Teresa Feldmann

Planet Abundance sound piece, as exhibited at the festival ‘Who owns the economy?’ in Willem Twee Art Space, Den Bosch.

Planet Abundance sound piece, as exhibited at the festival ‘Who owns the economy?’ in Willem Twee Art Space, Den Bosch.

Planet Abundance sound piece, as exhibited at the festival ‘Who owns the economy?’ in Willem Twee Art Space, Den Bosch.

OIKOTOPIA video piece, as exhibited at the festival ‘Who owns the economy?’ in Willem Twee Art Space, Den Bosch.

OIKOTOPIA video piece, as exhibited at the festival ‘Who owns the economy?’ in Willem Twee Art Space, Den Bosch.

OIKOTOPIA video piece, as exhibited at the festival ‘Who owns the economy?’ in Willem Twee Art Space, Den Bosch.

One of the three Planet Abundance workshop cards with guiding questions. I created this particular one to help initiate conversations about what economics could look like in our imagined post-work society.

Six illustrations, corresponding to each chapter of the science fiction script “Planet Abundance: a feminist economist vision of a post-work society”. The chapters are (from top left to bottom right): The Great Exodus; Planet Scarcity; Planet Abundance; Bank of Care; Feminist Money; Caring Post-Work Society.

The sci-fi script “Planet Abundance: a feminist economist vision of a post-work society⁠”—an illustrated page taken from the workshop guide we developed.

The first of our Planet Abundance workshops was delivered at Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany, in June 2022.

The first of our Planet Abundance workshops was delivered at Documenta 15 in Kassel, Germany, in June 2022.

Detail of the large collective drawing created during the Planet Abundance workshop at Documenta 15.

Detail of the large collective drawing created during the Planet Abundance workshop at Documenta 15.

Screenshot of Planet Abundance online event in Oct 2022. After all the local workshops had taken place, we invited the artists and facilitators for a collective sharing session online. Being based in the Netherlands, Scotland, Colombia, Canada, Japan, and India, the online event enabled us to gather in one space, to get to know each other, and to offer and exchange visions of life on Planet Abundance, a post-work future world centred on the experiences of women.

The Anoiksis Index Map is a beginner’s guide to the Anoiksis Theory, that helps the user get started with drawing their own mental map. It is a poster that contains a variety of labels and examples to choose from, offering the user the word tools to express their situations past and present.

Anoiksis image: what stories? “We rely so heavily on our senses that it does not occur to us to question them. Instead, we create stories, even if that story seems unusual because it supports our experience. We can learn to distinguish metaphorical significance from what may feel like a literal truth.” ⁠— Dr Jennifer Kanary

Anoiksis image

Anoiksis image⁠—the meaning of the bulbous figure is in the eye of the beholder: it has been described as an inward-looking eye, a portal, an organ, a breast, a celestial body, a friendly alien. It holds space for a person's subjective experiences.

Pluristories is inspired by the herstory concept, and thus questions the structures of history-making. The project aims to contribute to a more inclusive historical understanding of the pandemic era. What will be recorded about the Covid-19 in history textbooks for future generations? What will be erased, ignored, or glossed over? I organised Pluristories into a collection that I call Liminal Calendar. This calendar chronicles the 12 months following the first lockdown not via the biggest headlines in mainstream media but through personal stories of care, relationships, mutual aid, mental health, body image, precarity, and essential work.

Detail of a page from the Liminal Calendar (May 2020)

Collected stories of care, relationships, mutual aid, mental health, body image, precarity, and essential work that happened during the pandemic time.

Bank of Care (BoC) rethinks the whole economy from the perspective of a caregiver. BoC is an alternative accounting system that keeps track of an individual’s unpaid care work. In a three-step loop, it records caregiving, translates it into readable data, and rewards carers. Members get a detailed overview of their labour in the form of receipts and cumulative statistics. They are creating mounting evidence that this productivity exists. The goal is to introduce care labour into the canon of economics, so that we cannot have an economic discussion without considering the most basic economy.

Bank of Care (BoC) rethinks the whole economy from the perspective of a caregiver. BoC is an alternative accounting system that keeps track of an individual’s unpaid care work. In a three-step loop, it records caregiving, translates it into readable data, and rewards carers. Members get a detailed overview of their labour in the form of receipts and cumulative statistics. They are creating mounting evidence that this productivity exists. The goal is to introduce care labour into the canon of economics, so that we cannot have an economic discussion without considering the most basic economy.

Rita, Daria, Su-yin, Magda, Aurélie, Loes, Paola, and Kadri are all real people who sent me their audio recordings. Names are changed to protect their privacy.

