the truth lies in dreams of many: reflections of a design student on changing roles in design...
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THE TRUTH LIES IN
DREAMS OF MANY:REFLECTIONS OF A
DESIGN STUDENT ON
CHANGING ROLES INDESIGN PRACTICE
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Introduction Slovenia: Social
Values Lost and
Found
24-10-2012
Self-Inspiration
Attempt No.1
Bauhaus, a Factory
of Universal Truths
Framing the
Problems:
Contemporary
Matters-of-Concern?
The Theatre of
Gatherings
In Conversation
with Designers:
What Does it Mean
to Work as a Design
Practitioner Today?
A Transformative
Approach to
Work: From
Creative Industries
to Creative
Communities
Transformative
Approach to the Self
From an Individual
to a Collective
Micro-Societies as
New Laboratories
for the Future
Conclusion Bibliography
MADesignFutures
Disertation GajaMenariOsole
TeruthLiesinDreamsofMany:
ReflectionsofaDesignStudentonChangingRolesin
DesignPractice
WritingasdesignstudentintransitionReadingonbehalfof
designpractitionerintransition
MentorsHannahJohnesExternalMentorBiancaElzenbaumer
Printed
11thSeptember2013Goldsmiths,UniversityofLondon
Tankyoufortakingcare!:BiancaElzenbaumer,HannahJones,JohnWood,Saatucin,TommyBeavitt,NinaVidiIvani,SvenjaBickert,ElenaBusheva,EloisaArtuso,XiYang,MinaArko,ChristinaPapazoglou,IrmaMenari,MarinkaMeznari,AnaKerin.
Gaja Menari-Osole
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Introduction
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2
I am writing this dissertation as a design student
having experienced the privilege o this particular
education, reflecting on the roles played by design
practice in our society today and raming my own seto values through a process o exploration.
Tis work consists in an intense, practitioner-led
discussion that explores possible ways o working/
designing by recognising, problematising and
embedding current discomorts within societies intothe realm o design practice. Tis proposal explores
the transitional (non)state o design practitioners,
who are interested in changing their roles to resonate
with current societal needs as well as in possibilities
that have emerged rom a period o alling economical
wealth and widespread recognition o environmentaldepletion.
With the term transitional designI am marking a
transormational state o the design practices that
grew rom modernist design disciplines whose
paradigm was defined by the Bauhaus School andre-raming their ocus towards more embodied,
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collectivist and caring ways o understanding design
practice as a means o conronting ongoing societal
and environmental concerns.
Processes and times o transition1are (non)states
o rupture, conusion, wandering, imagining,
conronting, searching, ailing, laughing. In talking
about transitional stages representing a state o
becoming in temporal as well as ormal terms, I aim
to capture some o the non-unified, multiariousdirections that the proposed considerations might
express. In recognising the inapplicability o old
rameworks, their primary role is shifed to one o
serving as explorations, critical reflections and partial
propositions.
I open this journey rom the grounding o my
previous living and working experiences in Slovenia, a
ormerly socialistic country, that have had a big impact
on how I see, value and engage with lie and design
practice. Te writing continues with the establishment
o an atmosphere, a reflection on first observationsafer coming to study in London. Bringing in the
1 Transition is the process or a period of changing from onestate or condition to another.Oxord Dictionaries (2013) [Online] Avaialble at: http://ox-
orddictionaries.com/definition/english/transition [Accessed20 August 2013].
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perspective o nomadic sel, this sequence is intended
to expose the ragile state o becoming through
experiencing and engaging within the environment
that surrounds us.
By analysing the modernist origins o contemporary
design practice and recognising inadequancy o
their seemingly objective aproaches, I introduce a
theoretical discourse o Lautours matters-o-concern,
which helps me to build my thoughts around designpractice as a contemporary problem solving and
collaborative discipline, ramed around finding
practical solutions or our shared concerns. I started
to realise that design needs to set up new grounds o
collectivity in order to perorm research led practice
in the direction o reaching out towards welcometransormational changes.
Afer talking with colleagues rom my course, I have
noticed and started to think about the gap between
available working opportunities and new, change-
driven practices that are being conceptualised withinthe educational environment.
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With exploration o current working opportunities
and uture design aspirations I am raming a
set o propositions, or designers in transition.
ransormative actions to work and towards the sel,seemed almost inavitabile, i desing wants to work
towards re-estabilishing the commons o nature.
Since design practice will hopeully move towards a
recognition o the inevitable importance o collective
and inter-disciplinary engagement with an ongoingfinancial, social and environmental crisis, it might
be interesting or the reader to reflect on some o
the contemporary eminist ethical discourses that
are discarding previous identity constructs and
introducing more subjective, inter-relational and
fluid modes o recognising our agency and impact incontemporary society.
Acknowledging the subjective, embodied, critical
as well as partially explored nature o this writing,
I intentionally aim not to give the reader a definite
and linear set o guides to ollow but rather propose acollage-like aggregation o triggers and reflections on
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practice. Trough examples, stories and research that
might evoke reflection and discussion potentially
leading to action this work aims to transorm
engagement within the readers own practice.
Structuring the thought o eminist philosopher Rosi
Braidotti, this work comes into existence as a nomadic
subject in which [t]his figuration expresses the desire
or an identity made o transitions, successive shifs,
and coordinated changes, without and against anessential unity (1994: 22). In this way I am exploring
and searching around common areas o concern
rom different perspectives, constructing an identity
o meaning through the process o writing and
reflecting. Te text has no rigid ending or beginning,
thereore the different parts o the text can be read bythemselves in isolation or in the context o other parts
or as a whole.
Te ormat o the writing explores various knowledge
representations and perspectives that come into
existence in terms o writing style and quality. Te textis supported by the visual structure, which ormalises a
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gradient o maniestations rom academic, scientific to
poetic, playul and personal. Speaking in this manner
I would like to question the orm o the current
academic language and by doing so to bring into itssphere an embodied, always partial perspective.
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Slovenia:
Social Values Lostand Found
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2
I will use the passage below to situate my
perspective as the writer in terms o explaining the
background o my specific areas o interest, criticality
and concern as a design practitioner. Doing so willprovide me with the ground rom which to illustrate
and explain how and why I think the questions o ways
o working, socialising, responsibility and care are
connected with the way practitioners relate to design
practice.
What is perceived in Western Europe as a threat to
civilization is celebrated, in the transition-charmed
countries, as an ascension toward civilization. In the
Balkans specifically, transition styles itself in Orientalist
terms, in the terms of an imperative to join Europe.
While in Europe, and elsewhere in the world, moreand more people reject the false alternative: liberalism
or barbarism, the people of the Balkans are being
submitted to neo-liberal policies in the name of shedding
their Balkan barbarism.1
1 Monik, R. (2003) Social Change in the Balkans. [Online],
Available at: http://monumenttotransormation.org/atlas-
o-transormation/html/b/balkans/social-change-in-the-balkans-rastko-mocnik.html, [23. August 2013].
