Critical Platform on Design - Society - Politics

Simple Revolution Starter

AUTHOR: Vuk Ćosić*

 

You are alone at home, living your life, and you suddenly feel the urge to change the world around you but need a place to start? Here’s a simple recipe that might come handy. If you follow these steps you won’t be locked in the constant feeling of despair. Possibly you will even make the next step (not covered here) and stage a revolution of your own.

 

Ingredients (serves whole society)

1 Injustice

1 Good will

1 Determination

 

Level: Medium hard

Time: ASAP

 

  Photo: Ksenija Berk

 

1. Feel

 

First you have to properly identify the injustice that you are going to work with. It may range from human rights (marginalization, exploitation, xenophobia…) to state (corruption, hidden war crimes, education, media…) or town (“street level” local rules…).                                                                              

Tip: If you are working with this recipe for the first time it is better to take medium sized injustice.

 

 

2. Understand

Best way to understand injustice is to try to figure out it’s genesis and it’s context. Check the regulatory background (which laws cover your thing) and the political reality (which parties, companies and crime groups are enjoying the benefits of status quo – these are going to be your opponents).

 

3. Articulate

Once you have understood your injustice and still feel like pursuing the path of revolution you need to articulate a goal. Usually this means change in regulations, from state to household level. Without a clear goal your revolution will not work. 

 

4. Allies

If you are guided by true feeling of injustice, you will easily find other people that feel the same. This step can be frustrating because even if people are frequently willing to agree that something or other is not OK, they are not going to take action. Here you need to be smart and persuasive. The tricky part about being persuasive is not technique (you can find dozens of tips about that) but the ethical compass.

Tip: If your supposed allies find out you are building a relationship on handling their psychology they are going to dump you before you can say Relationship Marketing.

 

 

5. Educate

Together with your allies you have to create a community that will share values, knowledge and information. This means you need to find good ways of spreading content that your opponents can’t see.

Tip: Not everybody in the community is equally passionate so don’t be afraid of hosting casual meetings to make your members feel good about belonging to the group.

 

If you have carefully followed the recipe you now have an excellent basis for starting a good world changing revolution. Congratulations!

 

 

* One of the recipes for creative change from one of the authors of Kitchen Revolution Project Vuk Ćosić you were introduced to in a previous post with Irena Woelle.

The Kitchen Revolution

AUTHORS: Vuk Ćosić & Irena Woelle

One of the key concerns of any society is the work and integrity of educational institutions. In many countries, especially those in which the recent decades were marked by turbulent wars or violent changes in government, the rules of the educational system and their implications are often subject to revision. More often than not, even basic facts are questioned.

Institutions tend to shape themselves in line with their dominant policies, the religious affiliation of the majority, and strength of military structures, etc. In many cases, educational institutions are selective when deciding on the content and curricula of their programmes. There are even examples where we can see human rights violations. This does not refer only to this part of the public sector, but the effects within this sphere are more dangerous and terrifying when we bear in mind the recipients of this information – those who have not fully shaped their own opinions and actions.

Designer and activist, Irena Woelle and pioneer of Internet art, Vuk Ćosić took decisive action when an individual, in this case a teacher, chose to adjust primary school lessons according to his own personal biases.

Educational poster with chronology and documentation of the project Kitchen Revolution

In schools we are very vaguely taught about how the world works but we are never told how to fix it. That is wrong. When confronted with injustice we say nothing. Thus we give implicit approval to the thugs and become accomplices. Not cool either. In the end we start thinking that if we become selfish we can’t be touched by problems of others. Wrong again.

The Kitchen Revolution is a project about these deficits.

 

Heroism

Even if we have no good videos to prove it we still have reason to believe in the story of the first activist that has jumped from the tree and led our species on the evolutionary journey without return. We might be able to think of more examples but the point is clear: our entire historical development from the evolution of hominids to the creation of nation states is conditioned with various instances of activism. We could also call them large activism because they had big consequences. Our city squares are full of such bronze heroes that we worship because they used violence to solve the problems of the community (killed some number of people of other nationality). Each community needs heroes of that particular profile in order to decorate banknotes and cement national cohesion in time of hollidays.

