Following is an edited version of an in-depth interview first published in the magazine Dumbo feather, pass it on (issue 9), D*Hub’s newest content partner.
Just over two years ago Matt Butler, a successful furniture designer from Melbourne, upped sticks and moved to a small town an hour south of Byron Bay, NSW. The influence that ‘going bush’ has had on his work is fascinating. Since relocating Butler has developed the Zaishu project (Zaishu is derived from the Japanese word ‘zaisu’ meaning small seat), which has been exhibited in Milan, Melbourne, Tokyo, Seoul and Sydney to much acclaim. The project is based on the principles of creativity, collaboration, evolution and sustainability. Rarely does a design product have the power to act as a catalyst for change such as this.
Dumbo feather: What kind of reaction do you get from people to the Zaishus’
Matt Butler: When I was naming it Zaishu I thought maybe no one’s going to know what a Zaishu is… Then someone said: ‘But that’s a good thing because straight away people are going to ask ‘what’s a Zaishu”’. When they ask the question you get the opportunity to explain it.
How did you come up with the design’
I was invited to be in an exhibition called The Tyranny of Distance in Tokyo. It was an exhibition that RMIT [University] was curating for Australian design to go to Japan, and part of the brief was looking at the tyranny of distance. That’s why I came up with the idea of something that could be flat-packed and easily posted overseas. Normally when we have furniture exhibitions it’s very expensive. Just to send a chair to Tokyo costs $1000. But with Zaishu, the exhibition in Milan [in April 2005] for example, I took the whole exhibition on the train with me from Milan to Paris, and just posted it back by normal post to Australia ‘ it was very easy.
When you were invited to do the Tyranny of Distance exhibition did you already have the idea for a seat’
I didn’t know what I was going to do at all but at the same time I was asked to be a part of the State of Design Festival which involved having an installation at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art [ACCA]. I started to morph the two briefs together. It turned into this slot-together seat and it was almost at the last minute that we [Christopher Kaltenbach, the curator, Jenny Ford and Kate Jackson, R and D assistants] decided to apply some kind of print or artwork to it. We had just seen it as a pine box until that point. So about two weeks before the installation opening, I phoned a guy called Andy Mac who runs an organisation called Citylights from Melbourne. He’s a curator with a good network of stencil artists and he became the art director. Two days before we did the painting I phoned up Dulux and they sponsored the paint. Then we needed to find somewhere to do the artwork, so we just decided to do it in a laneway in Melbourne behind Misty Bar where Andy has his office. We lined the laneway with about 15 sheets of cheap ply, and over the course of three or four days all the artists came along. (There were 25 of them ‘ some of these street artists are starting to do quite well. Phibs has just done the latest Absolut Vodka campaign with magazine ads and billboards, and Panderosa have just returned from a hotel project in Copenhagen.) With the painting there was this beautiful layering process. I thought they would just have a panel each, but instead they all swapped panels as they painted. It was really good to see this collaborative sort of thing happening and the layering over time. They said to me, ‘Matt, when it all gets cut up make sure it’s all just cut up by chance.’ At first I was worried that they might be offended if their artwork was cut in half. Then they also said, ‘When they get assembled make sure all the panels are all mixed up and we have one piece of artwork here and another there…’
A true collaboration.
Yeah, which resulted in each Zaishu having artwork from up to ten different artists ‘ something that couldn’t be easily replicated. I began to like the idea of the Zaishu being an art storage device to record visual information from a particular time and place and culture. I went down to the laser-cutters the day before the installation opening and I asked them to keep the off-cut bits as well. Just by chance, I happened to be at there when everything was coming out of the machine and they were grabbing the Zaishu pieces and placing them back in the off-cut template, almost like putting a jigsaw puzzle together and constructing the artwork again. Then I thought, wow, imagine if at ACCA I have the pieces of plywood in a pile in the middle of the room, nothing else, and then people can come and actually pick the jigsaw bits out and make their own Zaishus. Instead of having rigid plans we let the project reveal itself to us right up until the last minute.
Did you start one off for people at the exhibition’
I made one, yep, just so people could get the idea. It got me thinking, it’s more than just a seat now, it’s got this sort of community/collaborative thing happening. It’s more than just a static exhibition where you go into an art gallery and just look at what’s on the wall, because with the Zaishu, people can actually participate. They can transform the space – just a square, concrete room into this vibrant space. And it’s not just colourful, but also socially vibrant and interactive. It took a bit of convincing to explain to the other organisers that the gallery would initially be bare and the installation would be built by the guests. Once all the seats were made, we had a DJ, and being an exhibition opening there was free alcohol. Over the course of three hours this blank room was transformed into a vibrant gathering space. All of the artists came and I gave them a Zaishu each and then the rest were sold to pay for the project. Then I thought I’d do another project, so I phoned up a friend, Adam Dunn, who’s a youth worker at St Vincent de Paul. We ended up having a workshop at St Vincent de Paul where we taught some of the kids at the youth project how to make stencils.
What was the feedback like from the St Vincent de Paul artists’
Great. Some of these kids have had a tough life and have various difficulties to overcome. The art workshop created a temporary diversion from that and a social occasion to build friendships and develop social skills. They appreciated the opportunity to be expressive with stencils and spray cans because it’s a culture they relate to. I started to realise that the Zaishu became like a catalyst to join two parties who wouldn’t normally get together: St Vincent de Paul, a charity organisation working with homeless people, and Space Furniture, a high-end design retailer. It was very worthwhile for them, they both got lots of publicity. I thought it’s not just a box anymore; it’s a social catalyst that gets people together. At that point [I asked myself]: What have I created here’ What does it actually do’ Where’s it going’ What sets it apart from other products’ It was a very organic project at that point, which was great, but you need some core principles to hold it together. The first principle is participation, the second is creativity, the third is sustainability and the fourth is evolution. Those four principles don’t say that it has to be a plywood box or that it has to be artwork. I’ve deliberately separated Zaishu from Bluesquare, my furniture company, so there’s no company agenda behind it or anything. The whole idea about participation is that people see what’s happened so far, and then they’re given the opportunity to take an element of it and take it off into a new direction.
And that’s what you mean when you term it a ‘project’ rather than a ‘product”
Yeah. Being a project invites all types of people to be involved. It also creates its own momentum and personality. You can nurture a project… Like teaching a kid to ride a bike, you can run behind them and only hold on when there is a danger of them falling off. The rest of the time they think you are holding on but really you have let go ‘ you want to see how confident they get and what direction they go in. [']
This is an edited version of an in-depth interview with Matt Butler first published in the quarterly publication, Dumbo feather. The full interview in issue six is available at www.dumbofeather.com