Emilie Baltz

What is an Alternative Thinker for you?

The word “alternative” implicates “possibility”. In this light, alternative thinking requires an openness to choice, an ability to create (or recognize) unexpected opportunities, and a willingness to go beyond the status quo. With that in mind, Alternative Thinkers must also question the notion of “thinking” itself – how we define what is “rational”, “intelligent”, “efficient” or “a solution” – and instead embody a new modality of producing ideas.

What are you bringing forward in your work?

My practice is motivated by igniting new ways to delight in the experience of being alive.

Raised between France and America, my shifting cultural identity played a central role in the definition of my personal identity. Within this experience, the greatest difference I found was in how people eat: whether gathered around a table or a countertop; if silverware was permanent or discarded; if food was prepared or packaged. The proximity of food to daily life offered an entry into the quotidian, revealing patterns of individual behaviors that permeated social relationships and, ultimately, cultural identity. These semiotics, the signs that give insight into how meaning is both enabled and understood, are the heart of my professional and personal pursuits.

Claude Levi-Strauss made it clear that for human beings there is no such thing as a natural food. What we eat, as well as the act of eating itself, are caught in a web of meaning making, of ritual and myth that help us understand who and what we are. By remixing the everyday act of eating and drinking with new technologies, choreographies and scenographies, I aim to create embodied experiences that break expected patterns of daily behavior and promote curiosity as a way of Being; one lick, suck, sniff and bite at a time.

Why did you highlight this/these specific project(s) below?

These projects highlight my interest in the serious business of delight, playful futures and embodied experience:

Delight is an experience beyond “fun” and “happy”; rather, it is a rare pleasure created by experiencing something familiar, in a new way. This combination of “the novel” and “the known” facilitates ease in new experiences and allows for more curiosity, wonder and presence in people (all behaviors I want to see more of in the world).

This work also illustrates my interest in exploring the counterpoint of new technologies and speculative futures by opening possibilities within play, joy and human connection.

Maria Montessori once stated that “the hand is the instrument of the mind.” These examples put forward my own commitment to designing for the human experience by using all 5 senses intentionally.

What would you like to see change in the current economy?

I’d like to see more funding for development and research across all industries, as well as greater value assigned to process-as-commodity, rather than our present emphasis on product-based economies.

Tell us what your vision of the new world – post COVID-19 – is like?

Industrially, I believe we’ll see an integration of mixed reality across all sectors–bringing technology, personalized experiences, physical space and digital platforms together as a means of de-risking the future of culture and commerce through frictionless access to multiple points of content and purchase.
On a personal scale, I feel a return to the domestic will require us to invest in acts of emotional care – for ourselves and for others – redefining what we think of as health and wellness through the lens of relationships and rituals.

What are the questions you have been thinking of for years and never had the time to answer?

Practically, I’d love to dedicate more time to exploring the relationship between eating, neurology, psychology and consumer packaged goods – focusing on how these areas of industry and research might work together to promote greater access to human well-being.
Fantastically, I want to figure out how to experience “dancing in a bowl”. 😉

Who would you like to collaborate with in terms of brands / institutions / property developers / other Alternative Thinkers?

My work naturally embraces the sectors of art, hospitality, technology, performance and education. I am also drawn to applying my work in the medical, beauty, health and rehabilitation sectors as an unconventional means of creating relief, care and hope therein.