 

Framing

Except for stimulating heroic behaviour stories of heros have one more consequence: in our brains they create the profile of “true” heroism, the only right one, involving physical conflict with people from outside Us. Globalised communications are helping us understand it does not need to be so. Instead of glorifying violence we are beginning to think of other activisms. In Newcastle you can see a monument to Earl Grey who wrote some good laws and made life better. No killings, no defence from armed foreigners, no spectacle. So, the question is not only what we recognize as heroism but also what expectations we place on next generations.

 

Civilization

The realization that the belonging to a group is not determined only by the level of violence against a stranger is relatively new. The development of that understanding is indicating the civilization level of a tribe, and sometimes we can even identify small increments within the lifespan of one generation. Today for instance, we are sincerely puzzled by the prehistoric rituals of football fans or child beating. Possibly because of the actual global crisis, maybe only because of the media, we are inundated with the feeling that we live in a crucial historic moment when we are deciding about various aspects of future life on our planet. In that sense one of our central responsabilities is to give next generations a good example HOW to fix the world. Just in case we leave it broken.

Kitchen Revolution

We believe that it is important for everybody to take active part in creation of their life circumstances. Also we believe in nonglamourous nonspectacular variety of activism that each of us could easily perform in our immediate surroundings. So we do projects here and there – we call them life – with which we are crossing the boundaries of our home and actively fixing things at our childs school, in our street, in public.

 

Typical project

One day our nine year old daughter came back from school and said that teacher lectured about families but failed to mention gay marriages. This felt odd so we proposed in our parents mailing list to organize a visit lecture from a prominent academic on this topic. We do this all the time and it was just a normal thing to do. Teacher agreed and the date was set for a small thing. Few parents started oposing the visiting lecture more and more. The majority was silent. The evening before the event the teacher got a phone threat from one very vocal mother that if the lecture happens she will take his kid out of our school. So we cancelled the lecture and decided to organize the event at our home. Our japanese friends joined the project with amazing catering and in the end we had about fourty kids and parents having serious fun.

And then there were consequences. We live in a capital city of a European Union country and when you have an instance of a simple and basic human rights topic being expelled from class in this way then something may be wrong. Specially if parents have to organize private schooling on such topics like in cold war days. So people started talking. We think this is good.

 

Exchange

Our little life activisms are ranging from guerilla gardening and beekeeping to influencing corporate clients to do good (and not just avoid evil). We believe that having the mission to fix the world is a good agenda and would like to exchange recipes with you. Do you have any to share?

 

http://www.oktobarskisalon.org/52/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=32%3Avuk-osiairena-woelle&catid=2%3Aumetnici&Itemid=44&lang=en

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Girls in Developing Countries are Absent from School Because of Their Period

 

AUTHOR: INDEX Design to Improve Life    www. designtoimprovelife.dk

 

In some regions in the developing world, young girls can miss up to 50 days of school or work because of the complications and sometimes stigmatisms related to their period. INDEX: Award finalist She28 believes that a girl's life does not have to stop every 28 days because of her menstrual cycle and that missing valuable time in school is not only a "blood cost" to women and girls, but to their families, communities, and nations as a whole.

 

 

She28 empowers women and girls through education, advocacy and entrepreneurship. A simple, common, and yet largely ignored reason that girls are frequently absent from school and women from work in developing countries - up to 50 days per year - is that there is a lack of access to affordable menstrual pads. Girls and women in this setting turn to either premium priced international brands, which are too costly to sustain, or alternative methods such as rags which, in combination with a lack of a clean and accessible water supply, are unhygienic and potentially harmful. This harms entire communities as girls’ education and women’s economic success improves overall family welfare.  

 
She28 aims to provide affordable, quality, eco-friendly menstrual pads for women. Rather than a donation-only approach, she28 enables individuals to develop the capacity to improve their own and their families’ circumstances through entrepreneurship, technology transfer and access to finance. she28 has already equipped 50 community health workers with simple business skills so they can start their own distribution business selling pads. 
 

For every women-led and operated business that the organization behind she28 invests in, approximately 100 jobs are created and approximately 100,000 girls and women will gain access to affordable sanitary pads. Multiply this by 12 franchises, and 1200 jobs will be created reaching one million girls and women.

