Inspired by an online meme comparing the Thneed – a textile object from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax, capable of serving as a shirt, a sock, a glove, a hat, or almost anything imaginable, but whose production completely destroys the forest of Truffula trees from which it is made – to artificial intelligence, Dasha Ilina set out to make a Thneed herself, learning to crochet through YouTube tutorials. The project uses this strange textile object as a starting point for conversations about the environmental impacts of data centers and the extractivist practices of Big Tech that accompany the expansion of digital infrastructure.
Like much textile work, crocheting is often a collaborative process. It also functions as a form of data storage, preserving traces of how many people contributed to a piece, the techniques they employed, and the skills embedded within it. Crocheting readily lends itself to collective practice, inviting discussion throughout the making process. Participants are therefore invited to join the conversation and consider whether the Thneed is, indeed, a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need.
Dasha Ilina is a Russian technocritical artist based in Paris. She employs low-tech and DIY approaches to question, document, and challenge the mythology surrounding technology, revealing what it tells us about the world. Her practice engages the public to create space for critical reflection on care, privacy in the digital age, and the contemporary tendency to seek technological solutions to social problems. She is a frequent collaborator with the collective [Disnovation.org] and co-director of NØ SCHOOL NEVERS, a summer school dedicated to critical research on the social and environmental impacts of information and communication technologies.
