SA(L)VAGE CUT

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how to (mis)handle a tree
June 2022 - IKEA, Worldwide

Salvage Cut uses storytelling to highlight how fast furniture demand drives illegal deforestation in protected areas of the Carpathian Mountains.
The project looks at the IKEA marketing strategies, store layout & storytelling methods to create a counter scenario where consumers & producers are in direct connection to the forest. The worldbuilding aspect of the project allows the viewers to become immersed in the factual analysis of the insdustry, as well as enabling them to imagine alternative scenarios based on reuse & a personal aesthetic.

The research started in Romania, at the heart of Europe’s last ancient forests, unpacking how the growing culture of fast furniture consumption is directly impacting deforestation levels & our relationship to the forest. The project exists through the hyperobject of the film as a designed media meant to build a set of associations in the mind of the consumer. This is done through 3 steps: educating, alienating & reorienting.

Educating – by showing the discrepancies between IKEA’s strategies and the factual reality behind them.
Alienating – by exposing the imposed status quo built around the user.
Reorienting –  the user through a series of existing sustainability practices & technologies staged on top of the current IKEA system. This aims to cause a change in value systems in the consumer and therefore the industry depended on consumer demand.
 
WATCH VIDEO

An exploration completed with the support of Inigo Minns & Manijeh Verghese.