She28 was designed by Elizabeth Scharpf (United States of America) and Julian Ingabire Kayibanda (Rwanda) in 2008.

To read more, please go to http://she28.sheinnovates.com/ 

You Can't Compete With Fish if Nobody Taught You How to Swim

CRITIQUE

 

The world economic turmoil has thoroughly altered the maps of the business world as well as the functioning of various professions, education and research. Design academies worldwide are facing a crisis brought about daily by the social and political changes, distribution of power, natural disasters, economic models, financial risks, education reforms, precariousness, competitive advantage struggles and good old ignorance. 

 

One of the biggest problems I frequently face, chiefly in graphic design projects, is that of designers being utterly unprepared for working in business environments. With all due respect, I am not referring to those successful individuals and collectives who corroborate the rule. I am not referring to being unprepared as a negative attitude of the designers towards collaborating with various business entities – the so called 'design anarchism', quite popular attitude among young European designers. There are several complex structural reasons to the unpreparedness I am discussing.

The unpreparedness usually results from insufficient knowledge on the functioning of the business world.   A substantial problem pestering many a European design academy today is that of outdated study programmes, which fail to provide the students with the necessary knowledge to be able to be competitive in today’s world. All too often, design academies teach in academic vacuum, without proper insight into and consideration whether the education of their students is at all compatible with the time and place they live in. The students need to learn that both, the profession and the role of the designer in contemporary society, have changed considerably, having little to do with the romantic notion of the emotional creative person so frequently advocated by some professors. Nowadays, nobody has a single big client enabling their survival; one can also not limit themselves to functioning exclusively in one field. First and foremost, the designer is a problem solver who needs to be trained for functioning with a various range of clients. 

Sadly, graphic designers all too often fail to obtain enough sufficient knowledge and skills during their schooling that would enable them to self-reliantly walk the business talk. This does not mean that the graphic designer should suddenly transform into a successful analyst, visionary and strategist although it is these skills that successful individuals excel at. For starters, every designer should possess at least that much basic knowledge to be able to self-reliantly interact with and perform their specialised role amongst the other business partners in joint projects.  

I can already hear sceptics grumbling that design academies are supposed to be experimentation platforms rather than schools modelling themselves after the aggressive business environment. I could not agree more. Experimentation and learning from one’s mistakes are important components of the study process, but the experience from the classroom should at least approximately reflect reality. We are therefore in need of projects and programmes which will provide the students with such experience in the safety of academy classrooms. Thus, the problem is not in us failing to see the solution – the problem is that we have failed to see the problem time and time again. 

 

 

The Time is Now!

Designers Must Learn How To Deal With Disasters

CRITIQUE

It could be you: seeking for a shelter and running for your life on tomorrow's news!

Not a single day passes by without alarming news on natural disasters (Haiti earthquake, floods in China and Europe, volcanic eruptions on Iceland ...). As they would not be devastating enough there have to happen terrible disasters caused by human factor, like not so recent BP oil spill. Disasters unfortunately happen frequent enough to become yet unwanted part of our everyday life. It is about time to finally include a specialist knowledge on how to deal with all sorts of disasters into a regular design curricula. 

 
 

Photo: Talia Frenkel, American Red Cross. 

There are many design collectives and individual designers who work successfully on this complicated issue. The list of them would be too long for this short post, however many of them have been and will continuously be mentioned on this blog connected to certain projects or initiatives. 

As it comes to how designers are taught, there have unfortunately not been done enough to properly teach them and equip them with the knowledge they could successfully implement when it comes to solving problems caused by natural or human disasters. 

There are so many brilliant individuals working in different fields of design  whose joint efforts could produce breathtaking outcomes in constructing a course, not just a single workshop, of design for disasters. A utopian thought you might say? I don’t think so especially if disasters will happen on such a large scale and so frequently as they have in the past two years. It is important to start the ball rolling. Raising the awareness of this important issue is just a start and important opportunity to engage for a worthy design cause. 

Everyone seems to agree that design for disasters should become an important stone in contemporary design curricula. However, we are suddenly not sure how to implement the idea and the vision it in practice. Design for disasters is positively predestined to have a fruitful impact on public spaces, infrastructure and above all on lives of devastated communities and individuals who, some more than once in a lifetime, have to experience it in all its tragedy. It means a positive dialogue between design community and society at large. The time is now and the place is everywhere! It could be you: seeking for a shelter and running for your life on tomorrow’s news. 