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Coming rom Slovenia, an ex-socialist country, I
grew up with a value system based on supporting and
appreciating social cohesion. Our living standard was
high. Everybody I knew had a job as well as spare timeto relax or travel. I used to live with my mother in a
small house that embraced our amily apartments.
My mother was a reelancer; when she had to go to
work Barbara, a girl slightly older than me, used to
play with me and sleep over when I was alone. She
came rom a mixed amily her ather was a Bosnianconstruction worker and her mother a school cook
rom the countryside. Tey could not afford a lot in
terms o luxuries but their table was always ull o
ood. We spent a lot o the time playing outside on
the street with the other children living in the same
quarter, running around, roller-skating and drawingwith chalkboards on the asphalt roads. My mother
always invited her to go on holiday or spend weekends
with us. Every year we went to the seaside somewhere
in Croatia, to ski somewhere in the Slovenian Alps, to
climb mountains, jump into the rivers or to visit my
grandparents in the countryside.
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main access road to the city. Te shif o the political
agenda embodied a systematic deprivation o social
values, ways o working; how we shared and used
public spaces. It resulted in a non-transparentand unjust restructuring process, which caused
an impoverishment o social health care, public
education, local companies and industry.
As mentioned, the process o transition resulted
in a great decrease o the social cohesion that wasvanishing rom the different types o communities
connected by locality, proession or age. Te blocks
o flats in which I used to live, or example, used
to belong to the community o residents rom
the University; they had been mostly built or the
proessors and intellectuals o that era. Beore thebreakup o Yugoslavia, residents could buy their
apartments or a subsidised price; this was not the
case or us anymore. As the years passed, a lot o old
people died and younger people started to moving
in. Te sense o a living community (that expressed
itsel in trust, random conversations, borrowing salt or
flour rom neighbours on Sundays when stores were
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shut down, just to name ew) gradually disappeared
and nobody seemed to care to know each other
anymore. Te young people who moved in worked all
the time and did not have an interest in engaging inthe neighbourly activities. Once an old lady died and
nobody knew about it or three days.
Te common trends o countries in transition
gradually maniested over the past ten years in
terms o a decrease in social solidarity, a rise in theunemployment rate, a decline in the standard o living,
an increase in poverty, the rise o individualism and
the emergence o social groups at risk such as the
youth and the elderly (Monik, 2003).
Te realities o entering into the glossy Western wayo living, didnt seem to fit anymore to our original
aspirations. In 2010, at a time when financial crisis
was urther accentuating the deteriorated situation,
I started to work with a collective o architects,
artisans and designers. We met afer a riend came
back rom London and wanted to do something
together though we did not know what exactly. At
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shaped the final outcome o the space. With the
support o the local journalists, we managed to engage
more participants as well as gained sponsors or
constructing the space. Te design o the final spacedepended on the people who engaged in workshops,
as well as the objects, collected through the process
(Menari Osole, 2013).
Collaborating with G-R-U-P-A, was somehow the best
working experience I had until now. It was the firsttime, that I elt as though I was doing things right, as
a designer. Unortunately, most o the time our work
was underpaid or voluntary, which inevitably was the
reason the group slowly ell apart, since all o us were
searching or other opportunities to make a living.
Starting with eleven members, we were eventually lefwith three and in the end, all o us made new plans
or our utures. I decided to apply or postgraduate
study in order to continue raming, exploring and
experiencing such practice in a supportive and mind-
opening environment.
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24-10-2012
Self-InspirationAttempt No.1
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I came to London to fall in love. o breathe the
air of excitement and uncertainty at the same time. o
be inspired and seduced.1
It is almost 5 oclock in the morning and my body is
too nervous to sleep. Te lectures and experiences
that I have had so far are not exactly what I wanted or
expected. Instead of a flirtation, I feel like I have fallen
into a new serious relationship, one with a structured
set of rules and a clear direction of motion.
At the moment I do not believe and here I am
speaking with the innocent voice of my subjective-self
in the ideas and systems that are jostling to occupy
my brain and force me to accept a self-organised
religion. We live in times where it is now impossibleto set up systems based on detached, abstract ideas.
Tey have to grow out of real-life experiences,
experiments, observations, local knowledge, tangible
connections. But am I the only one who is wedded to
that kind of thinking?
1 Self-Inspiration Attempt No.1 is a personal blog entry.
Menari Osole, G. (2013) Self-Inspiration Attempt No.1
[Online] Available at: http://design-futures.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/self-inspiration-attempt-n1.html,
[23. August 2013]
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Old systems are now just a big empty frame whose
picture ran away and which is now standing in
front of us naked and cold. A big, empty form and a
hypothetical content, simultaneously coexisting andfighting for our votes. And all we are able to recognise
is the old, smelly frame, stalking us like a big phantom,
slowly but surely imploding into the forgotten land of
universal truth.
But I think the content is always the same. At the endof the day we all want to feel loved and necessary.
So, are love and the feeling of purpose now walking
around us naked, begging us to dress them in a new
coat. How could this look?
I dont want to fight old systems with new a one. Ithink the answer is not hidden in a new continent, nor
the moon, and we wont find freedom in killing the
natives in order to vomit our unrealised dreams into
the resulting tabula rasa. We should see and accept
what is around us. Find the guidelines and learn how
to grasp the information we can no longer read. I
think we are living in exciting times, times in which it
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is incumbent on us to set up a multitude of new ways
and sensations for future generations to follow and
rely upon.
Te night is slowly turning into a new day so it is
time to make a contract with myself. I promise at this
exact moment that I will constantly try to transform
this education journey into something exciting and
fulfilling. I am surrounded by super-interesting
classmates from different backgrounds from all overthe world, a great workshop, the best roommates
in the most culturally rich city in the world. I need
to scope out the content from the frame and create
something beautiful.
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Bauhaus, a Factory
of Universal TruthsTe school is the servant o the workshop, and will one
day be absorbed in it. Tereore there will be no teachers
or pupils in the Bauhaus but masters, journeymen, and
apprentices. Te manner o teaching arises rom the
character o the workshop: Organic orms developed
rom manual skills. Avoidance o all rigidity; priority
o creativity; reedom o individuality, but strict study
discipline [...].Collaboration by the students in the
work o the masters. Securing o commissions, also
or students. Mutual planning o extensive, Utopian
structural designs public buildings and buildings or
worship aimed at the uture. Collaboration o all
masters and students architects, painters, sculptors
on these designs with the object o gradually achieving a
harmony o all the component elements and parts thatmake up architecture ...1
1 Gropius, W. (1919) Bauhaus Maniesto and Program.
[Online], Available at: http://www.thelearninglab.nl/
resources/Bauhaus-maniesto.pd, [6. August 2013].
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Contemporary design is positioned in the
moment o re-consideration, in the process o moving
rom the modernist design production o accessible
goods defined by the Bauhaus School to placing itsocus on finding ways o responding to contemporary
societal and environmental concerns.
When I was undertaking the undergraduate course
in Ljubljana, students could only apply or two design
courses: visual communication and industrial design.In Slovenia in recent years, during the ongoing
economic crisis and restructuring process, a significant
proportion o local industry was simply shut down,
leaving behind large numbers o unemployed workers.
