Welcome to the museum of

unneeded and questionable things

This museum was founded in 2012 when some people did not know where to put the fridge, which was unneeded and was taking needed space in the kitchen. So where to put it? Where does it belong? Of course, in the museum and so the museum of unneeded and questionable things was born.

This is the digital version of a museum established and placed in Can Decreix, Cerbère, France Never closed and always free entry

Contacts: corinna.burkhart@googlemail.com (digital museum), candecreix@degrowth.net (Can Decreix)

The house, the museum is located in, has a special history and only parts of it are known. It was a rabbit house and maybe used for other animals. After the animals moved out or maybe when they were still there the place was used as a dumpster site. While restoring the place, all kind of garbage was found (one box full you can still find outside and here in the picture), it was buried in the soil in the museum’s yard and inside the house. The place was one of these places, where people used to dump garbage. Something that broke was just thrown away. Today this is something we cannot imagine since we reuse, recycle, repurpose everything and if there is something that is really out of any use we find a place; we don’t leave it somewhere where we don’t see it, just to forget about it. Dumpster places and all the items in this museum were something very normal in people’s landscape of imagination and they were normal as results of a reciprocal process of people’s actions and the society they lived in.

“For Museum?“- You noticed the little sticker on the bidet? The question is, if the right place for a bidet is this museum. Some of you will say “yes”, some will strongly oppose. Therefore the question mark, so please say what you think. Does it make sense to use a bidet in times of dry toilets? Or is it better than using toilet paper? Also all the rest of the museum asks you to participate. The items you see here are only the tip of a mountain of unneeded stuff. So what to do with all this? We can’t put everything in museums. If you have any idea how to reuse, repurpose or recycle any of the items, leave your suggestions and open your eyes and mind anywhere you pass. And maybe you can think of more of these questionable or useless items. Before you exit the museum and for every item there is room for ideas, suggestions and comments.

Before you go on: Are you sitting? The mentioned house, where the museum is placed in, is very small and doesn’t allow an upright position for most adults. So most of the time visitors spend bend or sitting which brings another dimension to the museum: you can also feel the time and places of unneeded or questionable things. The bend position was a very common position. People were sitting much more than we can imagine today. Lots of daily and sometimes daylong activities were taken out sitting and often bend, due to the little consciousness about the body and reduced movement. People spend the whole day sitting in front of the computer, sitting in cars, sitting in trains, in conferences, in school, in front of the TV, on the toilet… Movement was mainly to get from one seat to another.

Fridge Yes, this thing is a fridge and was used to cool food. And yes, it needed electrical power. Why did people use electricity to cool something, when it is so easy to cool just in cellar rooms, or if you have only little space, in a terracotta fridge? And this closed plastic, metal construction easily started moulding and gave everything a taste of everything. The fridge was one of those things people could not imagine to live without, not even thinking about the option to live without it. It belonged to every home in the places which we call today “those which called themselves developed”. Fridges were as many other technological items designed and developed to make an individual living in an urban space possible, with the luxury of so felt endless fossil energy.

Plastic bag The plastic bag stands as one sample of many unnecessary plastic items. Plastic was a commonly used material for all kinds of things. From garbage bins over children’s toys to so called credit-cards - a former instrument of payment. While produced from mineral oil and not very robust it was still favoured since it was cheaply available due to an economic system, now belonging to the past. Still we find much plastic in our environment (think of items you use everyday like a computer) and it will take some time to find solutions to replace it completely, since it is integrated in so many things we still use.

Car This number plate is a leftover form a car, also called automobile. The name origins in the purpose of the car: to give mobility to the individual. Nearly everybody had or wanted one car or more. This car phenomenon is connected to the way space was organized. Home, work, schools, food and leisure where scattered all over the place. The integrated way of living we experience today, where society is made up of self-regulating, self-sufficient localities (both physically and mentally) promotes all aspects of living to one place. Cars are more standing around then that they are used and if they are used than only if they are full, since there is car sharing and a wide net of public transport there is no sense in auto mobility.

Water toilet Today a water toilet seems in many ways arbitrary, but it was common to have at least one in each household. Human excrement was seen as something like garbage, and was something nobody wanted to deal with. The water toilets were connected to a canal system, which lead to a centralized so called clarification plant. Water toilets made us forget what happens with the excrement and promoted a “flush and never see again” mentality. Using excrements as fertilizer, which today is the common practice, was a no - go. The high water consumption of water toilets, a big problem in dry areas, was sometimes fought with the attempt of using only little water, but in general is was not taboo to use clean drinking water to carry away good compost.

Private property sign “PROPRIETE PRIVEE – DEFENSE D’ENTRER” written in big letters on a sign good visible attached to any kind of fence, door or house could be found in many streets. Today we have to explain what “private property” actually means. It refers to a concept of private ownership. This means that items or places or land was seen as something that is owned by somebody. This person would have the right to set rules in this place and could therefore also decide who is allowed to enter. Very often people would keep their property for themselves, build fences and close all doors and then even put a sign, to leave no questions.

This was interlinked with the way social status was gained. Owning much and having large property would be admirable. A person having a big house, some land, big cars and so on, all for private use, was a hero; something unthinkable today where sharing is normal and nobody looks how much the other has, since the commons are revitalised and the last “private property” signs disappear.

Electric water heater Electric water heaters were used to heat up water for the use in bathroom and kitchen. The water was heated with electric energy, generated by centralized power plants, mostly from fossil fuels or nuclear power. The energy from the grid was seemingly cheap and abundant, an illusion failing to make visible the actual costs of extracting fossil fuels and radioactive material.

Now it is hard to imagine using a very high energy consuming technique for something that can be easily done by the sun or is not even needed on a warm summer day. The same logic applies for the electric room heater, shown in the right picture.

TV This TV antenna stands for something which was an essential part of many peoples life – Television. Its purpose was basically amusement with the possibility to see moving pictures in the living room. From a small item it developed to a space and time filling instrument. The TV could never become to big and was always to small. And there was always something on to entertain, to detract, forget and fill gaps. No need for interaction, thinking or movement. While it was used to inform but also to manipulate and promote consumerism. It is very difficult writing this little text, since the TV disappeared so long ago. Due to so many more interesting, much more enhancing activities there is simply no more time and need for TV. And we already forgot what TV stand for.