So, this is me.
I’m 26 years old, and for the last 5 years I have been travelling the world and working as a digital nomad. All the possessions that I own into the world fit into a suitcase and a backpack (minus one box of very sentimental things I leave at my mom’s home in Cape Town, South Africa). All the jewellery I wear I have either been gifted at significant phases in my life, or I buy on my travels to mark a country or place I have enjoyed and want to remember. The bracelets I have on my left wrist are the same; they attached permanently, and only get removed when they wear down to the point of falling off (which usually takes a few years).

My bags are adorned similarly, with selected pins and patches, some made by friends and others found in interesting corners of cities I have explored. 98% of days I spend dressed in high waisted jeans, a much loved shirt of some kind, and my Doc Martens.  The Doc Martens are probably my most recognisable feature, as I am never without them. They are my perfect shoe to take my through my daily movements which often include walking through cities or across university campuses, jumping onto filmsets or into design studios, and then hiking through mountains before sunset.

When looking at me, people may not know all that specific information about my items, but my appearance turns into a text that tells a little more about who I am. It becomes a story about the things I like, the places I have been, the ethos that I follow, and the lifestyle that I live. It also becomes a form of text: it is information I am selecting, framing, and sharing with the public that they receive then interpret themselves to come to know and understand me.

The things inside my bag tell a very similar story. Before we continue, here is a snapshot of what is inside my backpack:

Because I’m travelling at the moment, I have all of this on me at all times. In general however, I will have a selection of these items on me on any given day. The items in my bag are all hold various functions, often overlapping between work and personal, intellectual and creative, or mandated and fun.  The objects I carry with me are also always purchased with a dual motivation: I buy things that I need, but also specifically take the time to seek items that I enjoy, that I feel are reflective of my identity, or that come from places that I value and support.

Description

Discussion

These items say a lot about me. They tell you about the work that I do, and the creativity that I enjoy. They show that I inhabit various places and take my work, studies, and entertainment with me. They reflect my tendencies to be interdisciplinary, and valuing analogue and digitally technologies equally. They even reflect my values as many of the items are second hand, upcycled, or replacements for single use. As with my outward appearance, the items inside my bag have been mindfully collected over time for both their functionalism but also for their representation of who I am. They thus tell a story of me that I share, and are items that people will interpret in order to infer information about me.

This is perhaps better described with a textual analogy. The items that I carry with me are the nouns of my life. They are the things that I have function and that I use to do my work, and practice creativity or mindfulness, or to enjoyment in my free time. Many of them are tools for holding and sharing information, and for giving and receiving textual content. However, if you dig a little deeper they begin to act as adjectives that describe me, too.  Whilst I need all these items, I have carefully selected them as markers and representations of who I am. Their functions map the areas and environments I inhabit, their aesthetics reflect my preferences or cultural identity, and their origins reflect my life journey so far.

Many of the items in my bag are specifically text technologies as much of my life revolves around communication and visual culture. Literally, some allow me to communicate or store text. Creatively, they let me visually share, document, and receive information. They also really show the variety of ways in which I engage with language and communication, as well as the range of literacies that I have and use on a daily basis. I move seamlessly between analogue and digital technologies, often integrating both into the same tasks, and move between using words and images to communicate. All my devices have at least three languages loaded, with clocks from multiple time zones showing, to allow me to communicate with different people from all over the world. In this way, I think the private contents of my bag align relatively well with the image I outwardly project, especially since they have all been purchased with the intention to do this and to work within my nomad life. 15 or 25 years ago, I may have needed a lot more items to be able to achieve the tasks I do today. I would probably have needed different bags and a more modular, rather than integrated, work/life style.

Reflecting on this task, what became very apparent to me is in an intricate and intimate sense, objects are more than mere things – a combination of matter that we pick up to wield and use – acting instead as agents within our lives. They co-construct our environments, and become part of who we are. In this way, they evolve from being technologies that create text into texts themselves, describing and representing the people who carry them. I find myself sitting in a somewhat new materialist seat at the end of this conversation, rejecting notions of matter as  a static, inert and fixed presence or a mere backdrop for human agents. Instead, we are viewing objects from a philosophical lens in which they are phenomena participating in our cultural worlds as both matter and meaning (Monforte, 2018).  A great read for those further interested in this perspective is Sherry Tucrkle’s (2007) book Evocative Objects. This collection of autobiographical essays has authors focus on objects as companions to life experiences rather than as instruments, and is a fantastic meandering through stories of instances where objects and text melt into one.

“We find it familiar to consider objects as useful or aesthetic, as necessities or vain indulgences. We are on less familiar ground when we consider objects as companions to our emotional lives or as provocations to thought. The notion of evocative objects brings together these two less familiar ideas, underscoring the inseparability of thought and feeling in our relationship to things” (Turkle,  2007, p. 5).

References

Monforte, J. (2018). What is new in new materialism for a newcomer? Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 10(3), 378-390.

Turkle, S. (2011). Evocative objects: Things we think with. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press