At Revivack we do not only propose a return system, but a new way of understanding and using everything we acquire and use things for. We rethink the old ways of making, producing and discarding. We believe in the story of things, in the value of the material experience through which an object traveled and its potential for transformation into another. All this in a context of climate crisis that challenges us to action.
Another way of producing and consuming
Returnability is the technical capacity of companies, agents, institutions or individuals to ensure that the goods produced, once they reach the end of their useful life, can be returned to the same companies that produced them, or to other specialized companies. In this way we get them to be disassembled and their materials recycled. Or in other words, and without going off the deep end, it is nothing more than the recycling process, but materialized and sustained from a collective awareness of its necessity in the circumstances that we face.
© Pablo Fernández Amiano
And it is these circumstances that make us look at the climate challenge as an opportunity for change rather than a tragic prospect. This is how we can begin to glimpse a horizon in which the circular economy is no longer a marginal possibility but a central necessity.
Literature as a tool
We believe that literature is an excellent tool to illustrate our project in a more enjoyable way. That is why we would like to introduce you to two very special people.
Both of them, both in their lives and in their work, in a more explicit or subtle way, tell us about the life and history of inanimate things, of the objects we live with and with whom we live. Objects that to a greater or lesser degree we can give certain importance, but that irremediably occupy a central place in our existence, because they are trunks of memory.
Valeria Luiselli and Serguéi Dovlátov are two authors who, although at first they might not have anything to do with each other, both have a lot to tell us and to say to each other through their own work.
Literature allows us to approach the value of objects in a way that transgresses the idea of utility, of the finite use of things.
Luiselli in his book The story of my teeth tells how a man, Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, also known as Carretera. This character is dedicated to auctioning, among other extravagant objects, teeth. The quality of his work lies in his ability to narrate the story of that tooth, of who it was, what this person did. This leads him to other pieces, showing us that an object is not only its material, physical expression, but also a repository of minimal, small, everyday stories. Stories that treasure a richness and preciousness inside that makes us think about the value of things and their possibility of transformation into others.
It is about transcending the dualistic idea of use and waste, to fit another element, which could be called reuse, recycling, rediscovery…
Dovlátov in turn tells us in The Suitcase about the moment in his life when he emigrated from the USSR in the 1980s. He constructs his story through the objects he was able to accumulate in his life until his exile. He does so with a kind of ironic and amusing irony, telling us about the stories that accompany the objects he brought with him, such as Finnish crepe socks, a poplin T-shirt or chauffeur’s gloves.
© Nick Fewings
In Revivack we think that objects can have another destiny, that they do not end with the end of their useful life, since they contain in themselves an energy that is nothing more than the stories they have witnessed. There are possibilities of transformation, that is why we work with so much affection in this project to reflect on other ways of consuming, producing and using.