Manifesto, Publication
Sustainability ~ is sustainability possible? ~ it doesn’t have to be the focus, but it can’t be ignored ~ what does your basic tangible process look like; what are your tools?
Define reality. Whats your state of being? Implicit or explicit? What structures are activated? Understanding the context in which something exists is tied to its very core: the object, the place, the person, the thing. To understand context is to understand how a subject relates to its environment and what gives it form. It lies adjacent to the conflict, the concern, or the design challenge you’re trying to address.
What are your core beliefs, and how do they translate into design?
Design that is truly human requires a steady presence of self. If that presence is missing, then who are we creating for? The idea of who we are, or the reality of it?
Design reveals itself over time, through reflection, lived experience, and conflict. It is not always immediate or clear in the moment, and sometimes only emerges after engaging, failing, or confronting tension, when reflection turns toward the lived experience.
“These places of possibility within ourselves are dark because they are ancient and hidden; they have survived and grown strong through darkness. Within these deep places, each one of us holds an incredible reserve of creativity and power, of unexamined and unrecorded emotion and feeling“(Audrey Lorde)
What’s your base? What sits at the core of your thinking? What system of thought is influencing and shaping your design?
Interogating Intitutions
This means interrogating the institutions that fund us, that shape ideology, science, design, art, technology, and materials. So what does colonial design look like? That sits at the core of my inquiry. And how can decolonial values help shape not only our futures, but also our present?
Technocapitalism thrives on this loop: extract, analyze, predict, sell. It is an economy built not only on labor, but on attention, on intimacy of our everyday lives.As designers, we become mediators. We decide whether to perpetuate these systems or resist them.