As an employee at the thrift store, Lonneke is fascinated by the sorting department: overflowing boxes of moving, bananas, oranges, and mandarins, towering shelves, and stuff, stuff, stuff everywhere. This place exists by the grace of our consumer society. Besides the fact that overconsumption is harmful to nature, according to sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, consumerism also influences how we relate to one another: the logic of transience and replaceability, he argues, extends to human relationships as well, causing social bonds to become less stable, more temporary, and more superficial.

In contrast stands the thrift store, where, alongside the circularity of goods, a strong emphasis is placed on the human scale. It is a place for reintegration where people are given time and space to find a new place in society—a place driven by reciprocity, solidarity, and connection.

With a clay animation and installation presented at the shop de Arm Hoograven, Lonneke explores this contradiction: how a place born from our overconsumption can simultaneously create a space where precisely these values take center stage again. In doing so, she pays homage to the humanity hidden behind all those things.