Read Like You Give a Damn

READ LIKE YOU GIVE A DAMN

VOLU M E 1

then DESIGN FOR THE COMMON GOOD

Excerpts for designers edited by LINDSAY KINKADE

read like 窶楽ou Give a damn

then design for the common good

About the series No book can contain everything you need to know when setting out on a complex mission, like making design projects for the common good. But a series of readings can be a starting point for nuanced thought that results in knowing and empathetic action. If in the course of doing this type of graphic design you come upon other texts you think might benefit designers in this field, please share them with your peers, and with the editor of this book.

Commentary In religious traditions, type is often set in such a way that it fills only part of the printed page in holy books. This design is intended to allow for thoughtful reading and notes, or commentary.

This book, though not religious, is also designed to facilitate commentary. The margins are designed to facilitate your interaction with the text.

You are invited to mark it up and make it your own.

Lindsay Kinkade, editor Advised by Douglass Scott December, 2009.

read like  you Give a damn

then design for the common good

Excerpts for designers edited by  Lindsay Kinkade

design for the public domain, 2008 Hugues Boekraad’s review and survey of Pierre Bernard’s graphic design work is both exhaustive and enlightening. He interviews the designer about his work, his goals, the practical the Gift, 2007

details of running a small design

Lewis Hyde’s book on creativity outlines a history of gift-giving in multiple cultures as a way of understanding the value of gifts. This text on the gift process inherent

firm, and the goal of always doing good-looking socially relevant graphic design.

13

in creative work is appropriate

relational aesthetics, 2002

for all artists, This excerpt from Nicolas Bourriaud’s book on the work

designers, and

of relational artists in the 1990s analyzes the ways in

anyone trying to

which interactive artwork was made and the ways in which it was received. He reviews the work of many

do social good.

9

any designer working in this area.

It outlines areas of culture where additional

graphic design could move beyond

readings

advertising and it calls graphic

of art and design create

rules for radicals,

relationships in a given space.

1971

Bourriaud’s exploration of ‘the

President Barack

encounter’ and its aftereffects

Obama read this

can be considered in relation

text when he was doing community

to public intervention projects by designers working for social causes.

35

The critical manifesto on design for social good, FTF is a must read for

specific artists whose work designers might look to for precedents of how forms

First Things First, 1964

of interest 65

organizing work in Chicago in the 1970s. It

designers to pursue the use of their tool for culture making in addition to the making of their livelihoods.

21 First Things First, 2000

was a seminal text for many progressive leaders in the making. Much of the

The original manifesto was revisited

writing about communism and socialism

twenty-six years later by a new

is rooted in another time and context, but

generation of designers wanting to

the rules themselves are timeless. RFR

speak out against the state of design

is a set of basic principles about human

at that time.

behavior and how to shape public opinion.

53

27

the Gift Lewis Hyde’s book on creativity outlines a history of gift-giving in multiple cultures as a way of understanding the value of gifts. This text on the gift process inherent in creative work is appropriate for all artists, designers, and anyone trying to do social good.

The Gift 11

We also rightly speak of intuition or inspiration as a gift.

As the artist works, some portion of his creation is bestowed upon him. An idea pops into his head, a tune begins to play, a phrase comes to mind, a color falls in place on the canvas. Usually, in fact, the artist does not find himself engaged or exhilarated by the work, nor does it seem authentic, until this gratuitous element has appeared, so that along with any true creation comes the uncanny sense that “I,” the artist, did not make the work. “Not I, not I, but

In his Candy Spill installations, Felix Gonzalez-Torres designs a formation for the candies, stipulates that the amount of them is to be ‘unlimited,’ and then allows museum-goers to take the candies. His installation is a gift that keeps on giving. These photos show the installation of the spill.

12

The Gift

the wind that blows through me,” says D. H. Lawrence. Not all

13

artists emphasize the “gift” phase of their creations to the degree that Lawrence does, but all artists feel it.

These two senses of gift refer only to the creation of the work-what we might call the inner life of art; but it is my assumption that we should

relational aesthetics His [Guattari’s] definition is ideally

extend this way of speaking to its outer life as well, to the work

applicable to the practices of the

after it has left its maker’s hands.

contemporary artists who create and stage life-structures that include

That art that matters to us–which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we

working methods and ways of life, rather than the concrete objects that once defined the field of art. They use time as

choose to describe the experience–that work is received by us as a

a raw materiaI. Form takes priority over

gift is received.

things, and flows over categories: the production of gestures is more important

Even if we have paid a fee at the door of the museum or concert hall,

than the production of material things.

when we are touched by a work of art something comes to us which

Today’s viewers are invited to cross

has nothing to do with the price.

the threshold of ‘catalysing temporal

...

If a work of art is the emanation of its maker’s gift and if it is received by its audience as a gift, then is it, too, a gift? I have framed the question to imply an affirmative answer, but I doubt we can be so categorical. Any object, any item of commerce, becomes one kind of property or another depending on how we use it.

Even if a work of art contains the spirit of the artist’s gift, it does not follow that the work itself is a gift. It is what we make of it.

Oliver Bishop-Young’s Skip Garden in London is intended to take streetspace back from cars. His ‘skip,’ or dumpster, is used for several different installations that make recreational space out of the street.

