This project comparing a DIY coat hook with a manufactured equivalent was part of my Masters of Architecture Thesis. While the drawings were in part a practical guide, they were primarily designed as a diagrammatic metaphor representing diametrically opposed worldviews. The diagrams did, for the most part, serve this purpose—the dichotomy is certainly not subtle. However, I wasn’t sure what ongoing purpose the exercise served beyond a metaphor? In a world of YouTube, what does a diagrammatic instructional drawing offer? Furthermore, challenging the contemporary and ingrained cultural paradigm of industrial society seemed pointless.

However, my recent investigations into the internet served as a reminder of how important maintaining the diagrammatic instructional is in the face of escalating carbon emissions from data storage and AI.¹ Not only can a simple drawing series stand in place of photos and video, it even has the capacity to outperform it as an instructional medium. Furthermore, using diagrams supplemented with photos or short videos is a great way to utilise the best of both mediums, increasing overall legibility while reducing file sizes dramatically and thus the embodied carbon.

Furthermore, from a degrowth perspective, challenging paradigms is vital. With the metal coat hook, the concept of technological naturalisation is clearly evident. That is, what appears as progress and innovation is, in reality the coalescence of powerful interests, asymmetric power relations, and neocolonial domination.² The absurd process undertaken to produce a simple piece of technology, such as a coat hook, feeds into the ‘myth of progress’ ingrained in the growth narrative. Challenging this, and exploring what this naturalisation process really entails, helps to release our imaginations from the normative daily rituals of capitalism.

Ulrich Brand and Markus Wissen’s theory of the ‘imperial mode of living’ explains how this absurd process rationalises the reproduction of capitalism through everyday material and social infrastructures that conceal north-south neocolonialism. They assert that ‘capitalism reaches its economic social productivity in centres’ but that ’labour power and nature are first valorised and monetised elsewhere and values and matter are then transferred’.³ This means that values inscribed into daily life through institutional and social infrastructures enable normalised and rationalised imperial consumption that originates at a distant frontier. Moreover, this distant and global chain of relations conceals the true impact of our daily habits.⁴

Marxist philosopher and degrowth scholar Kohei Saito expands on how technology disguises the ‘imperial mode of living’:

The novelty of new technologies can obscure the real problem that is precisely the continuation of business as usual that is irrational. Technology functions as an ideology that mystifies this irrationality. In other words, technology suppresses and eliminates the possibilities of imagining a completely different lifestyle and a safe and just society. —Kohei Saito ⁵

In this, Saito shows how the entanglement of social values with ideas of progress and technology disguise the true nature of the problems at hand and prevent envisioning solutions outside of normative capitalist realism. This is because, as Mark Fisher has written, ‘capitalism seamlessly occupies the horizons of the thinkable’.⁶

Although this article may appear as anti-technology, it is by no means that at all. This article is merely another expression of the neo-luddite philosophy pointed at in my article ‘Towards Degrowth Internet’. That is, rather than accepting technology as a given, we must realise it is always biased and always political, and therefore, must be scrutinised rather than universally accepted and adopted.⁷ As is pointed out over and over in the literature, degrowth does not mean no growth, and it is not austerity—we absolutely must invest in certain industries such as renewables.⁸ To do this, without overall aggregate growth, we must focus material flows on vital industries, which means analysing and understanding the network of technologies and infrastructures involved in the creation of our daily lives. We cannot accept all technology as true progress in the face of the environmental catastrophe. A point often missed, after all, is that climate change is a problem created by technological progress.

Therefore, this exercise in making a coat hook is both a reminder that practical instruction through diagramming is still a relevant format—an exercise in examining technology in itself. And that practical exploration of technologies through hands on exploration is a poignant way to unlock our imaginaries from capitalist realism. So here are my original instructional drawings and commentary:

How to Make a Timber Coat Hook

The first time I saw a coat made from a tree branch, it didn’t appeal to my aesthetic sensibilities. Nevertheless, the longer I dwelled upon the coat hook, the more its aesthetics grew on me. I am a product of industrial, capitalist culture. This is the culture where I grew up, am educated, and work and live every day. I am bombarded with its aesthetics through language, politics, fashion, advertising and built fabric daily. Suffice to say; it took and still takes practice and imagination to realign my aesthetic judgement with degrowth practice. The coat hook was a pivotal moment for me in this process. Now, to buy a cast metal coat hook seems absurd. Moreover, why would I want my home to be defined by aesthetic objects created with incredible amounts of carbon energy and unethical labour practices? In making a coat hook myself, I engage with local ecologies: the community who attend the neighbourhood food forest; the plants and animals of the food forest; my partner who, since 2010, has planted and cared for almost every tree in the forest; and my daughter who has begun to learn, through observing this practice, how to care for plants and work with wood. Furthermore, this process only utilises convivial tools, which empower me to create what I want, when I want it, with my own labour.⁹

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Process:

How to Make a Metal Coat Hook

The metal coat hook is the epitome of industrial production. This is a seemingly simple object, yet tracing the primary and secondary resources, manufacturing processes, and workers involved is a difficult task. For many, though, this is the preferred aesthetic, and is an essential lifestyle choice due to low skill and limited time (probably because of a bullshit job¹⁰). In purchasing an industrial coat hook, consumers willingly sacrifice time with family and community to pay for these aesthetic objects and the debt they create. Working to pay for a metal coat hook may even be marginally more time-efficient than making one. This, however, is because the inputs are treated as income rather than capital.¹¹ This is not an indictment upon all industrial products and the positive outcomes for society some can create. It is merely to point out the absurdity of the pursuit of growth. The metal coat hook creates jobs and revenue—and for a few, wealth—yet to what end? In a degrowth future, resources and capital must be redirected to vital industries such as renewable energy, rather than needlessly complex ones.

Inputs:

Process: