Arts and Crafts Movement: this was a movement in fine and decorative arts that emerged and

flourished in Europe, North America, and later on in Japan. It first emerged in England and
during the 1880s and ended around 1910, although Japan experienced it in 1920. The three
main prominent figures of the movement are A. W. N. Pugin, John Ruskin, and William Morris.
They advocated for craftsmanship, employed romantic and medieval elements in their styles,
and stood against the industrial world that was being developed.

Utopia: A concept present during the last part of the reading. In it, the author states how we
should Utopia as hard as we can. He is basically stating that we should live in a Utopian
mindset, meaning that we should always aspire to live in a Utopian-like world. This way, by
setting up a model to fight for, we can start changing the environment we live in today to
create a more prosperous future. I think this is incredibly important. As humans, this is the way
we work. We produce, we create, and we do our best only when we see the clear objective in
our mind.

Revival Field: Project carried out by Mel Chin. Chin first started this project as a conceptual
artwork. He basically went onto a field that was contaminated and absolutely ruined waste
materials. He carried out an experiment in which he grew plants (on that contaminated soil)
that had great capacities to extract and absorb from the soil heavy metals and other hazardous
elements present in it. In my opinion this is a wonderful project that deals with a very serious
issue. When it comes to the sea, the situation is even worse. Nowadays, all of the oceans on
Earth are contaminated with mercury. Similar to this, there have been people trying to use
special kinds of seaweed and algae to solve the problem.

Flooded McDonalds: this is a video produced in 2009 by Superflex. It depicted a McDonalds

store gradually being flooded by water. In the video there are no actors acting as customers or
staff members. This is a project that is trying to desperately call our attention to the great
problem of climate change by portraying immanent disaster, as expressed in the reading. It
was very interesting symbols in it. The McDonald I would say that represents our current
economic system of extreme consumption and very importantly, of an irrational desire of well-
being. The water clearly represents one of the consequences of climate change.

Sources:

Reading

http://superflex.net/floodedmcdonalds/

http://melchin.org/oeuvre/revival-field

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arts_and_Crafts_movement#Origins_and_influences