"You Call This Work?"

CRITIQUE

"The question of whether humanity has a predilection toward the good is preceded by the question whether there exists an event that can be explained in no other way than by that moral disposition. An event such as revolution. Kant says that this phenomenon (of revolution) can no longer be ignored in human history because it has revealed the existence in human nature of a disposition and a faculty toward the good, which until now no politics has ever discovered in the course of events." 

 

Friedrich Nietzsche. 

 

The labour question in the vast field of design has in past few years highlighted some issues in our everyday agendas that could easily compete with issues of the factory workers in 1886. Nevertheless, the political and economic circumstances are far from similar.

   
Photo: Ksenija Berk.

 

  

When spring unleashed its charms in Chicago in 1886, no one even remotely expected it to become one of the most heated seasons ever. On May 1st, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labour Unions came up with a resolution stating that eight hours would constitute a legal day's work on international level and called for a general strike until the goal was achieved. Riots broke out and suddenly a bomb was thrown into the police force. The police fired at the crowd, several men were killed and a lot of them were injured. After the Congress of the Second International, held in Paris, May 1st became the International Workers' Day as a commemoration of the events in Chicago. Despite the Chicago riots, May 1st  still isn’t recognized as a holiday in the so-called cradles of democracy – in the USA, in South Africa and in Canada. 

 

Today we are living in a world of global capitalism, which is just another name for modernity, as Lyotard[1] figured out some time ago, and the contemporary labour ' scene in the field of design is mostly predominated by a hegemony of immaterial labour. It is not just designers, artists, theorists and critics who belong to this new working class. It is interesting that, among its members, there are all the darlings of capital, who sport the label of the most fashionable professions of our age. They consist of creative workers in the advertising, fashion and entertainment industries, of counsellors, portfolio managers, lawyers, doctors … 

 

It was a long time ago when only those who worked in emergency units, e.g. rescue teams, plumbers, dustmen and other watchers and maintainers of society, always had to be on duty and sleep with one eye open. The category of immaterial worker has inevitably become a para-special, mobile unit always on the move, always prepared on action, with a completely new way of living and structuring social relationships. The separation between the workday and free time hardly exists anymore and one can never be quite sure when a new opportunity for a project will arise. An eight-hour workday now only exists as a memory in history books or as a cynical comment. When one lands a commission or a call for papers, there is no free time left until it is done; it doesn't matter how time-consuming it actually is, the deadline must be met. The immaterial workers never actually go home. As we are constantly on the move, chasing different theoretical events, conferences, symposia, lectures at academies and universities, research work at institutes or art libraries, nobody really expects us to have a permanent workplace or time to work. 

The borders of our intimate world are fusing with the world of computer-mediated technologies; equipped with the latest achievements of designed technologies, our bodies are increasingly becoming cyborg-like. Howard Slater writes about how we may not be bourgeois but are turning into managers of the animate and the inanimate.[2] 

 

And what is the essence that unites them? Instability and complete neo-liberalization of labour. Stable and long-term labour contracts and tenure-track positions practically do not exist anymore. Part-time contracts and short-time projects are the name of the game. 

If one is a design practitioner, it becomes obvious that research in design are part of both creative and business processes. Some designers are fortunate enough to be able to charge for their research on a project basis. The less fortunate practitioners and many theorists have to practice a design research as a special free-time and non-paid activity or hobby. It is not surprising that most of them belong to younger generations, experiencing a chronic lack of  permanent research posts, stable contracts, or long-term professional relationships. Precariousness in theory seems to be one of our major problems to face; this is where our investigation  should begin as to what the state of contemporary design theory actually is and why there is so little of it. How can one conduct research, deliver lectures, write scientific papers and design criticism if everything needs to be done on the level of pure enthusiasm?  Flexibility and mobility are corrupted slogans of immaterial design workers, but frankly, they are just another name for the system of surveillance and punishment, in a time when financial indiscipline (not paying contracts on time) is crippling even the strongest, the richest and the most resourceful ones.