But design schools were still producing new industrial
and visual communication designers. Te implicationso the situation are practically skilled practitioners
who in many cases lack a comprehensive critical
approach toward market and design production.
Tis brie revision o the educational system o the
Bauhaus school will allow me to develop an exposition
o the ideals by which design practice has been ramed
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2) Bauhaus Costumes (1920): The
visionary imagination of the new
technological generation.
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Teir highest ideal was to construct a holistic image o
living and working spaces, taking care or the unified
identity rom the concept to every practical detail it
could resemble the building o an organism o a kind.Te amous Maniesto o Walter Gropius began with
the sentence: Te ultimate aim o all creative activity is
a building! (1919) Te statement was a response to the
lart-pour-lartisticmovement that was encapsulating
creative orces in isolation, serving only to stimulate
an artistic audience and closing the doors to the outerworld. In this sense the Bauhaus movement was on a
quest to open up the process o artistic creation so that
it could serve society in a democratic and holistic way.
However the Gesamtkunstwerk(the complete artwork)
that was conceptualised around this comprehensiveway o thinking about design production was
contextualised and tightly embedded to the times
in which it was developed and determined by the
setting up o decisive boundaries in and between the
outer world. It was constructed in an age o industrial
development and accompanied by a sense o limitless
possibility. As design historian Nikolaus Pevsner
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3) The Bauhaus masters in 1926, on the
roof of the Bauhaus building, left to right:
Lszl Moholy-Nagy, Herbert Bayer,Joost Schmidt, Walter Gropius, Marcel
Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky.
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How do we seethings? is the starting question that
a contemporary designer is required to reconsider.
For many years design education, as well as practice,
was based on didactic systems o abstract visualrepresentations, which started the students journey
with a dot, which developed into a line, then a
square, a cube, and finally a house. Te constructed
objectivity was set up to represent human aspirations
transcending any sense o a boundary or context. In
this deep technical context o rational vision, it wassomehow successully playing to be neutral. Without
any real consideration Bauhauss vision was set to
design the world as i it were a dead, mechanical
space; one that could be understood chiefly through
externalising the problems to make them technically
manageable (Weber 2013).
Such approaches to making products were embedded
into the value system o design education, that was
spread throughout the countries o Europe and
North America, ollowing Gropius initial wish to
merge art, sculpture and architecture into a craf o
creative imagination. Although somewhere on the
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way the link between architecture and design was lost,
students were still engaging with the practice, through
craf workshops and lessons about composition,
typography, colour studies, painting, modellingProducts that were providing the reason or
developing industrial landscapes produced a certain
image o practice that was primary linked to the
mechanised production in order to rise the standard
o living by producing accessible domestic goods.
Te project o Modernisation, which is still embedded
in the present reality o our everyday, was ocused
on developing society in a very homogenous way.
According to the design proessor Fern Lerner,
the modernist vision o Bauhaus school was more
concerned with the quest or exploring universalprinciples than with concentrating on specific, real-
world applications (2005: 225).
Te way the industry works today is that it transorms
creative individuals into producers o the immaterial
labour o the cultural content o the commodities
(Lazzarato, 1996), through activities that rame
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new cultural and artistic trends, norms and even
public opinions. Designers as creators o poetic,
yet pragmatic ideas, are the perect target groups
o such market policies. Stuck in a orm o a newmass intellectuality (Lazzarato, 1996), they become
some sort o messengers based on the pathways o
the market. I, due to the circumstances in which it
operates, design is considered as a problem-solving
tool, it also requently creates sel-generated problems
in order to solve them. Tus the questions are posed:what would need to be changed or design practice
to work towards public and environmental interest?
How can we move away rom the conceptual rames o
Bauhaus school and construct new ways o thinking,
doing and perceiving the practice that would resonate
with our common aspirations as well as attainablepossibilities outside the educational environment?
How can design practice be liberated rom the
product-actory paradigm?
Gropius plan to push the visionary programme
towards re-establishing the artist within the context
o society, creatively advancing the endeavours
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o modern civilisation, to develop broader, richer
horizons (Lerner, 2005: 217) clearly needs to be re-
appropriated in order to prepare uture generations o
designers to respond to the contexts o our own times.
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Framing the Problems:
Contemporary Matters-of-Concern?
[T]he objects of science and technology the aislesof supermarkets, financial institutions, medical
establishments, computer networks - even the catwalks
of fashion shows offer paramount examples of hybrid
forums and agoras, of the gathering that have been
eating away at the older realm of pure objects bathing in
the clear light of the modernist gaze.1
1 Latour, B. (2005) From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik An
introduction to making things public. In Bruno Latour &
Peter Weibel: Making Tings Public Atmospheres oDemocracy catalogue o the show at ZKM, Cambridge MA,
MI Press, pp. 23.
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Te absence o political vision, or ideological
or intellectual paths o construction (Baladrn,
Havrnek, 2010), in the second hal o the 20th
century, produced a society that lacked a perspectiveon motivation and meaning. What kind o view would
a designer need to appropriate in order to transgress
the production o apolitical aesthetics o universal
truths that have been developed over the course
o the last century and to embrace an aesthetic o
human-nature relations? Knowledge powers need tobe re-directed toward an embedding o the limits and
potentials o specific environments that would lead
to the creation o greater social, environmental and
political stability. Looking at contemporary design
practice through the lens o the eminist philosopher
Donna Haraways theory o situated knowledgesand rench philosopher Bruno Latours thoughts
on objects as matters-of-concern, I would like to
rame a discussion that could potentially lead to the
development o a transormative point o view.
Contemporary modernity stands on an unstable
ground. Tis instability results in repeated questioning
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and searching or new alternatives, new interpretations
o what we mean by civilisational development.
How could design, at this moment o the ongoing
global crisis o humanity, take the role o a sel-transormative actor?
According to Italian theorist and activist Franco
Berardi the moment we will lose the relationship
between the signifier and the signified by the presence of
the body, we will lose our relationship to the world. Andthat marks the stage where our relationship to the world
becomes purely functional, operational [...] (2011).
A change in the position and relation o the design
object has the potential to recast the way in which
we relate to the world that surround us. In orderto achieve that, a shif in perspectives is inevitable.
op-down approaches o design practice have to be
questioned since objectivised universalism permit a
view that could not provide an understanding o the
situation o tensions, resonances, transormations,
resistances, and complicities (Haraway 1988) o the
living world around us.
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5.) A Model for a Qualitative Society (1986)
Palle Nielsen: Changing the perspective of
seeing likewise allows us to realise thatdesign is not an agency of an objective,
passive matter-of-facts (Latour, 2005).
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Te ground-up perspective permits a slowing
down o our restless minds and deconstructs the
disciplined, objectivist knowledge o efficiency-seeking practice. Te view rom the body puts the
designer in a position o a subjective translator, in
a position that is always interpretive, critical and
partial. Tis position establishes us on the ground o
diverse opinions rom which we are aced by the view
rom the body always a complex, contradictory,structuring and structured body versus the view
rom the above, rom nowhere, rom simplicity
(Harraway, 1988: 589).
