Tell an Untold Story: Interviews

For this project we were required to interview 3 people about our subject. These are the transcripts for those interviews.

I interviewed one of my flatmates- Will -first.

Me: When I say consumption, what comes to mind?

Will: So when I think of consumption I think of sort of  um mass consumerism and sort of the consumption of not necessarily edibles, but um you know technology, and sort of just materialistic things. Um, so yeah consumption for me would be linked to things like advertising

Me: And like capitalism?

Will: Capitalism, all that sort of stuff um so more consumption on like a wider sense than individual like eating or anything like that, yeah

Me: If I say consumption does that seem like something that’s sustainable to you?

Will: What, is consumption sustainable?

Me: Yeah

Will: In terms of like

Me: Like, if I say the word consumption does you think it’s like something that’s sustainable or not?

Will: Yeah, although I think it has to constantly, like consumption needs to constantly change. Like people will always want more. You kind of get tied up in consumption and it becomes like, uh yeah you kind of, its kind of a bit of a cycle, it can be a bit destructive but the more and more we’ve sort of provided with the more people will fall into it. Its like a bit of a endless cycle

Like, if you eat a piece of bread and then suddenly someone says here’s a piece of bread with butter, you’re gonna want that cause its more

Me: Okay yeah that makes sense. So you’re sort of speaking about it in a way –

Will: It’s like with celery. It’s good celery but if someone says they’ve got hummus and celery

And its also about money

Me: So its kind a greed kind of thing?

Will: It’s greed. And you invest your money in consuming stuff. Like the other day I spent an extra 2 quid on parma ham instead of normal ham. I didn’t need that, but I wanted to con – you know? It’s just the greed thing

Me: Okay

I then interviewed another of my flatmates; Adam.

Me: When I say the word consumption, what comes to mind?

Adam: The consuming of goods, whether it be food or like consumers like luxury things. Anything that can be purchased in a supermarket

Me: Um, is there any – Do you think of consumption in a non-consumerist kind of way at all?

Adam: Only when it’s being put in that context, when I think consume I would assume its being talked about consumerism or the markets. Just something to do with purchasing goods rather than consuming products

Me: Okay, um do you think consumerism has gone too far now?

Adam: Consumerism has gone too far in certain aspects, but overall it’s a positive thing. It’s increased like – yeah the economy benefits from consumerism in a way that can’t really just be like explained properly. It creates new jobs through the uh creation of different goods. Um overall it’s a positive force but it can have some negative cultural aspects

Me: Such as?

Adam: You do get people obviously that maybe have bought into consumerism too much and define themselves purely by what they purchase and what they have and don’t have but I think for the vast vast majority of people this isn’t an issue

Both of these interviews focused on consumption in a very literal sense, in terms of food and products. This is helpful because it means that this must be what people think of when they think of consumption, and this could be useful when exploring the consumerist idea for my project, but not for the sustainability and repurposing line of thought I had been going with.

After this, I interviewed my friend Seb on his thoughts on consumption.

Me: What comes to mind when I say consumption?

Seb: Consumption? Well just absorbing a lot of stuff you know? Nowadays society. To consume you know it doesn’t necessarily have to be food, it can be cigarettes, drugs you know. Consumption comes in many different forms

Me: What other forms of consumption can you think of?

Seb: Well, I think the food, the drugs and the cigarettes. Um, what else do we consume? We consume time, we could think about it more fine arty way,

Me: Comsume time, okay that’s pretty deep. What do you consume?

Seb: What do I consume? I consume mainly food, lets say. I like consuming vegetables, meat, milk, eggs, cheese, butter, chocolate!

Me: Okay, what about consumption on a wider scale? Like consumerism and that kind of thing, what do you think about that?

Seb: I think that we as a population over consume things and not only over consume things, over produce many things and then consumption becomes more of a like a wasted theme because some of this food just you know doesn’t get to the consumers and then just perishes, disappears. This is not what we used to.

Me: Do you think consumption differs like around the world in different places?

Seb: Yes absolutely I think that some people almost under consume you know they don’t have much to eat they don’t have you know much to consume anyway so they have to be more creative and they really rely on what they either you know get or grow themselves or you know what they manage to harvest or even steal you know? But we as a western world its this massive idea of the consumption so for example I don’t know in England there is so much waste food that could be potentially shipped to lets say Africa or less developed countries that actually need the food but its just not happening because you know people are thinking at a business level rather than help other humans level

Me: I think that’ll do, unless there’s any other stuff you can think of to talk about?

Seb: Hmm, on the top of my head, Czech people consume a lot of beer. Uh and its like a tradition, its almost like our nation is shaped based on what we consume. So for example there’s almost like the famous saying that father will show you the pub before he shows you the cinema. Cinemas are all around the world right, but beer you know its what really shapes us as a nation. Well, I can say that because I’m Czech but yeah. Uh and then in England theres different types of consumption in a way and you get – lets just stop it there actually.

My interview with Seb was quite interesting because he brought up a few points that I hadn't thought about. For example, consuming time was a very interesting point and not something that had crossed my mind. However, I feel like that could encompass so many different things that it would be too vague to try and tailor a project around. However, unlike Will and Adam, he began to think about consumption in a different way, in a negative way in terms of how we over consume things and how we could remedy that. This feeds into my project more because I am more focused on how we can repurpose things and be more resourceful with our consumption in order to reduce it.