...

modules,’ rather than to contemplate immanent objects that do not open on to the world to which they refer.

design for the public domain The associations that citizens freely undertake between themselves are often long-lasting face-to-face relationships based on trust and loyalty. The services that are rendered one to another serve a common goal.

Rights and obligations are often moral 14

in nature and not strictly defined.

It is not for nothing that the reciprocal relationships of civil society that create solidarity are often called the cement of society.

A gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift. The spirit of a gift is kept alive by its constant donation. ...

Furthermore, when gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.

Gonzalez Torres’s posters are available in unlimited quantities. Viewers can take them and the gallery will supply more to the exhibition. The gift of an exhibition that allows you to take a piece of it endlessly is a true gift. The spirit of it is kept alive by its constant donation and replenishment.

design for the public domain

Hugues Boekraad’s review and 16

survey of Pierre Bernard’s graphic design work is both exhaustive and enlightening. He interviews the designer about his work, his goals, the practical details of running a small design firm, and the goal of always doing good-looking socially relevant graphic design.

Design for the Public Domain 17

Design responds to events, topical matters and the ‘talk of the day’.

In this way design acts as an instrument for maintaining or accelerating the existing patterns of production, promotion and consumption of goods and services. Its primary function is economic. And as a consequence of that, what defines quality is success in the marketplace. This market conformism makes design heteronomous and reactive. It is put into use in strategies on which it has no influence. Market orientation also determines the field in which design operates, while markets and brands free themselves from local or national cultural frameworks and become international. In the wake of privatization and stronger market forces in some countries, market-oriented

First Things First 2000

designing has penetrated into the public domain as a policy 47 instrument

We propose a reversal of priorities

borrowed from the private sector. In some countries, indeed, it has reached

in favor of more useful, lasting

the very apparatuses of the State itself, carrying out its classic core tasks:

and democratic forms of

defence, policing and justice, and taxation. ...

communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and

In cultural production too, the convergence ofthe public and private sectors has had an adverse impact.

When cultural production is perceived and organized as a form of consumption, it runs the risk of losing its contours and becoming a component of the popular and flexible culture of media and events. Ultimately it becomes a building block and purveyor of a new branch of commerce, the creative industry.

production of a new kind of meaning. The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand.

Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.

However much the porosity of the barriers between high and low culture may be applauded as a form of democratization, it cannot be denied that it jeopardizes some of the functions of art and science. The room for experimentation, for independent thinking and research, for diversity of intellectual styles and dissidence is increasingly limited. In this way the public domain is seeing the same paradoxical situation as the market sector: despite all the emphasis on distinction and identity, a clear tendency 18

can be discerned – in the most diverse social areas – towards greater uniformity and standardization of the procedures and styles of designers.

The diversity of visual culture is decreasing rather than increasing. ...

Looking at this small panoramic view of design we find ourselves asking one or two questions. The first is: do the nature and function of design disciplines allow us to deduce possibilities and objectives that they can realize autonomously? What is the actual value of their promise of unobstructed invention and initiative? Is design not by its very nature a heteronomous activity, bound hand and foot by practices, institutions and systems which have other functions and objectives? Do we not see, in actual practice, that design is only an instrument for more powerful players in the social arena? Are the design disciplines not absorbed by the dominant systems of money and power, and do they not as a consequence lose their own profile? This book focuses on a designer who has succeeded in avoiding the dilemma of autonomy and dependence.

Evidently it is possible to be a practising designer in a way that credibly combines relative autonomy, originality and social relevance.

The prerequisite for this turns out to be a not easily achieved position of equality with clients with whom one shares certain values.

This designer moves between the state and the market in a socio-cultural field whose dynamic allows the repeated creation of new alliances.

Bernard’s design group, Grapus, submitted a series of nine posters, including the two shown here, to the 1972 Warsaw poster biennal.

The series depicts the story of a long and bloody war in Asia. The first poster shows the war and the second shows the peace afterward.

primarily to advertising, marketing

Design for the Public Domain

design is a form of practical reason

and brand development are

19

Design takes place in the social interaction between the client, the designer and the user.

The designer is in the middle of social reality. He plans and effects real interventions in the real world.

[Papanek 1972].

His designs are produced and reproduced in series of varying sizes. Tangible material interests assume concrete shape both during the design process and in the result of that process. The client-designer relationship is a business arrangement and is usually regulated on a contract basis.

First Things First 2000 Designers who devote their efforts

supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizenconsumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact. To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public

design is a function of the power of imagination

The designer looks at the world not just as a field of facts but first and foremost as a field of possibilities.

Design is built on an existing state of affairs but tries to change it. The design process is a path from a given fact to a desired situation. As such, design is an expression of the power of imagination , to which, since the Romantic period, almost demiurgical potency has been ascribed. However, human imagination is not a matter of creation ex nihilo.

Design is almost always a variation on existing models and forms, and in only a few cases is it true innovation. ...

Design disciplines can be classified in many ways. As objects of design Buchanan [1992] distinguishesn between symbolic and visual communication, material objects, activities and services, complex systems, and environments. More usual is an arrangement according to the nature of the design discipline or the designer’s speciality (fashion, architecture, landscape, print media, industrial products etc.). Another arrangement is according to types of client: politics, culture, business, nonprofit organizations. Less common is distinguishing design activities according to the private or public character ofthe domain to which they relate.