BoC members get a detailed overview of their labour in the form of receipts and cumulative statistics. They are creating mounting evidence that this productivity exists.

Bank of Care at the KABK graduation show. The concept was to create a kind of bank experience but not in the usual hierarchical, corporate sense. Instead I aimed to design a space that feels inclusive and egalitarian, but also communicates the mountain of invisible work being done every day in an awe-inspiring way. The setup was carved out of carefully selected materials: a birch plywood counter, brushed aluminium signage, and oversized gradient colour receipts printed on thin, baking-sheet-like paper. Each poster is an individual user account floating in mid-air, symbolising the digital realm where these records can be retrieved from.

Detail of the Bank of Care exhibition at the KABK graduation show

Detail of the Bank of Care exhibition at the KABK graduation show

Did you know that anybody can create money? It is completely legal. There is actually an incredibly rich world of complementary currencies out there, tucked in local communities. Armed with an old-style letterpress machine, I printed my own Bank of Care currency—to rival the Euro—that addresses the invisibility of unpaid care. The note reads: ‘In unpaid labour we trust.’

Handmade business card for a feminist economist

Small handmade poster ‘Women are unpaid producers of wealth’

The football scarf collection started as a tongue-in-cheek exercise taking a masculine attire as a canvas to express women issues. This was one of the mixed media experiments I did while working on my thesis, “Ms. Unpaid Labourer” at the KABK. Made with Brother semi-automatic knitting machine. Teams represented: Plastic Brain Ms. Unpaid Labourer TIME BANK Radical Rest Mental Loadd Wear it loud & proud.

Me and Iris wearing the scarves titled Ms. Unpaid Labourer and Plastic Brain

‘Care’ knuckle duster is another exercise in mutating a masculine attire to carry a feminine message. I can’t remember how this ludicrous idea came about, perhaps I was looking for an excuse to do more sand casting, one of my favourite crafts. The final product—an objet d’art—has elicited joyous responses from many people. Caring has a warm/fluffy/pinkish image in Western culture. Yet care can also be cold/hard/metallic and smack you right in the face. Instead of giving care punches though, I recommend to wear it as a bling. Made of aluminium.

An experiment of making clay tokens that keep (archaic) records of care work, detailing the date, postcode, and signature of the labourer. Inspired by ancient clay tablets that were used to create the world’s first accounts.

“Ms. Unpaid Labourer — design perspectives for the ‘conceptually difficult’ work that women do” is the result of a four-month research in the Master Industrial Design programme at the KABK. It sheds light on the gendered division of daily chores, the tremendous commitment and time spent on household work by women worldwide, an obscure and overlooked part of our economic system. In addition to writing it, I produced a satisfyingly tactile ‘book object’. I learned bookbinding and became fascinated with the craft. I handmade several hard copies, experimenting with letterpressing, debossing, inks, powders, fonts, and a variety of papers that would complement my infographics and illustrations. Translucent paper became my favourite as it allowed me to layer up different visual elements. Keeping the cover modest yet tasteful, it reveals surprise contents that are playful, vibrant, and peppered with irony and wit.

Detail of the book⁠: several layers of translucent paper creates interesting effects with the infographics.

Detail of the book⁠: a letterpressed translucent page in between text⁠

I am not into 3D printed gadgets. I was curious what would happen when using additive manufacturing as an in-between step in the making process. Could a 3D print be treated like a piece of plywood or a sheet of steel, where possibilities are open and that lead to unique results? I started printing a new kind of sheet material, half-fabricates, that can be crafted into a desired form later. When heated, these gyroidal PLA sheets become malleable allowing them to be shaped by hand or stretched over a mould. It is the human interplay with material that defines the final design.

3D printed sheets before deforming process

Various objects created via heat deforming 3D printed sheets

A making experiment: fully custom-made aluminium wall hangers. Any letter in any typeface/font is produced as long as it can be 3D printed. Due to the unpredictable nature of the sand casting process, each piece is unique. The pouring channel and excess material blob (that’s normally cut off) forms an attractive mounting base for attaching the letter to the wall. Satin finish.

De Unravel Fabriek is a circular business model that salvages unwanted clothing through disassembly. It addresses the shockingly wasteful practices in fast fashion supply chains, specifically dealing with overproduction and unsold stock. The easiest garments to disassemble is knitwear. Unravelling, say, a sweater yields a yarn in its full length that can be rewound into skein. I made samples using a knitting machine. I learned that within certain limits unravelled yarns can be used to remanufacture new garments. I studied each yarn and noted down its properties, durability, how it releases from the stitch, as well as optimal machine settings for reknitting.

Pages from the booklet ‘Study of Unravel’