What is successful dissent appropriate for an immaterial, multitude worker in the field of design? The answer obviously should not be sought for in single-day protests and dissents, for they just turn out to be a simple gesture of the system. Even when such dissent happens, it does not bring much benefit to the protestors. So-called minute-protests are just a waste, an exhaustion of the system, to cool down the angriest lads of society and provide them with an official performative catharsis. What they are fighting for can no longer be found on the barricades anymore because it belongs to some other historical space and time.  

 

Single-day dissents, usually generously supported by politics, are one of many diplomatic tools used by capitalism to soften its image on the global level and strengthen its position and control on the local scene. While working as ambassador in France, Thomas Jefferson heard about the farmer riots in his USA and sent the following statement to Abigail Adams: "The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive … I like a little rebellion now and then!" Nevertheless, when the riots were brutally suppressed in one year's time, Jefferson wrote in a letter to a colonel: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is natural manure."[3] 

 

In the Multitude, the experience of dissent is largely shaped by means of computer-mediated technologies. One of the examples were the student demonstrations in France, which helped withdraw notorious Villepin's First Employment Contract bill. Mobile phones and the Internet served as a possibility of communication and designed dissent. The danger of dissent for all immaterial workers, including those in the field of design, is mostly in their inability to become a unique political subject. The fact that they are connected through creative industries, technology and exploitation, is simply not enough. When the first thrill surrounding small successful dissents is over, the immaterial protestors are always inevitably faced with a fatal loop. It comes as the hidden but crucial moment when protestors become tired enough not to notice that the other side – the one that literally never sleeps – smoothly and quietly takes over the reins of the protest. As every good strategist, the Other side initially waits and allows the protestors to go on with their dissent; only a moment later, however, in a manner of contemporary Debordian spectacle, it sweeps them away and sometimes even recycles them at the nearest garbage disposal. 

 

Even cultural dissent, one of the possible democratic tools for dissent in the field of design, is only possible through the dissent of the Multitude. In other words: an artist, designer, critic, theorist or performer should be prepared to take part of cultural dissent into their own hands and necessarily step out of the utopian position of someone who can position themselves beyond and outside everything. 

 

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Negri, Antonio, Hardt, Michael, Multitude: war and democracy in the age of empire. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. 

Lyotard, Jean-Francois, Political writings. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. 

Virno, Paolo, Hardt, Michael, Radical Thought in Italy. Minneapolis: University of Minesota Press, 1996. 

---  

[1] Capitalism is one of the names of modernity. It presupposes the investment of the desire for the infinite in an instance already designated by Descartes (and perhaps by Augustine, the first modern), that of the will. Literary and artistic romanticism believed in struggling against this realist, bourgeois, shopkeeper's interpretation of will as infinite enrichment. But capitalism has been able to subordinate to itself the infinite desire for knowledge that animates the scenes, and to submit its achievements to its own criterion of technicity: the rule of performance that requires the endless optimalization of the cost/benefit (input/output) ratio." Lyotard, 1993, p. 25. 

[2] For further reading see txt from Howard Slater on metamute called Toward Agonism – Moishe Postone’s Time, Labour & SocialDomination, http://www.metamute.org/en/toward-agonism 

[3] Negri, Hardt, 2004, p. 248 

 

Bridging Design Generations

CRITIQUE 

“A basic assumption in order for design to be taken seriously as a profession and as a relevant methodology vis-a-vis commercial, social and cultural, as well as the complex global and systemic challenges we face is the existence of sufficient scientifically valid knowledge about the effects if design about design processes and methodologies, the role of the designer and design theory as such. And it requires relevant structures and models, which can cater for the necessary flow of knowledge from the source of the research to design students and practitioners and to others, for whom this knowledge is of vital importance and value” Danish Designers’ Manifesto (The Role of Design in the 21st Century), p. 9.

I have mentioned Danish Designers’ Manifesto in one of my previous posts for it proves to be a great source of inspiration for many challenges design profession has to overcome in order to enter the future. One of the most challenging issues in design is that of bridging generations in order to provide a constant flow of knowledge, intellectual and creative capital in the field of design. I think it is about time we make some positive change here. However, in order to make that change happen we do need to develop a strong support system. 

 

  Photo Ksenija Berk.