This division allows of a dual perspective of design, from the individual point of view and that of the community. It corrects the methodological individualism practised not only by many designers, but also, in their wake, by design theoreticians and critics.

discourse.

20

Louis Vuitton’s collaborative design with artist Takashi Murakami is an example of a design that consumers see as part of their own self-expression. Carrying a

In the introduction to this chapter I pointed out the implications of this

First Things First, 1964

market related methodological individualism. The effect is that designing is

We, the undersigned, are graphic

seen first and foremost as an instrument for the private sector.

designers, photographers and

Producers see design as a means of seduction, marketing, branding, gaining attention, positioning, whereas consumers view it as a means of self-expression, a way of setting themselves apart from other consumers.

students who have been brought up

indicating awareness of the art world too.

and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable means of using our talents. We have been bombarded with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer, striped toothpaste,

In the private domain the chief functions of design are differentiation

aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion,

and individualization. The public domain, by contrast, is the territory

slimming diets, fattening diets,

of generality, of what binds people and transcends them, of their common

deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes,

interests and identity. These interests are defined and sustained in an

roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons.

unceasing and dialectical process of power and counterpower, of images and counterimages, of proposals and counterproposals.

bag with this pattern is a status marker and a way of

in a world in which the techniques

The heart of the public domain is the state, its organs and apparatuses, for it is the state, above all, that is charged with looking after the public weal.

Second, the public domain encompasses the public sphere, in which state and civil society interact.

This interaction takes the form of communication amongst government agencies and public authorities, between government agencies and public authorities on the one hand and the public on the other, and vice versa, and between citizens. Also part of the public domain is public space in the physical sense. And finally the public domain includes the institutions within which culture and knowledge are produced, distributed and preserved. The dichotomy of the private and public domain is the starting point of this book.

By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.

This pragmatic definition parallels the distinction, customary in the design world, between social, political and cultural clients on the one hand and commercial clients on the other. The public domain is the catch-all term for the first three of these areas. The sixteen projects presented in this book are grouped according to the various sectors of the public domain. Almost all of Pierre Bernard’s work has been done in the public domain, and indeed his work cannot be seen in isolation from the social, cultural and political 55 context in which it came into being.

At every stage of his career as a designer he has made his preference for public commissioners abundantly clear, even defining design as a social activity.

This is why the unity of his oeuvre cannot be established simply by looking at its themes, style, methods and values: it also requires an exposition of the specific nature and connection of those areas of the public sector in which and for which Bernard still works. It is the public domain that is the unifying link in Bernard’s projects.

As a theoretical concept the public domain actually leads an uncertain existence. The concept takes different roles in different scholarly and scientific disciplines, and it is therefore impossible to homogenize the various definitions into a single coherent theory – at least, to the best of my knowledge such a theory doesn’t exist. Besides, the realities to which the Pierre Bernard’s work for the French

term ‘public domain’ refers are not static but everchanging. The boundaries

parks system uses silhouettes from

between the private and the public domain are not, after all, fixed: their

nature to create an identity system.

demarcation is at stake in a permanent political and social battle which is

Turning natural elements into graphic

fed by political ideologies. These ideologies, in turn ,resonate in academic

forms, he creates an identity for

theorizing. That is why I shall confine myself in this introduction to a brief

the place we find their origins–

exposition of a few concepts borrowed from cultural anthropology and the

the parks. This inventive identity

theory of law that are relevant for understanding the role of communication

system for a non-commercial client

design in the public domain.

shows Bernard’s values at work.

Design for the Public Domain

All social interaction outside the personal sphere and outside the marketplace is accounted part of the public domain.

21

22

Design for the Public Domain

the public domain and the symbolic order Broadly speaking, the public domain is what individuals necessarily have in common to be able to exist as individuals. The public domain is thus not a cultural supplement, but a basic prerequisite for community living and survival. In this sense we can speak of a public domain as soon as people succeed in developing shared institutions such as language, family, religion, etc. These institutions are predicated on the human capacity to symbolize:

23

to render the physical and social environment manageable, comprehensible and meaningful, for without order and meaning the world would appear to us as an unfathomable chaos experienced only through impulses or drives.

Society and survival are impossible without regulation of drives. ...

Even on this fundamental, anthropological level we can distinguish five functions of graphic design in the context of public communication: orientation in an environment which without signification would be a frightening chaos to us; identification which, by allowing us to recognize ourselves in others, allows us both to establish our own identity and to identify with others; representation of symbolic meanings which renders the invisible visible and the absent present for all; integration of the various symbols and signs in a code that is valid for the whole community; and

JR’s photos of women in different

finally valorization as a dual, circular process: the attribution or denial

local areas are printed and installed

of values to people, objects and characteristics (e.g. courage or cowardice,

back into the local environment

wisdom or stupidity), and the affirmation of the value system on the basis

in the form of large-scale poster

of which this attribution takes place.

installations.

Symbolization constantly conquers strangeness by means of artefacts, which themselves adapt to the existing artefacts of the world we live in. For the professional designer this symbolization and adaptation are core tasks.

In our technologically highly developed culture social changes are often 24

introduced by developments in the sciences. Scientific or symbolic systems construct their own reality: their object of knowledge. True, in time they do have a real effect on daily life and social relations, but only after selective absorption by systems such as the economy or political power.

