Regret, regift | INDA (design3 y2s1) - Naphatsorn Silprachawong

REGRET, REGIFT

(Cream) Naphatsorn Silprachawong

The giving culture in the present society was seen as a way to express love and care, gift importance became more present to the point that it symbolized the meaning of holidays, along with the emergence of advertisements and holiday sales, materialism and consumerism have become the default norm and taken over the meaning of happiness.

Aiming to disrupt normal marketing business and encourage societal trends of slowing down the pace of new production and consuming, I come up with the goal to raise regifting, give experience instead of objects and to create reverse advertisement. The event was planned around three major annual celebrations: Songkran, Mid-year sales, and Christmas to New Year. The deployable outpost is placed in front of a certain mall, Central World, to block the most popular entrances and interlock with the mall’s structure to create difficulty in usual shopping and control audience circulation by creating barriers from the mall entrance.

The activity was split into two parts in relation to time: a gift exchange that takes place before to the holiday season for the audience to trade leftover items for “regifting”, and workshop activity that gather wastes from holidays to set up a crafts stool workshop after the holiday season is over. Crafted stools will be inherit to the next participants as anonymous ‘gift’ for providing this workshop experience and also act as a tool for spreading messages. Crafted items will become installations for counteradvertising after the event. Continue on as public furniture sets after that.

The influence of giving

The project started with observing my routine: shopping, that leads to the bigger picture of overconsumption in the world. While consumption is a big term, I focused in one aspect of consuming that results in excessed and unused products we do not actually need: Gifts giving.

I surveyed people about gifts in as[ects of being a giver and receiver, while the amount of end-up-unused and unwanted products are high, I discovered the system behind the materialistic value of gift giving: emerges of adverstisements and holiday promotion/sales for marketing purpose that have been setting the norms for many years.

REGRET, REGIFTCREAM NAPHATSORN SILPRACHAWONG

Central influence on materialism culture

I targeted Central after analyzing their marketing strategy that tend to portay products as gift for love ones, including the "Happiness at Central" campaign made to trigger sales that highly encourage attachment of happiness with objects. Central world court which was selected as my main site to reversely organize events to discourage Central business.

Holiday fever cycle

I observed the pattern of holiday fever and divided into 3 period: finding gifts, enjoying and regretting and assign the outpost activity in accordance with consumers behavior: gift exchange before holidays, for consumer to exchange unused gifts instead of buying new, and workshop set after holidays while consumers are realizing the waste they caused and tons of unwanted gifts they received.

Forms and materiality derived from cycle of gift packing

Deployable structure in relation to time

Due to its deployable function and flexibility, the structures can be installed and take out in relation to time and situation on-site. Furnitures installed were modular units that can be arranged according to activity: shelves for gift exchange activity and as table for workshop activity.

Regift and regret

After the event ends, crafted stools which act as device for spreading messages are build as installation for counteradvertisements that reflects resources wasted on holiday giving, continue on as public furniture sets after that.

REGRET, REGIFTCREAM NAPHATSORN SILPRACHAWONG