Changing the perspective o seeing likewise allows
us to realise that design is not an agency o anobjective, passive matter-o-acts (Latour, 2005),
as they have been called by French sociologist o
science Bruno Latour . Te entangled nature o acts
is interlaced with and within a complex network
o human-object relations. Teir inter-relational
character transorms them into issues, which direct
our orientation and change our living environment.
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6) One of G-R-U-P-As, a group of architects, designers
and artisans, main concern was framed around opening
opportunities for discussion and collaboration throughdesign process in order to provide work for the group
and for others.
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!"# !"#%&'#
() *%&"#'+,-.Give me one matter of concern and I will show you the
whole earth and heavens that have to be gathered to
hold itfirmly in place? [] e critic is not the one who
debunks, but the one who assembles. e critic is not the
one who lis the rugs from under the feet of the naive
believers, but the one who offers the participants arenas
in which to gather.1
1 Latour, B. (2004) Why Has Critique Run out of Steam?
From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern. [Online],
Available at: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/89-CRITICAL-INQUIRY-GB.pdf, [6. August 2013].
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3
e eatre of Gatherings2is a performative
space for embodied gatherings, a space for learning
through playing. It explores a collaborative probing
of risky, playful and tentative future scenarios, basedon thinking-through-action about our common
futures and areas of shared concern. It is conceived
to serve as a prototyping tool for imagining hidden
potentialities. While not wanting to be pretentious
or too serious, it sets out to provoke a rethinking that
leads towards the possibility of a re-creation of arenasof political engagement. e eatre of Gatherings
thus takes responsibility for researching important
issues that human and non-human participants share
in this theatre called the world. It includes elements
of unpredictability, play, spontaneity, embodied
knowledge, theory and practice. It is an exploratorytool that sets out to evoke discussions about shared
issues of concern through the means of performative
exercises.
2 I have coined the term e eatre of Gatherings to markthe performative nature of the method which provides
speculative political implications.
e eatre of Gathering is based on the Sustainable Hero
workshop that was conceptualised and facilitated by MA
Design Futures students at Goldsmiths design department
in February 2013. It was a two-hour workshop planned
for a group of BA design students that generated future
scenarios which looked creatively into some contemporary
environmental and social problems faced in Britain.e
outcomes are presented on pages 8-11.
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4
e section below introduces the tool in the form
of a game by providing instructions for players and
explaining the reasons behind the steps of the chosen
format.3
Performing Scenarios as an Exercise for
Opening Designers Perspectives
e game is a metaphor for alternative ways of
reasoning and thinking about design practice,
uncovering new opportunities for designers in termsof taking responsibility for addressing relevant issues
and thinking about future.
Using a method of future-scenario and role-play
allows actors to explore and envision plausible
alternative projections of a specific part of the future(Fahey, Randall in Evans, 1999). e format gives
an opportunity to analyse current problematics and
project their values towards more desirable situations.
e tool, that picks somethodological approach of
so called intuitive logic is focusing upon changing
mindsets, so that [actors] can anticipate different
future worlds (Evans, 1999).
3 Rules of this game are attached in the booklet.
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5
e form of a futuristic play encourages the involved
to think about things matters-of-concern in a
imaginative way, without putting up borders or beinglimited in terms of what is possible or impossible.
Performing the roles helps participants to experience
the solutions more vividly, as well as giving them a
chance to step into the mode of being, from which
they can release themselves from their everyday
roles or ego-selves and give new forms to relationalactivities.
Choosing Personal Values
e game starts by setting up small groups of actors.
Each individual in the team is asked to choose three
professional values as a practitioner. e value-ledapproach will set a base for bringing forth ethical
priorities when tackling complex problems. It helps
players with decision-making processes and to clarify
the directions of focus.
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6
Understanding the Issues
e actors choose articles that describe contemporary
social, economical or environmental problematics
that they relate to.
e raised issue is chosen froma newspaper, book, shared concern Issues might
include topics like climate change, technology and
development, sharing resources, waste management,
information overload, energy use, social deprivation
Writing a ManifestoAer the presentation of the articles, each group
choses a theme that they feel the most inclined
towards. Aer reading the content of the subject,
they are asked to choose five group values from their
previous individual propositions. ey have to create
a collaborative set of values, which they will later useas a basis for framing their practice. Identifying values
for their problem-solving activities can help players
to understand the priorities when framing desired
futures.
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7
Constructing a Scenario
(Discussion, Sketches, Brainstorm)
Armed with the values and the problem, players are
asked to start building up scenarios and characters.e goal of the game is to perform a five to ten minute
scenario in which players have to present imaginative
solutions based on the problems depicted. Using
the role-play method, students can create imaginary
scenarios based on situated contexts, improvising and
following intuitive decisions.
Backdrops and Props
In order to act out the role more vividly and think
more clearly about the details, the actors are asked to
design their own props such as the backdrop (a scene)
and a costume. e props serve as a supportive poolof knowledge and allow an ethnographic analysis
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8
of constructed tools that represent a mixture of our
everyday life mixed with imagination.
Examples of Outcomes
Lady Operator
e first group of students was tackling the problem
of information overload in the modern society. e
participants constructed a super-hero called Lady
Operator who helps the individual who is drowningin information to refine the selection and select the
one right for their purpose. She possesses a special
machine that regulates the available information.
When her phone rings calling her to duty, she flies
directly to the customer and selectively refines the
chaotic information.
Mr. Cutter
Mr. Cutter is a game-show host. He is half-Japanese
and half-Russian and lives on the coast of Spain.
His family was in the shark business so he became
an activist and started a game show in which he
educates and communicates the need for the diversity
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9
of fish and the the importance of the species in the
ecosystem.e game show is constructed in three
parts. In the first part a contestant answers fishy
questions and winsfi
sh-free cooking lessons, dinnersand money.e second part is the documentary side
in which the beauty of fish are shown through fashion,
art and nature documentaries. e last part includes
surprise fishing trips, where his team surprises
random people, takes them fishing and shows them
how to cook.
Mr. Fix
Tower block approaches can result in social
deprivation and harm. is is why the team argues
that being proud of the area in which you live and
taking ownership can help to build community. Asdesigners, they appreciate values like aesthetics and
quality work, the use of natural, eco-friendly materials,
etc. and how these factors influence people who live in
the blocks and show them new perspectives on living.
Whenever there is a problem like graffiti, broken
windows or doors they have a psychic community cat
with a paint brush tail so she comes along, does some
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Most o us read newspaper articles and nod
our heads when we come across the news about
catastrophes that surround us stories about climate
change, new technological conrontations, landexploitation, political injustices Afer the mornings
lessons we most likely store the paper on a shel and in
three days we throw it away, probably in the recycling
bin, eeling that we have done something good or
humanity. What i we were to try to do something
different or a change in trying to understand theissues not as acts that politicians will have to handle
and resolve but as shared concerns that call or an
action on the part o each and every one o us? What
i we were to create a playul space or a gathering-
around o things o shared concern? Invite some
riends, design a scenario, gather, dream and play. Tisgame is a game o imagination, ethics, play and serious
matters.