Here again design disciplines are necessary to mediate between those systems and the world in which we live.

First Things First 1964

The critical manifesto on design for 26

social good, FTF is a must read for any designer working in this area.

It outlines areas of culture where graphic design could move beyond advertising and it calls graphic designers to pursue the use of their tool for culture making in addition to the making of their livelihoods.

First Things First, 1964 27

196 4

We, the undersigned, are graphic designers, photographers and students who have been brought up in a world design for the public domain Producers see design as a means of seduction, marketing, branding,

in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective

gaining attention, positioning, whereas

and desirable means of using our talents. We have been bombarded

consumers view it as means of self-

with publications devoted to this belief, applauding the work of

expression, a way of setting themselves apart from other soncumers. In the

those who have flogged their skill and imagination to sell such

private domain the chief functions

things as: cat food, stomach powders, detergent, hair restorer,

of design are differentiation and individualization. The public domain, by contrast, is the territory of generality, of what binds people and transcends them, of their common interests and identity. These interests are defined and sustained in an unceasing and dialectical process of power and counterpower, of images and counterimages, of propsals and counterproposals.

striped toothpaste, aftershave lotion, beforeshave lotion,

slimming diets, fattening diets, deodorants, fizzy water, cigarettes, roll-ons, pull-ons and slip-ons.

rules for radicals We know intellectually that everything is functionally interrelated, but in our operations we segment and isolate all values and issues. Everything about us must be seen as the indivisible partner of its converse, light and darkness, good and evil, life and death.

28

Logo for the Azuero Earth Project

by Stefan Sagmeister.

First Things First, 1964

By far the greatest effort of those working in the advertising industry are wasted on these trivial purposes, which contribute little or nothing to our national prosperity.

29

In common with an increasing numer of the general public, we have reached a saturation point at which the high pitched scream of consumer selling is no more than sheer noise.

We think that there are other things more worth using our skill and experience on.

There are signs for streets and buildings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instructional manuals, industrial photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific and industrial publications and all the other media through which we promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater awareness of the world.

From the New York Times article on the new typeface Clearview for highway signs: ‘The typeface is the brainchild of Don Meeker, an environmental graphic designer, and James Montalbano, a type designer. They set out to fix a problem with a highway font, and their solution — more than a decade in the making — may end up changing a lot more than just the view from the dashboard.

We do not advocate the abolition of high pressure consumer advertising: this is not feasible.

30

Nor do we want to take any of the fun out of life. But we are proposing a reversal of priorities in favour of the more useful and more lasting forms of communication.

We hope that our society will tire of gimmick merchants, status salesmen and hidden persuaders, and that the prior call on our skills will be for worthwhile purposes.

With this in mind we propose to share our experience and opinions, and to make them available to colleagues, students and others who may be interested.

rules for radicals The basic requirement for the understanding of the politics of change is to recognize the world as it is.

We must work with [the world] on its terms if we are to change it to the kind of world we would like it to be.

We must first see the world as it is and not as we would like it to be.

First Things First, 1964 31

The WorldWide Telesope, designed by Artefact, is a software that allows scientists, educators, students, and enthusiasts to explore imagery of space.

Signed,

32

Edward Wright

Anthony Froshaug

Geoffrey White

Robin Fior

William Slack

Germano Facetti

Caroline Rawlence

Ivan Dodd

Ian McLaren

Harriet Crowder

Sam Lambert

Anthony Clift

Ivor Kamlish

Gerry Cinamon

Gerald Jones

Robert Chapman

Bernard Higton

Ray Carpenter

Brian Grimbly

Ken Briggs

John Garner Ken Garland rules for radicals

We live in a world where ‘good’ is a value dependent on whether we want it.

In the world as it is, the solution of each problem inevitably creates a new one. In the world as it is there are no permanent happy or sad endings.

In Ken Garland’s words, ‘Written and proclaimed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on an evening in December 1963, the manifesto was published in January 1964. Inexplicably, to me, reverberations are still being felt.’ The published manifesto is shown here.

First Things First 2000

A letter from Rick Poynor

The original manifesto was revisited twenty-six

34

to Adbusters readers: ‘Last fall, Adbusters and six design magazines printed First Things First 2000. An updated version of a 1964 declaration,

years later

FTF 2000 states that too much design energy is being spent

by a new

to promote pointless consumerism, and too little to helping

generation

people understand an increasingly complex and fragile

of designers

world. It was signed by 33 high-profile designers, and has

wanting to speak out

since been signed by hundreds more.

First Things First 2000 had a simple aim. We wanted it to

against the

provoke debate. Lulled by the economic boom, design has

state of design

shown little inclination of late to consider first principles.

at that time.

We figured that if we gave it a big enough push – high-profile signatories, co-publication in several magazines – it stood a good chance of grabbing attention.

The response is tremendous. The manifesto’s message clearly taps a deep need. Seven months after its launch, the campaign continues to roll. Scores of letters – supportive, angry, perplexed – have poured in to Adbusters, Emigre, and the other magazines. Some are outraged at the signatories’ nerve. Others want to know how they can add their names to the cause.

