Erotting
Paskamer x Elín Margot
About
Design often acts like preventive medicine, creating objects and spaces that are easy to sterilize and closed off to anything non-human. The wild and unpredictable are kept outside; only the “civilized” are allowed in. The modern home is clean, efficient, and stripped of excess, and our lifestyles follow. Work, sleep, repeat. Even scrolling on a phone becomes another form of unpaid labor.
For Paskamer, the messy and bestial took over the space through a collection of furry objects that celebrated the exchange of microorganisms.
The residency ended with an evening at Paskamer, where guests gathered around a large bed to “bedrot” together: eating, scrolling, and resting among hairy pillows and bowls of fermented snacks. What began as a reflection on bedrot culture became a live experiment in rotting together: a slow, soft form of being with others. This collective inaction became its own kind of activity, a way to share breath, touch, and microbes. Through small gestures like scrolling, humming, or gargling together, the boundaries between bodies shifted; a reminder that coexistence is always physical, and never entirely clean.
Elín Margot is a designer, researcher, and educator based in Iceland. Through speculative design and material research, she explores how everyday tools and systems can be reimagined. Her work often involves the public and focuses on alternative ways of producing, caring, and living together.
elinmargot.com