1. The knowledge in the field of design does not flow smoothly from one generation to the other. It is condensed in clusters connected to strong institutions. There is much to be said on how knowledge is disseminated. We have to put more efforts to make a constant flow of knowledge and information between generations and not to accept views that try to persuade us otherwise. 

2. Fortunately there are individuals who embody positive changes, but they hardly ever succeed in the system as it is set nowadays, for they have no power or solid support system that could enable growth and research for the 21st century. 

3. The system we have today, does not allow youngsters to penetrate it. Remember the never ending lists of scientific papers one must submit in order to get close to a post-doc or a research position? The major perversion of the system is calling for researchers on one hand, while forcing young researchers, theorists and critics into precarious labour conditions. It is impossible to have an impressive bibliography if one has to do several different jobs just to cover the bills for those peer-reviewed articles never make amends.

4. The enormous gap between design practice and theories on design continues to deepen. And yes, there are many gaps in our understanding of what is actually going on. I hope I am mistaken, but I am afraid we are sometimes loosing the perspective and continuously fail to recognize the importance of current social, political and economic issues on the field of design. 

5. The knowledge in the vast field of design is enormous. And it is only up to us whether we will recognize the importance of building bridges between generations for we are continuously drifting away.

The Role of Design in the 21st Century

HOSTING DANISH DESIGNERS

A vision of Danish design’s future - a manifesto

When I hear a new design manifesto has been launched my reaction usually goes: "Oh, no, not another manifesto!" Nonetheless, I must admit I have been pleasantly surprised by the third edition of the political manifesto launched by Danish Designers in January 2010. It is fresh, proactive, introduces the the triple bottom line - "social responsibility, financial feasibility and the well-being of the natural environment between 'people, profit and planet'". 

The manifesto also raises the important question that separates it from it's more utopian predecessors: "how do we reach the goals we set?" and even offers some realistic recommendations how to strengthen the role of design in the 21st century. Now I eagerly anticipate some real-time actions! Keep up the good work. 

 
Photo: Ksenija Berk

 

You can reach and download the manifesto at:

 http://wwwdanishdesigners.com/index.php?page=17

 

 

Danish Designers is located at:

 

Strandgade 27A 
1401 Copenhagen K
Denmark
+45 3313 7230 
design@danishdesigners.com

Haiti, Madeira, Chile: Rethinking the Notion of Sublime.

 

 

Whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime.  — Edmund Burke

 

Architects' work symbolically and literally overcomes the forces of nature to provide shelter and build infrastructure as it is the case of Architects for Humanity and their endeavors in Haiti. The question of the relationship between man and nature is a perennial philosophical problem that inevitably invokes the notion of the sublime.

Philip Shaw, lecturer at the University of Leicester explains that we extensively turn to the feeling of sublime, ”whenever experience slips out of conventional understanding, whenever the power of an object or event is such that words fail and point of comparison disappear...” (Shaw, 2006:2) Further on: “Sublimity then refers to the moment when the ability to apprehend, to know, and to express a thought or sensation is defeated. Yet through this defeat, the mind gets a feeling for that which lies beyond thought and language.” (Shaw, 2006:3)*

Sublime is a category often linked to vast ideas like space, time, death, and the divine and to the more general question of presenting the unpresentable. The question of sublime can originates from the writings of the Peri Hypsos Longinus and has undergone tremendous revolution in writings by respected theorists such as Burke, Kant, Hegel, de Man, Lyotard, Nancy, Jameson, Badiou, Žižek and others.
 

In the long Western discussion on sublime there is an important difference between theorizing of Kant who described sublime as ‘a satisfaction mixed with horror’ and that of postmodern theorist Lyotard who sees it as a ‘combination of pleasure and pain’ - pleasure in reason exceeding all presentation and pain in the imagination or sensibility proving inadequate to the concept. 
 

The notion of the sublime has hardly ever been put under detailed scrutiny in the field of design. In spite of some theoretical research in architecture, research on sublime in design  is scarce as hen’s teeth. What is the nature of sublime in the field of design, either in historical or contemporary context? Can we define a category of sublime design? And if design can be sublime what does that bring to us while crossing the borders of other disciplines both in theory and in everyday life? What a promising issue yet to be discovered. 
 