Around the world other magazines are publishing the text. Design Week and Creative Review in Britain; I.D., Print and Communication Arts in the U.S.; Idea in Japan; and, belatedly, Germany’s Form. Public events have been organized by the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the British Design History Society, and the design Biennale in Brno. The manifesto is being debated everywhere in design schools, and Ken Garland, who wrote the original, reports that even if he doesn’t bring it up, as a visiting lecturer, the students invariably do.

The issues are out in the open. The question now is: what next? Let us know: editor@adbusters.org

First Things First, 2000 35

2000

We the undersigned, are graphic designers, art directors and visual communicators

Using the tools of graphic design for a different message, John Briggs makes a modest suggestion in his 2008 project with Stefan Sagmeister’s Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far workshop project.

who have been raised in a world in which the techniques and apparatus of advertising have persistently been presented to us as the most lucrative, effective and desirable use of our talents.

36

Many design teachers and mentors promote this belief; the market

detergents, hair gel, cigarettes, credit cards, sneakers, butt toners,

First Things First, 2000

rewards it; a tide of books and publications reinforces it.

light beer and heavy-duty recreational vehicles.

37

Encouraged in this direction, designers then apply their skill and imagination to sell dog biscuits, designer coffee, diamonds,

One way designers can use their skills is building educational tools. These interactive tables by Second Story give visitors an opportunity to learn more about the strategy and technology used in World War I. The table uses 3-D reconstructions to show military tools, archival video footage, and interactive projects in which visitors can make their own propaganda.

Commercial work has always paid the bills, but many graphic designers have now let it become, in large measure, what graphic designers do.

38

This, in turn, is how the world perceives design.

The profession’s time and energy is used up manufacturing demand for things that are inessential at best.

Many of us have grown increasingly uncomfortable with this view of design. Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact.

To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.

First Things First, 2000

There are pursuits more worthy of our problem-solving skills.

Unprecedented environmental, social and cultural crises demand

39

our attention. Many cultural interventions, social market- ing campaigns, books, magazines, exhibitions, educational tools, television programs, films, charitable causes and other information design projects urgently require our expertise and help.

Andrew Sloat’s typographic video project, A More Perfect Union, shows citizens spelling out the preamble to the US Constitution.

This project was made during the run-up to the historic 2008 election.

We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning.

Relational Aesthetics These questions do not relate to an excessively anthropomorphic vision of art. They relate to a vision that is quite simply human; to the best of my knowledge, artists intend their work to be seen by their contemporaries... those artworks that seem to me to be worthy of sustained interest are the ones that function as interstices, as spacetimes governed by an economy that goes beyond the prevailing rules for the management of the public.

The first thing that strikes me about this generation of artists [working in the 1990s] is that they are inspired by a concern for democracy.

For art does not transcend our day to day preoccupations; it brings us face to face with reality through the singularity of a relationship with the world, through a fiction.

40

The New York Times’ Year in Ideas issue highlights the most innovative, most groundbreaking ideas of each year. It is an editorial project that uses design to further illuiminate new areas of thought. It expands the scope of debate.

Consumerism is running uncontested; it must be challenged by other perspectives expressed, in part, through the visual languages and resources of design.

In 1964, 22 visual communicators signed the original call for our skills to be put to worthwhile use. With the explosive growth of global commercial culture, their message has only grown more urgent. Today, we renew their manifesto in expectation that no more decades will pass before it is taken to heart.

signed,

Jonathan Barnbrook Nick Bell Andrew Blauvelt Hans Bockting Irma Boom Sheila Levrant de Bretteville Max Bruinsma Sian Cook Linda van Deursen Chris Dixon William Drenttel Gert Dumbar Simon Esterson Vince Frost Ken Garland Milton Glaser Jessica Helfand

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville’s take a break, out to lunch, back to work installation about work at the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training considers workers, union leaders, and managers in the capitalist system. It relates the means of production, not the means of consumption.

First Things First, 2000

The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand.

41

Steven Heller Andrew Howard Tibor Kalman Jeffery Keedy Zuzana Licko 42

Ellen Lupton Katherine McCoy Armand Mevis J. Abbott Miller Rick Poynor Lucienne Roberts Erik Spiekermann Jan van Toorn Teal Triggs Rudy VanderLans Bob Wilkinson

Tibor Kalman’s direction of Colors magazine challenged what kinds of information could appear in magazines and how they could be displayed.

relational aesthetics

This excerpt from Nicolas Bourriaud’s book on the work of relational artists in the 1990s analyzes the ways in which interactive artwork was made and the ways in which it was received.

He reviews the work of many specific artists whose work designers might look to for precedents of how forms of art and design create relationships in a given space. Bourriaud’s exploration of ‘the encounter’ and its aftereffects can be considered in relation to public intervention projects by designers working for social causes.

Relational Aesthetics 45

The work of art as social interstice

The possibility of a relational art (an art that takes as its theoretical horizon the sphere of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an autonomous and private symbolic space) is testimony to the radical upheaval in aesthetic, cultural and political objectives brought about by modern art. To outline its sociology:

this development stems essentially from the birth of a global urban culture and the extension of the urban model to almost all cultural phenomena.

