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,…

The 5&1 Step-back

November 15, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

On the Japanese island of Okinawa people start a meal by offering a piece of advice: hara hachi bu. It means eat until you’re 80% full. Don’t eat until you can eat no more, but eat until you’re not hungry. The Incredible Shrinking Man understands…

Trunkism

November 10, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

The growth of a tree trunk demands considerable investment and focus of resources. The competition for sunlight can lead to very differently formed trunks within the same species of tree. A comparison of two white oaks tells the story. The broad-crowned shorter oak grew as a…

Bigorexia (DFM)

November 9, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Bigorexia is a subtype of the obsessive mental disorder muscle dysmorphic disorder. The (mostly) men suffering from it have a delusional sense of being too small and insufficiently muscular, despite often already having exceptionally big and muscular bodies. Bigorexians spend inordinate time, attention and resources to gain strength…

The Dwarf and the Giant

October 27, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Between 1896 and 1913 French film pioneer and illusionist Georges Méliès directed over 500 films. Most of them were very short experiments exploring the possibilities of special effects inspired by the tradition of stage magic. As such the appearance and disappearance of objects and people…

Tsimtsum

October 25, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Tsimtsum is a Hebrew term meaning contraction, constriction or condensation. In the Kabbalah it is used to explain how God initiated the Creation by a process of contracting from his infinite omnipresence. Within the resulting space mankind could come into existence. So basically God actively shrunk…

Abundance Fantasies: Friedeberg’s Hand Chair

October 24, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

In Abundance Fantasies we explore how a desire for abundance is sometimes found in unsuspected places, practices and objects. Perhaps such encounters can be reinforced to stimulate a desire to shrink. In “The Art of small things” John Mack writes: “In literature, as much as…

Rafting Monkeys

June 7, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

We know of only three species of pre-historic mammals that managed to cross the Atlantic ocean between Africa and South-America. One of them was the now extinct Ucayalipithecus monkey about 35 million years ago. The other species of “immigrant” mammals were New World Monkeys, flat-nosed…

The Peruvian Variant

May 30, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Nearly 4,000 common variations in DNA are known to affect stature. Each variant nudges your height up, or down, with one millimeter or so. But now researchers have identified the single largest genetic contributor to human height known to date. The sensational findings of the…

David and Goliath

March 24, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

It’s interesting to listen to Malcolm Gladwell as he deconstructs the presumptions behind the story of David and Goliath. Rather than presenting it as one of our best known underdog stories he suggests that Goliath in fact never stood a chance. According to Gladwell this…

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…

Rod at Dawn

March 2, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

In 1994 popstar Rod Stewart gave a concert on Copacabana beach in Rio di Janeiro. And it turned out to be a legendary concert as it attracted the largest crowd of people in history for a musical event. 4 to 5 million people came to…

Mayan Dwarf Liminality

February 23, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

Short-statured people, dwarfs and people with achondroplasia play a significant role in Maya mythology. It was believed that dwarfs lived together with the gods long before humans even existed. This presumed divine proximity and intimacy gave the small-statured status. Dwarfs knew something that the taller…

Down with the Dead Puck

January 31, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

When John Chayka, general manager of the Arizona Coyotes of the National Hockey League, used his seventh-overall draft selection to pluck talented centre Clayton Keller, he was sold on the teen’s playmaking ability and his knack for creating what in any competitive sport is the hardest to create:…

Guts for Brains

January 12, 2020 By arne hendriks Off

The human brain is generally regarded as the organ that makes us stand out from all other life. People have unusually large brains in relation to the size of the body: About 3x larger than the brain of our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. And…

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…

GHRE

November 27, 2019 By arne hendriks Off

The etymology of the word growth may tell us why it is difficult to ignore its direct superficial appeal. In a balanced world both shrinking and growth have their place. Yet while the concept of growth is universally embraced and celebrated, shrinking is regarded mostly negatively.…

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…