*Shaw, Philip (2006): The Sublime (New Critical Idiom). Routledge; 1 edition (24 Nov 2005)

Time to leave a Comfort Zone

CRITIQUE

Sometimes the best solution is focusing on projects and ideas that call for positive change and especially on the people behind them. Strong minds and great personalities who could bring changes from theory into practice on all levels (research, education, practice, critique) and at the same time have a power/position to make things happen is what design is so desperate for right now. 

Design profession needs to move closer to the edge of the already existing research and, at the same time, foster a strong critique. I am sad when I see strong attempts to suppress design critique. I believe that a part of design research inevitably needs to expand to humanities and social sciences. Several issues discussed here, especially how to rethink design thinking, call for design philosophy, anthropology, sociology and, last but not least, psychology. It is the Philosophy of Design at least in my opinion that has already emerged and will hopefully develop into one of pivotal issues that of future design research. 

 

 
Photo: Ksenija Berk 

 

I am not concerned about interdisciplinary research between design and technology; it has already been practiced successfully for a long time. It is critical reflection on our profession that concerns me. Rather than checking on how we are feeling, we have to think design in a much wider context. I’ll use the thoughts of Terry Eagleton from his seminal book After Theory to underline my words: “It is this wider context which Aristotle knows as politics. You also have to look at yourself in a temporal context - to have some sense of your live as a narrative, in order to judge whether it is going well or not.” (Eagleton, 2004, 57) 

Perhaps there is some Eagleton’s post-tragic realm of postmodernism at work here, and: “We are like someone crossing a high bridge and suddenly being seized by panic on realizing that there is a thousand-foot drop below them. It is as though the ground beneath their feet is no longer solid. But in fact it is.” (Eagleton, 2004, 58) 

 

What are we missing here? Has design profession really imprisoned us in so many ways or is it that we have just failed to notice we have slowly become the prisoners of our own thoughts? Sometimes, it is the methodology that we share and sometimes the protocols or theoretical frameworks. Research could focus on the shared protocols, canons, managerial subroutines and instruments of power, control and distribution as practiced by design and applied to it. There are relations between design and contemporary society that should be put under our detailed scrutiny as well. However, are we capable and willing to recognize and analyze the forms and networks of power that design actually builds in our society with different agents ranging from politics, management, civil society to art? 

 

The real question at work here is whether do we actually have the courage to uncover some patterns, measures, standards and finally ethics involved in the process of design and its different modes of application? Are we prepared to understand design as a special form of visual power at its outer boundaries, where it becomes capillary, where it transgresses the rules that organize and delineate it, gets invested in institutions, embodied in techniques, and acquire the material and conceptual means to intervene in society as an agent of change? We should encourage discourse on design in a series of dialogues among different agents in society, foster a strong and interdisciplinary design critique, actively engage in broadening theoretical discourse and make connections with design practice. 

 

Perhaps we are like toddlers as Eagleton colourfully describes the situation when one does not leave the comfort zone that one is in at the moment; all we need to change a situation is a strong kick. “To relinquish our metaphysical comforters would be to make the momentous discovery that doing so has changed absolutely nothing. If only we could accept this we would be thoroughly post-metaphysical and hence free.” 

 

Crossing boundaries has never been a comfortable experience; it means also accepting a risk of being wrong. Nevertheless, those who search and risk most are most likely those who find most. 

A Call for Paradigmatic Shift in Design Education System

EYEBLOG INTERVIEW WITH VICTOR MARGOLIN

Victor Margolin, Professor Emeritus of Design History at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a lucid thinker and vivid critic, shared some critical thoughts in our two-part interview on Eyeblog.  His overview of basic ideas in design thinking brought to light some thoughts that could foster positive change in society – and in design itself, which all too often forgets its chief goal: the wellbeing of all mankind.

I'd like to stress your attention especially to the second part of the interview where Victor Margolin points out some major problems of design education while offers some solutions that could foster a positive change for sustainable future design education.

His overview of basic ideas in design thinking brought to light some thoughts that could foster positive change in society – and in design itself, which all too often forgets its chief goal: the wellbeing of all mankind.

http://blog.eyemagazine.com/?p=275 Power vacuum, part two.

Photo: Victor Margolin