The spread of urbanization, which began to take off at the end of the Second World War, allowed an extraordinary increase in social exchanges, as well as greater individual mobility (thanks to the development of rail and road networks, telecommunications and the gradual opening up of isolated From CreativeTime in new york

places, which went hand in hand with the opening up of minds). Because this

In 1993, artists and designers

urban world’s inhabitable places are so cramped, we have also witnessed

‘transformed Manhattan’s historic West

a scaling down of furniture and objects, which have become much easier to

42nd Street into a dynamic, around-the-

handle: for a long time, artworks looked like lordly luxury items in this urban

clock public art exhibition. In many cases,

context (the dimensions of both artworks and the apartments where they

participating artists involved passersby

were displayed were intended to signal the distinction between their owners

and members of the community in the

and the hoi polloi), but the way their function and their mode of presentation

actual making of their pieces.’

has evolved reveals a growing urbanization of the artistic experience. What

This piece, Everybody invites pedestrians

is collapsing before our very eyes is quite simply the pseudo-aristocratic

to sit, to be included. It creates an

conception of how artworks should be displayed, which was bound up with

inclusive territory in the urban space.

the feeling of having acquired a territory.

46

We can, in other words, no longer regard contemporary works as a space we have to walk through (we were shown around collections in the same way

Contemporary art resembles a period of time that has to be experienced, or the opening of a dialogue that never ends.

The city permits and generalizes the experience of proximity: this is the tangible symbol and historical framework of the state of society, or the ‘state of encounter’, that has been ‘imposed’ on people, as Althusser puts it, as opposed to the dense and unproblematic jungle of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s state of nature.

Rousseau’s jungle was such that there could be no lasting encounters.

Once it had been elevated to the status of an absolute civilizational rule this intense encounter finally gave rise to artistic practices that were in keeping with it.

NL Architects’ Moving Forest project designed for Droog’s Urban Play event put trees in shopping carts. With trees that are mobile, citydwellers can create a new dialogue about new ways of relating to the city and the availability of green space.

It gave rise, that is, to a form of art with intersubjectivity as its substratum.

Its central themes are being-together [l’etre-ensemble], the ‘encounter’ between viewer and painting, and the collective elaboration of meaning.

Relational Aesthetics

that we were shown around great houses).

47

We can leave aside the problem of the phenomenon’s historicity: art has

design for the public domain

always been relation to some extent. It has, in other words, always been

Design is a form of practical reason:

a factor in sociability and has always been the basis for a dialogue. One of the image’s potentials is its capacity for ‘linkage’ [reliance], to use Michel Maffesoli’s term: flags, logos, icons and signs all produce empathy

48

imagination: The designer looks at the world not just as a field of facts but first and foremost as a field of possibilities.

Design is built on an existing state of affairs but tries to change it. The design process is a path from a given fact to a desired situation. As such, design is an expression of the power of imagination, to which, since the Romantic period, almost demiurgical potency has been ascribed. However, human imagination is not a matter of creation ex nihilo.

designer and the user.

The designer is in the middle of social

and sculpture and displayed in the form of an exhibition) proves to be

reality. He plans and effects real

compresses relational space, whereas

Design is a function of the power of

interaction between the client, the

and sharing, and generate links. Art (practices derived from painting

an especially appropriate expression of this civilization of proximity. It

design for the public domain

Design takes place in the social

television and books send us all back to spaces where we consume in private; and whereas the theatre or the cinema bring small groups together to look at univocal images, there is in fact no live commentary on what a theatre or cinema audience is seeing (the time for discussion comes after the show).

At an exhibition, in contrast, there is always the possibility of an immediate – in both senses of the term – discussion, even when the forms on show are inert: I see, comment and move around in one space-time.

Art is a site that produces a specific sociability; what status this space has within the range of ‘states of encounter’

Design is almost always a variation on

proposed by the Polis remains to be seen. How can an art that is centred

existing models and forms, and in only

on the production of such modes of conviviality succeed in relaunching the

a few cases is it true innovation.

modern project of emancipation as we contemplate it? How does it allow us to define new cultural and political goals?

Before turning to concrete examples, it is important to take a new look at where artworks are situated within the overall system of the economy – symbolic or material – that governs contemporary society: quite apart from its commodified nature or semantic value, the artwork represents, in my view, a social interstice. The term interstice was used by Karl Marx to describe trading communities that escaped the framework of the capitalist economy: barter, selling at a loss, autarkic forms of production, and so on.

interventions in the real world. [papanek, 1972].

His designs are produced and reproduced in series of varying sizes. Tangible material interests assume concrete shape both during the design process and in the result of that process. The client-designer relationship is a business arrangement and is usually regulated on a contract basis.

Gabriel Orozco’s Ping Pond Table from 1998 creates a new way of relating to the table itself, the other players, and to the gallery space. It suggests possibilities for exchange other than the prevailing ones of gaming or the gallery.

Exhibitions of contemporary art occupy precisely the same position within the field of the trade in representations. They create free spaces and periods of time whose rhythms are not the same as those that organize everyday life, and they encourage an inter-human intercourse which is different to the ‘zones of communication’ that are forced upon us.

The contemporary social context restricts opportunities for interhuman relations in that it creates spaces designed for that purpose. Superloos were invented to keep the streets clean. The same line of thinking governed the development communicational tools while the streets of our cities were being swept clean of all relational dross. The result is that neighbourhood relations have been impoverished.

The general mechanization of social functions is gradually reducing our relational space. ...

The ATM has become the transit model for the most basic social functions, and professional behaviours are modelled on the efficiency of the machines that are replacing them. The same machines now perform tasks that once represented so many opportunities for exchanges, pleasure or conflict.

