Category: Shrink Activism

Fóxì

January 5, 2022 By arne hendriks Off

‘Tang Ping‘ or ‘Lying flat’ can be translated as a resistance to participate in the tempo and demands of current neo-liberal society by doing very little or nothing. Fóxì, or Buddha-like, is a rather more frequently used word similar to tang ping. Buddha-like youth, also…

The Not So Resolute Desk

November 30, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

At first sight it seems rather curious that a man so sensitive to the image of power as is Donald Trump, would allow to be photographed sitting behind a very small desk. His large body in relation to the small table just looks awkward. Plus,…

Kohrisms

March 15, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

The Austrian economist and political scientist Leopold Kohr opposed the “cult of bigness” in social organization. He inspired the movement for a human scale and the Small Is Beautiful movement. His most influential work was The Breakdown of Nations. In 1983, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award. In the…

The Zooms: The Feynman Zoom

March 13, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

The Zooms are modest symbolic gestures intended to initiate an embodied practise of the desire for smaller. Although they are often hardly more than physical whispers these actions attempt to overcome the inability to act in the face of the omnipresent desire for BIG. They…

Height Blind

January 8, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Greater height in humans is commonly associated with advantages such as leadership skills, wealth, intelligence or social status. Differences between short and tall men are often found for these traits, mainly in favour of tall men. But are height-related effects biologically determined or do they…

Adaptive Size

November 28, 2019 By arne hendriks Off

Architecture studio Wallgren Arkitekter and Swedish construction company BOX Bygg created the design tool Finch which can generate floor plans adapted to the constraints of a site. It allows architects to understand the potential of a specific building site, especially in terms of size and configuration. The Incredible…

The Kampung Lodan Miracle

November 15, 2019 By arne hendriks Off

The Kampung Lodan Miracle was a shrink event that took place on the river banks of the Ciliwung river in Jakarta in the summer of 2017. Two local seamstresses resized a pair of jeans and a shirt of 195cm tall Arne Hendriks into a fitting…

Guangzhou Reversal Room

December 30, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

The Incredible Shrinking Man was invited by the Guangzhou Triennial 2018, curated by Angelique Spaninks, Zhang Ga and Philip Ziegler, to resurrect one of its favourite shrink experiences: the Ames room. An Ames room allows people to visually experience a shift in body size by…

Hallmarks of Malignant Growth: Avoiding Immune Destruction

December 28, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

In trying to understand what makes the idea of continuous growth so powerful (despite clear evidence that it is a harmful concept) The Incredible Shrinking Man turned to cancer research to learn where healthy growth turns malignant. Although cancer is a very complex phenomenon the…

Implosion Fabrication

December 27, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

It’s not quite the Dehnel phenomenon but implosion fabrication does allow for a different perspective on shape shifting, size and shrinking and may just add a piece to the puzzle of achieving a smaller size for that bloated hydro-species by the name of Homo sapiens. Researchers…

The Cell Cycle: Mitogen

December 19, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

The Cell Cycle investigates the mechanisms and substances that regulate cell division and growth. The process of deciding to divide, or not, is a highly regulated interplay of messages and receptors reporting on the state of the environment and the state of the cell. While…

Calimero Complex

November 14, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

In the Low Countries the Calimero Complex refers to people, organisations or countries that feel they’re under-appreciated because of their small size. The name given to the complex refers to the lead character Calimero in an Italian animated cartoon series featured in the early 70’s…

D(r)egrowth

November 7, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

What does it mean when your spelling control keeps changing the word degrowth into the word regrowth? How obsessed with growth must a society be when decades after the word degrowth was introduced to inspire a paradigm shift towards the destructive idea of continuous economic…

Hallmarks of Malignant Growth: Tumor-promoting Inflammation

November 3, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

In trying to understand what makes the idea of continuous growth so powerful (despite clear evidence that it is a harmful concept) The Incredible Shrinking Man turned to cancer research to learn where healthy growth turns malignant. Although cancer is a very complex phenomenon the…

Amplexus Tantra

October 27, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

It may seem farfetched and even a little awkward to discuss a frog’s preferred sexual position as part of a strategy to shrink. However, to change humanity’s irrational desire for bigger towards a much wiser desire for smaller we must invest as much in alternative…

Micro-Livestock’s Short Shadow

October 18, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, a 2006 report released by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, assesses the impact of the livestock sector on environmental challenges, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation. The livestock sector poses serious challenges to the environment at every…

Hallmarks of Malignant Growth: Genome Instability and Mutation

October 2, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

In trying to understand what makes the idea of continuous growth so powerful (despite clear evidence that it is a harmful concept) The Incredible Shrinking Man turned to cancer research to learn where healthy growth turns malignant. Although cancer is a very complex phenomenon the…

Shrink Exercise: Buster’s Unfolding

September 21, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

Buster Keaton was a master of visual comedy in the era of the silent movie. His use of props and perspective often brilliantly deflates presumptions on how things are supposed to be. In the opening scene of The High Sign (1921) the simple gesture of unfolding…

Zebrafish Oannes

September 17, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

The zebrafish is one of The Incredible Shrinking Man’s most beloved spirit animals. Being a model organism for endocrinological and genetic research positions it between fact and fiction, the known and the unknown and the present and the future. Thus it invites us into realms…

Myxozoans

September 11, 2018 By arne hendriks Off

Several years ago Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout suggested that rather than reduce human height to 50cm (as The Incredible Shrinking Man has investigated) people should shrink to the size of a parasite and live in the stomach of  a cow. It’s an interesting suggestion,…