Punk Shui: Home Design for Anarchists by Josh Amatore Hughes inspires living changes - By N.L. Belardes

I’ve been living punk shui for more than a month. And I’m handling it OK. Except I haven’t been inviting too many people in my house on the account that they might not understand why the shitty old couch inherited from my moronic brother was purposely destroyed…

Sometimes we just have to get through our own family issues with a good book and a piece-of-shit couch that's in need of a makeover.


Punk Shui on myspace

I tried to get in touch with Josh Amatore Hughes about his eye-opening book, Punk Shui: Home Design for Anarchists. I tried to have a conversation via email. No good. Just wasn’t happening. It’s taken far longer to try to reach the master of Punk Shui and have an intelligent conversation than it took to read his book—an afternoon of delightful punk-influenced interior decoration epiphanies that I have since taken to heart. At least in spirit…


Let me start by saying Punk Shui is about you feeling too comfortable in suburbia. It’s about bringing up your own level of comfort through experiencing discomfort. It’s about forgetting everything you thought you knew about posing and pretending you fit into the world around you. We Americans get really comfy. We make babies, and we have expectations that the world around us is service oriented comfortable bullshit. Take a look at this Bakersfield blog by Keely for example who went to get a massage, got one, but got an earful about the tragedies of war as well. You might agree or disagree with her about societal expectations for her comfy preggers world. If you ask me she got a Punk Shui massage! An uncomfortable non-generic experience worth re-telling. Hell, I’d pay for a massage and war stories. If Keely will tell us where her debacle ocurred then I’m calling up and requesting the war stories massage therapist!



OK, now let’s get punk shui about interior design. How? Destroy your house—with a sense of fashion of course. Shock your friends with a different take on the idea of space and comfort. Sleep on the roof! Put a bed up there for a night! Change your habits—even temporarily—from the standard practices and cultural norms of easy living. Just ask yourself: why is a kitchen a kitchen and a bathroom a bathroom? Shouldn’t you try sleeping in every room in your home for a change? Especially if you’re from the culture of sex who has to christen your home in various kinky ways? Maybe you’re a bit punk already. Maybe you should pick up a copy of Punk Shui and read it so you can justify how you already live! Costs less than $10.



Punk Shui is a book to live by, to laugh at, and to share with your friends just to see who can be more punk shui than who.

Here’s my challenge: Send in some of your own home living punk shui photos. Or create an artwork masterpiece of punk shui that I can add to this post! Yes, destruction in your living room can be art if you say it is! Broken glass? Art. A broken mirror? Art. An old Atari 2600 hanging on your wall? Art. Old clothes in a frame? Art. Last night's TV dinner package? You know it!


You betta chiggidy check yoseff befoe you wriggidy wreck yoseff


In the meantime, here’s my own brand of punk shui:


Punk Shui begins in the bathroom with this "Soldier on a string." Meant to remind the sacrifices soldiers make through this symbol of a plastic armyman getting pissed on, shit on, and nearly going down the drain each time. If you lose one, you can always add another.










TV on an old chest. Vanna White's underwear lie in that box. Really!


Realizing the fact that I dry shirts in the living room and never put them away made me think that it might be part of a cool art flow...


My mantle collects objects? Punk Shui?


A young punk musician is a great way to bring punk shui into any home. (He's my kid) More on him in a moment.


I moved the vaccuum into the living room, right near the front door as one of the first objects someone sees when entering the house. The clear dirt receptacle makes for easy analysis of the dirt in my life... obviously it's in abundance. Punk Shui.


Back in the bathroom I stacked dead sea creature carcasses for an ocean bottom graveyard feel.


This was our biggest feat of Punk Shui, our "Family Values" couch sculpture.


Take a punk kid, add some pop culture, destructiveness and vague directions and you have punk shui creativity in action!






The addition of another kid brings a new dimension to punk shui brainstorming. Thus, the value of our family is our ability to destroy as a dysfunctional unit...


Was the axe overkill?




A nice touch one punk kid thought was to impale the couch with various sharp objects. Since splinters had been flying around the room, we thought sharp was good. And sharp was good in the Punk Shui book too...


Scissors: the impact of... shit... I don't know, but something on family values that cuts out shapes of who we are...


My main contribution was impaling a punk shui signed guitar by the lead guitarist of the punk band, Dirty Spanglish, right into the couch. Culture. Clash. Couch. Creation.


Still functional and separates family into natural categories of left/right, here/there, with no middle ground other than the punkness in between.



Send your photos now! nl@nlbelardes.com

*Link to PUNK SHUI photos on Paperback Writer

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Saturday, November 18, 2006. You can leave your response.