Contemporary art is really pursuing a political project when it attempts to move into the relational sphere by problematizing it. ...

Relational Aesthetics

An interstice is a space in social relations which, although it fits more or less harmoniously and openly into the overall system, suggests possibilities for exchanges other than those that prevail within the system.

49

An exhibition is a privileged place where instant communities like this can be established: depending on the degree of audience participation demanded by the artist, the nature of the works on show and the models of sociability that are represented or suggested, an exhibition can generate a particular ‘domain of exchanges’.

50

And we must judge that ‘domain of exchanges’ on the basis of aesthetic criteria, or in other words by analysing the coherence of its form, and then the symbolic value of the ‘world’ it offers us or the image of human relations that it reflects.

Within this social interstice, the artist owes it to himself to take responsibility for the symbolic models he is showing: all representation refers to values that can be transposed into society (though contemporary art does not so much represent as model) and inserts itself into the social fabric rather than taking inspiration from it). Being a human activity that is based upon commerce, art is both the object and the subject of an ethics: all the more so in , that, unlike other human activities, its only function is to be exposed to that commerce. Art is a state of encounter...

Conviviality and encounters

A work can function as a relational device in which there is a degree of randomness. It can be a machine for provoking and managing individual or collective encounters. To cite a few examples from the last two decades, this is true of Braco Dimitrijevic’s Casual Passer-by series, which disproportionally celebrates the names and faces of anonymous passers-by on posters the size of those used for advertisements, or on busts like those of celebrities. In the early 1970s, Stephen Willats painstakingly charted the relationships that existed between the inhabitants of a block of flats. And much of Sophie Calle’s work consists of accounts of her encounters with In On Kawara’s I Met project, he wrote

strangers: she follows a passer-by, searches hotel rooms after getting a

down the name of each person he

job as a chamber maid, asks blind people how they define beauty, and then,

met with from May 10, 1968 through

after the event, formalizes the biographical experiments that led her to

September 17, 1979. This bound series of

‘collaborate’ with the people she met. We could also cite, almost at random,

books keeps records of encounters with

On Kawara’s I met series, the restaurant opened by Gordon Matta-Clark

others as a document his relationships.

in 1971 (Food), the dinners organized by Daniel Spoerri or the playful shop opened by George Brecht and Robert Filliou in Villefranche (La Cedille qui sourit)...

Nancy Dwyer’s Multiple Choice installation at Port Richmond High

in the school’s courtyard. The words can be read from the classrooms above.

The courtyard becomes a micro-utopia.

Relational Aesthetics

School on Staten Island creates benches

Social utopias and revolutionary hopes have given way to day-to-day microutopias and mimetic strategies: any ‘direct’ critique of society is pointless if it is based upon the illusion of a marginality that is now impossible, if not regressive.

51

Almost thirty years ago, Felix Guattari was already recommending the neighbourhood strategies on which contemporary artistic practices are based: 52

the Gift Furthermore, when gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.

‘Just as I think it is illusory to count on the gradual transformation of society so I believe that microscopic attempts – communities, neighbourhood committees, organizing creches in universities – play an absolutely fundamental role.’

Traditional critical philosophy (and especially the Frankfurt school) can no longer sustain art unless it takes the form of an archaic folklore, or of a splendid rattle that achieves nothing.

The subversive and critical function of contemporary art is now fulfilled through the invention of individual or collective vanishing lines, and through the provisional and nomadic constructions artists use to model and distribute disturbing situations. ...

Other artists suddenly burst into the relational fabric in more aggressive ways. The work of Douglas Gordon, for example, explores the ‘wild’ dimension

The best example of how untimely communications can disrupt

Relational Aesthetics

of this inte(action by intervening in social space in parasitic or paradoxical

communications networks is probably a piece by Angus Fairhurst: with the

53

ways: he phoned customers in a cafe and sent mUltiple ‘instructions’ to selected individuals.

kind of equipment used by pirate radio stations, he established a phone link between two art galleries. Each interlocutor believed that the other had called, and the discussions degenerated into an indescribable confusion. By creating or exploring relational schemata, these works established relational microterritories that could be driven into the density of the contemporary socius; the experiences are either mediated by object-surfaces (Liam Gillick’s ‘boards’, the posters created in the street by Pierre Huyghe, Eric Duyckaerts’ video lectures) or experienced immediately (Andrea Fraser’s exhibition tours).

The Subject of the Artwork

Every artist whose work derives from relational aesthetics has his or her own world of forms, his or her problematic and his or her trajectory: there are no stylistic, thematic or iconographic links between them.

In June 2008, Candy Chang, an artist and designer in New York City, used

What they do have in common is much more determinant, namely the fact that they operate with the same practical and theoretical horizon: the sphere of interhuman relationships.

post-it notes arranged in the shape of

Their works bring into play modes of social exchange, interaction with the

a house on a store window to create

viewer inside the aesthetic experience he or she is offered, and processes

new relationships. Her project, I’ve

of communication in their concrete dimensions as tools that can to be used

Lived, asks neighbors to anonymously

to bring together individuals and human groups. They therefore all work

contribute information about the size

within what we might call the relational sphere, which is to today’s art what

of their apartments, the length of time

mass production was to Pop and Minimalism. They all ground their artistic

they have lived there, and the rent they

practice in a proximity which, whilst it does not belittle visuality, does

pay. While the project collects assorted

relativize its place within exhibition protocols. The artworks of the 1990s

data, it is also mapping the relationships

transform the viewer into a neighbour or a direct interlocutor. It is precisely

of neighbors to one another. The project

this generation’s attitude towards communication that allows it to be defined

creates a place on the street where

in relation to previous generations: whilst most artists who emerged in the

neighbors can contribute to the data

1980s (from Richard Prince to Jeff Koons via Jenny Holzer) emphasized the

set, see what others pay, or start a

visual aspect of the media, their successors place the emphasis on contact

conversation with a stranger.

and tactility.

