Nomadic knowledge is the way we dress… up

by Marco Minuz | Dec 21, 2011 in Nomadic Knowledge | Leave A Comment

It may seem a truism to say that every industrialized society lives in a state of torment, great changes and deep contradictions. Every day an enormous amount of information, data and streams of numbers pass through cables or over our heads in imprecise regions between earth and sky.

A huge constantly-changing kaleidoscopic bazaar of knowledge is mixed together and defines what we call “freedom”.

This flow however, for various reasons such as security, privacy and professional discretion, becomes problematic, erecting as it does protections which are metaphors of our time: each of us feels the necessity to build an “appearance” to define our personal limits of competence, assert our ability and to safeguard our position and certainty.

In my opinion the idea of “Nomadic knowledge” is to be found in these contradictions.

There is, in particular, one view of this situation which seems to me very interesting and important and that is that Man has always felt the necessity to cover himself, to protect himself from bad weather, danger and enemies. Through the ages and with the march of progress this prime necessity has however taken on further functions.

Clothes no longer only serve their primary aim but have assumed other economic, symbolic, political and group-membership roles. They thereby reflect historical change, hope, fear of the future and dreams of a planet with fewer guns and more roses.

In my opinion the best contemporary definition of “Nomadic knowledge” is the way we dress.

We now take the opportunity and have the luck to be able to dress in a way which plays with not only forms and colours but also with a range of cultural diversity.

We wear the colours of India, wool from the frozen North, the American cut, the products of far-off workshops, the magic European styles, traditional embroidery, the see-through look, necklaces made from tropical trees and decorations from antique civilizations.

These are things which easily become ours, and which we can assemble as we like.

We are in a way like geographical globes which are dressed and undressed in many codes, and this fact perhaps provides the best definition of “Nomadic knowledge”.