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Te Rules of the Game
- Te play is set up in 20 years orm now.
- Te process unolds in 6 stages.- Te rules serve as suggestive guidelines. Tey are
open or participants to make alterations. You can play
with the tempo and with issues, contexts and values.
- o build a scene and characters, use materials that
you have at hand.
- ape the gatherings, i possible.
Stages
- What is important to you? Individually choose 3
values that drive you as a practitioner.
- Create a group o 3-5 participants. Pick theme that
represents the issue o a global or local concern in thenewspaper, the book, V wherever.
- Discuss about the shared issue o concern. Frame it.
- Gather the individual values and choose ones you
would like to work with. Create a maniest that will
represent your members.
- Work on a scenario or solving the issue, ollowing
your maniesto. Envision the set. Use things that
surround you, make costumes, props and backdrops
that will support your perormance.
- Perorm a scenario and discuss by reflecting.
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In Conversation
with Designers:What Does it Mean
to Work as a Design
Practitioner Today?
During your working practice did you eel that you
needed to question the ways o doing design? Why?Because it wasnt about the best solution, but a solution
in that time. A solution according to what the client
requested, but not what he would have needed.1
1 Bickert, S., [email protected],
2005. Designer in ransition. [e-mail]
Message to G. Meznaric Osole. ([email protected]). Sent Friday, 16
August, 19:28.
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9) I think to be a good designer, you need
to know something about everything and
than a lot about something very specifc.Like Indian goddess Durga that has many
hands which I chose as my image.4
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3
Educational institutions around the world
started to rame programs or re-orientation o
design practitioners teaching them creative methods
and processes, critical thinking and inorming themaround environmental and social concerns, providing
them with tools and knowledge to become responsive
and conscious change-driven creatives. Yet the
working environment is not offering enough jobs to
support these kinds o positions.
In order to understand the problematics o ways o
working within the design practice, I have engaged
MA design students to talk about their working
experience and aspirations or the uture. Te
analysis is based on a questionnaire that was sent
out in July 2013 and was responded to by six designpractitioners who are or were studying or a Masters
degree in design and who are inclined to push their
practice to embrace social, environmental or critical
perspectives.2
2Xi Yang, an artist and graphic design practitioner and MA
Design Futures student at Goldsmiths College; Eloisa Artuso, a
ashion designer and MA Design Futures student at Goldsmiths
College; Elena Busheva, a graphic designer and MA Critical
Practice student at Goldsmiths College; Christina Papazoglou,
an interior designer and MA Design and Environment student
at Goldsmiths College;Mina Arko, a graphic and interaction
designer and ormer MA student at Aalto University in
Helsinki; Svenja Bickert, a design thinker and ormer MA
student o Design Futures at Goldsmiths College.
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4
In the passage below, I will analyse responses o
these design practitioners, present their working
problematics and point towards directions new
generations o educated designers are inclined toollow. Te given answers urther inormed my
considerations on approaches design practitioners
could undertake in order to ollow their socially-
and environmentally-engaged design outcomes.
Tis section represents a critical overview based
on conversations with MA design students abouttheir working experiences, values, aspirations,
changing perspectives and roles as designers and my
personal observations as a design practitioner and
MA student. In order to understand and implement
transormative roles o design, working towards social
and environmental well-being, I find it important toexplore, i and how ideals and concepts that are coined
within (concept or skill-driven) educational systems
have the chance to live in the world o actual practice.
Introduction
Design is taught to be a top-down practice,conceptualised to impose the master planning value-
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6
while erasing the value o a collaborative approach
towards the process o creation. Te gap between
top-down planning and bottom-up ways o thinking
puts designers and clients into situations o arguingor endless compromises. As one o the practitioners
claims: In working practice I was quite happy with
bries and tasks , but always elt that a designer needs to
educate clients to whom s/he is making a piece o design,
people who will sign it. In 95% o cases you dont have
that opportunity, what actually limits the final resultin 10x times.3From the perspectives o designers,
clients are woeully undereducated about the broad
possibilities design can offer so they are unable to
think outside the narrow view o material products
and preerred styles. I believe that the conflict emerges
due to different perceptions concerning aestheticstandards, value systems and knowledge types.
When clients want to fit the design project into the
ramework o profitability the need to ollow the
trends becomes more important than the need to
improve the situation in terms o the given context.
In these cases, the value o making a profit normally
overlaps the wish to produce creative and innovative
3 Elena, B., [email protected], 2013.
Designer in ransition. [e-mail] Message
to G. Meznaric Osole. ([email protected]). Sent Friday, 2 August, 13:14.
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7
design outputs that are perceived as such through
the purview o established creative communities.
Designers also complain, whether working in a
commercial or non-commercial sphere, about theamount o time practitioners are given to solve the
task, which is usually insufficient to allow deep
research around the topic; thereore, the solutions are
unable to meet a transormative criterion. Working
under such conditions, designers become alienated
rom their own creative skills, which disempowerthem as practitioners. Many educated designers today
dont agree with the politics o profit-led practice
since it doesnt meet their own ethical and/or creative
values.
Working in a Corporate CompanyWhen designers choose to find their first working
experiences and incomes in larger companies or
advertising agencies they become accustomed to
ollowing orders as technically skilled practitioners.
Teir input doesnt raise the value o the work in
accordance with their intellectual contribution and
doesnt carry any responsibility besides the one
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8
that s/he has to accomplish as a wage employee.
Te hierarchical structure o the company creates
power relations between the workers; thereore the
outcomes normally dont include the knowledgesand sensitivities o all players in the process o the
creation. Projects are normally directed towards
meeting the needs o the most powerul. Many times
the compromises dont result in generating any
improvement since the research is based on targeting
the market in order to make profit. Tis requirementorce practitioners to become wage-labour workers
beyond the classic Fordist paradigm. In the times o
the actory the relations between practitioners were
appropriated to manual practices but ree in terms
o relating to each other. According to a practitioner
agencies hire you or your skills and are mainlyconcerned with how well you can use the programs and
how well will you fit in their environment. Ofen you are
not encouraged to think but instead to make.4
oday, i a designer wishes to find employment in a
modern actory, s/he has to posses required skills
that are not only connected with knowing how to use
4 Arko, M., [email protected],
2013. Designer in ransition. [e-mail]
Message to G. Meznaric Osole. ([email protected]). Sent Friday, 27
August, 15:28.
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9
specific computer sofware programs but also have
to conorm with extra requirements such as social
intelligence and an attractive personality that fits well
with the agencies aspirations. Tey have to acceptthe code o corporate behaviour. In this manner the
company modifies relationships between workers
as well as orcing them to accept their ethical values
thereby commercialising previously untouchable
spheres o workers reedom. I the ethical codes used
to be directed only towards the companies customers,now they come in as well in terms o re-designing
relations among workers.
