The art of the fix-it
21.03.11
The Fixers' Collective was founded in January 2009. At first, remembers Tammy Pittman , the director of Proteus Gowanus and its cofounder, with Mahfouda – the members worked at a long table in the main hall of Proteus. Back then, the focus was more on taking appliances apart, and making art out of the plastic innards and metal guts. But eventually, the group moved to a brightly lit back room and turned its energy toward actually repairing the items.
"It makes people feel proud of themselves – a little less helpless," Ms. Pittman says. "Everything breaks. Everything. These days, and especially with all this electronic equipment, we have no clue – no idea at all – how to fix stuff. We are pretty much at the mercy of our computers, our cellphones. The Fixers' Collective helped us become a little more self-sufficient. It is an attitude as much as anything."
Pittman draws a direct line from the financial crash of 2008 – "which made a lot of people, and certainly us, less inclined to trust the experts" – to the creation of the collective. But it is also true, as Pittman hints, that many Americans worry that they have become more reliant on their belongings and more disconnected about how they work.
Source: Christian Science Monitor