Issue 4: Gearing Up

I conducted a casual poll recently, asking friends to name the most crucial item of gear that had helped them survive these past eighteen months. Results ranged from cars and air pods — the most-cited items — to a microplaner, likely used to grate untold amounts of lemons and aged cheeses upon countless home-cooked meals. A college friend in Vermont sent along a detailed list of cold-weather running gear; another one in Montreal wouldn’t have made it without her espresso machine. A designer in Baltimore tipped me to an $11.99 field pant liner procured from an Army and Navy store that could have come off the runway, while a bi-coastal museum director that has been traversing the country by car introduced me to a delightful pop-up tent that self-assembles when tossed like a frisbee. So many weighted blankets! So many different kinds of face cream! Melatonin gummies. CBD joints.

How are workaday objects transformed, seemingly overnight, into crucial infrastructure during troubled times? What constitutes a ‘need’ in the face of a global pandemic? How do our desires inform the way we perceive our needs?