Working as a Freelancer
As I have observed, the majority o educated designers
today choose to seek or work in project-led studiosor work on their own creative projects. In becoming
sel-employees or reelancers, they are able to ollow
the path towards sel-actualisation. As one o design
practitioners claims: Working as a reelancer gives me
more reedom in communication with the client which
(in my opinion) results in a better product. I eel more
ree in developing my ideas. With reelancing you are
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10
taking on more responsibility and need to always push
yoursel which is a good motivation to make better
work.4In accordance with contemporary neo-liberal
ideals, we mostly build our personalities throughour working practice. Tis questions the ethics o
reelance work since creative practitioners today not
only have to seek or the wage-labour to provide them
with financial security but also or the specific work
that would allow them to build their personalities,
grow, learn, be ethical and give them enough creativereedom. Freelance designers are thereore put into
a position in which they have to construct a viable
identity and develop good communication skills,
since the career success usually depends on the flow o
persuasive communication. I practitioners learn how
to negotiate well, more flexible and dynamic workingpractices give them good opportunities to explore a
variety o project-based working experiences.
I consider that a good job is usually associated with
a position in which designers earn money or using
proessional skills through the process o ideation,
which gives them more reedom to develop their own
4 Arko, M., [email protected],
2013. Designer in ransition. [e-mail]
Message to G. Meznaric Osole. ([email protected]). Sent Friday, 27
August, 15:28.
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11
ideas. Since demands or design practice are gradually
turning towards immaterial labour, designers need
to develop competencies such as communication,
mediation, management, writing and orecasting skills.From my observations, there is an increased interest
in nonspecialised and more conceptual designers in
terms o design thinking. As one o the interviewed
practitioners mentioned, social innovation companies
and public institutions are increasingly searching or
practitioners who know how to sketch, prototype,write, present and think creatively; such skills are
rapidly becoming as valuable as practical, technical
skills. I have observed that a belie in learning through
working and pushing onesel to overcome boundaries
resides quite strongly in the perception o many
contemporary creative practitioners. Tey have toconstantly ollow up on new technologies, trends and
clients desires, without having the chance to question
and envision their own values or projections or our
common the uture.
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12
Working through Research
What are the most significant characteristics
between your working practice until now and your
preerred one in terms o a) skills, b) ways to work, c)products? a) less actual work in design programs, b)
deep research on the problem, using different creative
methods. c) concept is a product. Producing immaterial
which will be materialised by others and will influence
material finally.5
Reading through the answers I have noticed an
increased desire this came rom the voices o
more than hal o the interviewed design students,
including mysel to become diverse change-driven
workers, using creative methodologies, ethnographic
approaches, collaborative engagement, cross-disciplinary work, field work, practical skills, all in a
wish to be a part o situated and exploratory research-
driven practice that is directed towards improving
the uture o living. Designers have become interested
in understanding the contexts o situations and
working towards designing social and environmental
5 Elena, B., [email protected], 2013.
Designer in ransition. [e-mail] Message
to G. Meznaric Osole. ([email protected]). Sent Friday, 2 August, 13:14.
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13
improvements, that take orm in a diverse range
o outcomes (things, spaces, texts, concepts or
discussions), combining theory and practice
towards pursuing their path o curiosity and criticalengagement.
Conclusion
I the link between the educational environment
and practice will not be activated to the extent that
practitioners will have a chance to work, this newgeneration o designers with valuable knowledge will
not have a possibility to implement answers to the
problems we are acing at the moment.
Could designers be the ones to imagine new ways
o living through introducing models and conceptso working practice, liberated rom satisying the
needs o the market and understanding o work as
a necessity or surviving? Revamping the struggle
o commercially driven desires and hegemonic
directives rom the market as well as the concept o
working or living, would release the tight connection
between work, security, identity and survival and
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14
could possibly lead design into a practice, where
these transormational aspirations, based on research
through design practice, would have a chance to live
without wage-labour oppression.
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What would design practitioners find valuable when repositioning theirpractice? In the next passages I will explore possible ways of re-thinking our
approach towards the concept of work and towards ourselves in the context of
contemporary design practice.
First I will touch on new working forms that are defined by the concept of creative
industries and explain why this approach might not bring optimally beneficial
solutions in terms of environmental and social stability. Further on I will touch the
phenomena of creative communities that emerged around the financial crisis and
explore new models of collective working that are not so strongly connected to the
accumulation of profit and growth. ouching upon such communities and in this
connection my exploration is mainly limited to the territory of Slovenia, I would
like to open a discussion around the unlocked potentials of such formations.
Te second part of the section analyses the accumulation of profit through neo-liberal modes of working that demand from creative workers that success be built
through a process of self-actualisation and explain why, I believe, such an approach
cannot lead to the desired social and environmental transformations. I will support
the discussion with theoretical discourses, introduced by femininst philosopher
Rossi Bradiottis thoughts that present contemporary ethics through post-identities
and nomadic subjects. In thinking through these subjects in the context of
becoming liberated from the idea of the autonomy or dependence, I will explore
approaches towards collective responsibility in sense of human interdependence,taking cognisance of another feminist theoretician, Jean ronto, and her
approach to the ethics of care (1993). In this world of unequal power relations
and competition in the name of profit accumulation, I find her suggestions
valuable as normatives for developing an understanding of some necessary ethical
considerations to the transformation of roles in design practice.
o think this through, I will use one of the suggested examples of three types of
possible transformations (Baladrn, Havrnek, 2010). Bauhaus, for example, was
following the first type of transformative process in a wish to build a new world
through paths of construction. On the other hand, the Slovenian nation went
through a transformational process involving colonisation / assimilation according
to neo-liberal rules. Neither one nor the other path of transformation happened
to be beneficial in either of the cases.Te third type the one that interests me
the most is the approach based on experience, that is to say, nature. Aiming to
provided suggestions for further consideration, the foregoing will be focused on the
ground perspective of this position.
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A Transformative
Approach to Work:From Creative Industries
to Creative Communities
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2
A conversation I had with my riend andcolleague Nina afer she returned to Ljubljana aferfinishing her masters design course in London has
stayed in my memory. She was studying productdesign; her main concerns during her studieswere centred around thinking about systems andenvironments that would enhance social engagementand acilitate the exchange o already availableresources. In this conversation we were discussing
whether to continue with the group or go our separateways due to the requently voluntary / unpaid natureo the work we were undertaking, arguments withclients, etc. o the question o what next? that isconstantly haunting our minds, she replied: Oh,Gaja, you are so lucky! You have gained a super-
specialised knowledge [I have a diploma in visualcommunication], so you will be ok. I eel like I dontknow how to do anything. Everything and anything atthe same time! She continued: My mother once toldme that Jewish people have always had two proessions one or the times o wealth and one or the times
o crisis. At the moment, she is painting portraits opeople she meets.
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3
Recent research on unemployment rates (Eurostat,
2013) estimates that 26.654 million men and women
in the EU-28 [], were unemployed in July 2013.
Compared with July 2012, unemployment rose by995,000 in the EU-28 and by 1,008,000 in the eurozone.
