto Designer Tom Taylor of the Really Interesting Group,

he spoke about the joy of producing your own newspaper and recommended that as his Small Do. He encouraged us to “seize the means of production”, which I took to mean enjoy the process of making things and understand that making a website is different from making a newspaper, which is different from making an axe, but both all equally valuable.

This for me is interesting as DIY culture has been with us for a long time. Whether its people creating culture and food in their allotments, or the more savage DIY culture of Punk – what is extraordinary is Tom’s story about using the mighty capability of a mass scale newspaper printing press connected to low cost production tools integrated into the networked world and the internet.

“Seizing the means of production” is actually quite a revolutionary, some might say incendiary statement. Frantz Fanon said,

a people will only be free when they control their own communications.

I am not sure Tom sees himself as a revolutionary, but perhaps he just doesn’t know it yet?

Finally Leonora talks about the one and only Geoff McFetridge. Originality is priceless in any medium…

Geoff McFetridge.

I would say there were indeed quite a few originals at Do, and Leonora mentions a few others. She sums up

Do Lectures are simply unafraid of being copied because they all know that what they are doing is completely unique and they are the very best at doing what they do. Everything else is just a pale imitation.

Amen to that.

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