[] Te EU-28 unemployment rate was 11.0 % in July
2013 [], it was 10.5 % in July 2012. Compared with a
year ago, the unemployment rate increased in seventeen
member states and fell in eleven. Te highest increases
were registered in Cyprus (12.2% to 17.3%), Greece(23.8% to 27.6%), Slovenia (9.3% to 11.2%) and the
Netherlands (5.3% to 7.0%).
In thinking about new models that reject the oldlabour divisions o work and leisure, the European
Commission recognises solutions in creativeindustries that are working towards unlockingthe potential o the creative industries in buildingeconomic wealth. In order to provide new workingopportunities, it acts to empower creative practitionersto discover new synergies with modes o industrial
production. But to look at the financial crisis throughthe lens o economic stabilisation, we may not be
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4
attempting to solve the problems rom the mostproductive perspective.
In this new digital economy, immaterial valueincreasingly determines material value, as consumers
search for novel and enriching experiences. Te
ability to create social experiences and networking
is now an important factor in competitiveness. If
Europe wants to remain competitive in this changing
global environment, it needs to put in place the rightconditions for creativity and innovation to flourish in a
new entrepreneurial culture1.
Tis neo-liberal orm o governmentality is highlyconsumer orientated and primarily ocused on making
improvements in terms o market optimisationrather than striving towards social cohesion andenvironmental protection. Creative industries areusually maniested in the orm o micro-enterprises,which are flexible, small, temporal and project-based practices. Since they do not provide stable
working conditions they orce creative practitionersinto a constant state o insecurity, competitiveness
1 Green Paper, Unlocking the potential o cultural and
creative industries (2010) [Online], Available at: http://
ec.europa.eu/culture/our-policy-development/doc/GreenPaper_creative_industries_en.pd, [6. August 2013].
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and consequently develop an attitude that could beunderstood as a orm o sel-precarisation, involvinga creative and productive relationship to the sel.
On top o that, what can be problematised in theseinstitutional structures is the restructuring o relationsbetween creatives in terms o processes o acceleration,
valorisation and optimisation (Von Osten 2011: 42).Tis establishes the ground or the creation o workingconditions that orce the practitioners to float rom
project to project or build one micro-enterprise aferanother. Once again, work production and insecuritybecome part o the way o lie.
According to Gerald Raunig [] flexibility [as a
normative within the working sturcture of creative
industries] becomes a despotic norm, precarity of workbecomes the rule, the dividing lines between work and
leisure time blur just like those between work and
unemployment, and precarity flows from work into life
as a whole (2011: 199).
Let us say that there is a chance that creative industriesmight help to solve the problem o unemployment
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in providing new working opportunities orcultural entrepreneurs. But it seems or now thatan obsolescent instrumentalising logic continues
to ignore a basic problem: one can hardly hope toaddress issues like social instability, acceleratedliestyles, physical bodies and attitudes to nature indesigning such alienated and precarious workingconditions
Capitalism is an economic system, in which profitand the accumulation o capital can only be sustainedthrough constant growth. Tis means that the marketsystem can survive only i it prepares the ground orsuch growth in real value, regardless o the social,political, geopolitical or ecological consequences.
Deriving rom that, an economic crisis is defined interms o a lack o profit growth (Harvey, 1990)? Butwhen will it be possible to understand that puttinga growing economy at the top o our priority listwont help us save the ongoing social and ecologicalproblems?
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By now the majority o Western world had becomeoverloaded with consumer goods. Most o thingswe produce in this world are conceptualised in the
design stage o the process, whether we are talkingabout the products, inrastructures or services thatsurround us (Design Council, 2002). Te urban worldis over-built and the accessibility o things is moreintimately linked to the distribution o resourcesthan to production processes. How can design create
ethical aesthetics around this concerns and by doingso inorm its own practice as well as the public? Ocourse this broadens the scope by adding a whole newway o looking at the politics o design practice thatsearches or the questions and answers directly romour selves, our ways o living, working and relating
with the environment and each other.
Te World Commission on Environment andDevelopment (WCED) in 1987 was responding toa contemporary global concern o deterioration othe human environment and natural resources. Te
outcome o the commission was the Brundtlandreport, which coined the term sustainability and
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invited all countries to work together towardssustainable development.
Conceptualising sustainability through the perspectiveo resource management allows technocratic policyapproaches. Cross-disciplinary biologist AndreasWeber claims that these only intensiy dualist culture-nature tensions by trying to increase technologicalefficiency and the objectification o nature (2013). In
that manner, treating the condition o a living systemas a statical construct o matters-o-act, would notallow us to meet the desired changes. Tat kind otreatment allowed the concept o sustainability to beexpressed through many maniestations that actuallyexacerbated the problems instead o solving them.
Ideas like the green economy are still conceived interms o a gap between culture and nature, the samegap that alienated us rom the complex environmentwe live in right at the birth o Western philosophy.
In this sense it is important to look at new
technologies that we develop not only rom thepoint o view o what is gained but also to enter into
2 I was led into this kind o thinking through a development
o a conversation I had with the Emeritus Proessor o Design
at Goldsmiths University o London, proessor John Wood.
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a dialogue that reflects also on what we lose2. Whatbaby has been flushed away with the technologicalbathwater o contemporary finance?
What needs to be acknowledged is that any economicactivity at its base is not just an exchange o objectsand money but rather a rich set o ongoing flows andrelationships (Weber, 2013). And these relationshipsprovide us a sense o belonging and commitment,
generating eelings and meanings. Money does notdo that. Economical exchange disconnects agentsrom resources, making them seem independentwhile suppressing the act that they are reallyinterdependent. In so doing, it compresses the valueo meaning. I we continue to lose ourselves in the
contemporary ideology o working or a living, weare enramed in actions that detaches us rom andprevents us rom communicating with our humanand non-human environments in a balanced and non-abusive way.
According to the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj iek,the problems that we are acing are the problems o
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the commons o nature, which cannot be resolvedthrough market mechanisms, it needs a kind o aglobally coordinated activity beyond nation state,
beyond market (2011). Global initiatives, in myopinion, could be more resilient in terms o ramingsmaller micro-political initiatives that take the ormo creative communities that recognise the localproblematics o specific areas and are connectedand empowered through their raming o translocal
networks. Isnt it that inventing new global modelsin the orm o representative guidelines would bringonly a mimetic relation to the given reality, attachingholistic models to specific localities, which were inhistorically speaking mostly unsuccessul?
Te financial crisis that started to spread aroundEurope rom 2007 onward resulted in a lot youngcreative practitioners finding themselves in theposition o having to find new ways o organisationaland working models, raming diverse collectivelyorganised urban practices. Te reason or the
emergence o the groups was mostly the increasedamount o ree time among the unemployed, the
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majority o them being highly educated practitioners.o illustrate, the unemployment rate among the youthin Slovenia is 23% and rising (SA, 2013) (in line with
Italy which has reached 11%, Spain 56.1%, and Greeceat the highest with 62.9% (Burgen, 2013)). Architects,ollowed by design practitioners, were one o thegroups o educated creatives most exposed by the lacko job positions.
Te lack o working opportunities led practitionersinto a position rom which they started to engagewithin different kinds o non-designerly practices(in this case the term reers to practices that need adifferent type, mainly sel-organised, involving bothcollective and individual engagement) and to step out
o their roles as specific experts and assume previouslyunthinkable roles out o their area o expertise.
o talk about Slovenia specifically, I think it isimportant to observe that the collective spirit ocontemporaneity is being influenced by temporal as
well as spatial contexts. It emerged rom a sense onecessity that was caused by the Western neo-liberal
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politics into which we gradually transited, throughwhich process o transition many ostensibly healthylocal enterprises were allowed to wither and the local
economy destroyed. Restrictive market policies, anunequal split o the privatised property, increasedood prices and reduced standards o healthcareand education were also experienced. But a positiveaspect o the crisis was maniested in a revivedsense o nostalgia or socialism and a new interest in
researching the times o socialistic modernity.
Craf making, cooking, gardening, DIY (do-it-yoursel), creating new, shared, spaces interlacedwith the appreciation o local and natural resources,reuse, sharing and low-budget solutions, are the most
requent. As I have observed, the collectives emergedrom both interdisciplinary and intradisciplinarygroups, based on a shared concern or practical skill.Tey unction as transitional bubbles and a socialexperiment that by circumstantial necessity transgressthe boundaries o the exploiting logic o cognitive
capitalism. Trough their embodied practice theyseem to question our needs and ways o living rom
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10) Culinary Collective Trapez3
(2013), Ljubljana.
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the point o view o our social and material bodies.What do we really need in order to survive? How canwe work it out together?
Trough their practice the collectives give orm tocollectivised values: they revive appreciations otraditional practices like stamping, bookbinding,silk-screening, sewing; they give lie to public spaces,organising happenings and workshops. Practices
that are not directed through the neo-liberal marketthereore provide or unlock new potentialities o urbanexistence3.
3 Just to name ew o the examples: creative collectives
like rapez, a group o designers, economists, architects
and lawyers, which is a newly-emerged community that
is in the process o setting up their transitional practice in
(street) cooking. | Muslau, which is a collective o creatives
who are connected with the love or bicycles and cycling,
organising cycling events around the country, repairing and
designing parts or the bicycles, organising happenings and
experimenting with technological possibilities around bicycle
mechanics. | Smet-Umet, a creative collective o architectural
and textile students who are raming their practice around
research on reuse o domestic waste, creating discussions,
workshops and production lines based on their findings. |
Home-made in Moste is a couple o students o architecture
who are raming their practice around learning through
perorming a renovation o their old ruined house, engaging
with craf and DIY practices, connected mostly withdesigning urniture and clothes, exploring various traditional
techniques and methods.
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I believe that it is important to consider and reviveinherited values and local knowledges o social
cohesion in the present-day context o economichardship and labour crisis, when ideas o socialengagement are coming back into relevant discussions,ofen in the orm o the new ethics rom the West.Examples like community gardens, which are beingset as new initiatives just ten years afer they were
obliterated to make new parking spaces; the openingo swap-shops; second-hand markets; co-working.Although such iniciatives are very welcome, yetcould more contextual and politically engaged spacialpractices avoid ollowing the patterns rom the Westin a orm o temporary trendsetters? Tis would also
allow practitioners to think about the pracitces thatare still missing in such ormations, such as creatingstronger links between older and younger generations,urban and rural practises, other disadvantaged groups,in order to rame more inclusive environments.
Relating to creative practices I am posing the questionas to whether is it possible or such communities to
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avoid the the cycle o development that is comingin through supporting sel-actualisation throughentrepreneurship and thus have a chance to survive,
grow, challenge such dystopian working conditions?Why I believe that it would be important to unlocktheir potential is that these ormations, so stronglyinterwoven within the present, are the ones that arere-inventing the uture through the taking o small butgrounded steps. Jean Baudrillard gave an alternative,
downbeat definition o utopia: utopia, he wrote,is what is never spoken, never on the agenda, butalways repressed in the identity o political, historical,logical, dialectical orders. Utopia is what the ordero the day is missing Something elusive that dieswhen aggressive interpretation sets in (Baudrillard in
Larsen, 2013).
So how could we encourage more critical reflection,questioning around collaborative creativecommunities, recognising them as valuable aspotential experiments or ways o working in the
uture. Opening up orums or discussions, mergingtheoretical and practical discourses could encourage
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creatives to think o actions that would increase thepotential or critical engagement. What would happeni designers connect with sociologists, culturologists
and philosophers as well as local communities? Here ahidden potential still remains to be unlocked.
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11) Cycling collective Muslauf3
(2012) Ljubljana.
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Transformative Approach
to the Self From anIndividual to a Collective
I am a designer in General and in General a designer.I give the world a beauty of useful things [] I am with
you in search for liberty and harmony between artistic
and natural Beauty. For De Lucchi, the conventional
Designer in Generale, who shouts, commands, forces,
decides, was too imposing a figure, emblematic of a
profession steeped in authoritarian elitism. InsteadDe Lucchi proposed a different figure - one more
collaborative than combative in his approach to
architecture and inhabitants.1
1 Rossi, C. and Coles, A. (2013) EP/Volume 1: Te Italian
Avant-Garde, 1968-1976. Berlin: Sternberg Press, pp. 53.
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2
Te introduction o the neo-liberal economic
system, which operates according to the principle o
accumulation o profit, resulted in physical and mental
detachment rom our ecosystems. Since economicalstructures are the main reflection o contemporary
power systems, we are building up a society in which
we are alienated rom each other and are losing the
sense to recognise the needs, opportunities and
possibilities or exchange and potential synergies
hidden outside the purview o profitability. Teancient notion o taking care o yoursel, knowing
yoursel in order to understand how to act ethically in
a democratic society, has transormed rom a healthy
morality o knowing about your limits to a society o
competitive sel-orientated individuals in a pursuit
towards sel-actualisation (Foucault, 1997).
Focusing only on the concept o autonomous and
ree identities does not resonate with the common
responsibility or the collectively shared world we
inhabit. Neo-liberal logic, which assimilated living
to working, creates the unbalanced situations we
are acing today, through supporting environments
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in which wage-based working conditions demand
competitive actors in a pursuit o profit as a living
necessity. In this mode, the social abric will never
meet environmental demands because o the way thatnatural resources serve as viable resources or meeting
the desires o privileged individuals.
Creative liestyles, which used to present viable
alternatives in the post-ordist societies, are becoming
increasingly economically utilisable models orthe labour market demands o today. Appreciation
o flexibility, subjectivity, reedom, emancipation,
creativity and temporality are well suited to the
viral logic o the ree market. Creatives add value
to contemporary cities and liestyles by generating
creative models o living and producing which canbe turned to the purposes o commodification and
profit. I only Baudelaire knew, when he wrote his
maniestoTe Painter of Modern Life, that his artistic
liestyle would grow into a role model or the neo-
liberal individual! Designers, caught in between poetic
and pragmatic practice, can thereore be represented
as embodiment o contemporary productive existence
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