They emphasise immediacy in their visual writing. This phenomenon can be explained in sociological terms if we recall that the decade that has just ended was marked by the economic crisis and did little to encourage spectacular or visionary experiments.

...

54

When we look at relational artists, we find ourselves in the presence of a group of artists who, for the first time since the emergence of conceptual art in the mid-1960s, simply do not take as their starting point some aesthetic movement from the past.

Relational art is neither a ‘revival’ of some movement nor the return of a style.

It is born of the observation of the present and of a reflection on the destiny of artistic activity. Its basic hypothesis - the sphere of human relations as site for the artwork - is without precedent in the history of art, even though it can of course be seen, after the event, to be the obvious backdrop to all aesthetic practice, and the modernist theme par excellence.

Anyone who needs to be convinced that interactivity is scarcely a new notion has only to reread Marcel Duchamp’s 1957 lecture on ‘the creative act’. The novelty lies elsewhere.

It resides in the fact that for this generation of artists, intersubjectivity and interaction are neither fashionable theoretical gadgets nor adjuncts to (alibis for) a traditional artistic practice. They are at once a starting point and a point of arrival. or in short the main themes that inform their work.

These artists produce relational spacetimes, interhuman experiences that try to shake off the constraints of the ideology of mass communications; they are in a sense spaces where we can elaborate alternative forms of sociability, critical models and moments of constructed conviviality.

It is, however, obvious that the day of the New Man of the future-oriented manifestos and the calls for a better world ‘with vacant possession’ is well and truly gone:

utopia is now experienced as a day-to-day subjectivity, in the real time of concrete and deliberately fragmentary experiments.

The artwork now looks like a social interstice in which these experiences and these new ‘life possibilities’ prove to be possible. Inventing new relations with our neighbours seems to be a matter of much greater urgency than ‘making tomorrows sing’.6 That is all, but it is still a lot. And it at least offers a welcome alternative to the depressive, authoritarian and reactionary thought that, at least in France, passes for art theory in the shape of ‘common sense’ rediscovered. And yet modernity is not dead.

Relational Aesthetics

The space in which their works are deployed is devoted entirely to interaction. It is a space for the openness (Georges Bataille would have called it a ‘rent’) that inaugurates all dialogue.

55

If we define as ‘modern’ meaning a taste for aesthetic experience and adventurous thinking, as opposed to the timid conformisms that are defended by philosophers who are paid by the line. neo-traditionalists (the ludicrous Dave Hickey’s ‘Beauty’) and militant passeistes like Jean Clair.

Whether fundamentalist believers in yesterday’s good taste like it or not. contemporary art has taken up and does represent the heritage of the 56

avant-gardes of the twentieth century, whilst at the same time rejecting their dogmatism and their teleology. I have to admit that a lot of thought when into that last sentence: it was simply time to write it.

Because modernism was steeped in an ‘oppositional imaginary’, to borrow a phrase from Gilbert Durand, it worked with breaks and clashes, and cheerfully dishonoured the past in the name of the future.

It was based on conflict, whereas the imaginary of our period is concerned with negotiations, links and coexistence.

We no longer try to make progress thanks to conflict and clashes, but by discovering new assemblages, possible relations between distinct units, and by building alliances between different partners.

Like social contracts, aesthetic contracts are seen for what they are: no one expects the Golden Age to be ushered in on this earth, and we are quite

more dense ways of life, and multiple. fruitful combinations of existence.

By the same criterion, art no longer tries to represent utopias; it is trying to construct concrete spaces The Criterion of Coexistence (Works and Individuals)

Gonzalez-Torres’ art gives a central role to negotiation and to the construction of a shared habitat. It also contains an ethics of the gaze. To that extent, it belongs within a specific history: that of artworks that make the viewer conscious of the context in which he or she finds himself/herself (the happenings and ‘environments’ of the 1960s, site-specific installations).

At one Gonzalez-Torres exhibition, I saw visitors grabbing handfuls of sweets and cramming as many of them as they could into their pockets: they were being confronted with their own social behaviour, fetishism and acquisitive worldview ... Others, in contrast. did not dare to take the sweets. or waited until those next to them took one before doing likewise.

The ‘candy spill’ works thus raise an ethical problem in a seemingly anodyne form: our relationship with authority, the use museum attendants make of their power, our sense of proportion and the nature of our relationship with the artwork.

To the extent that the latter represents an opportunity for a sensory experience based upon exchange, it must be subject to criteria analogous with those on which we base our evaluation of any constructed social reality.

The basis of today’s experience of art is the co-presence of spectators before the artwork. be it actual or symbolic.

Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estates project encourages people to tear out their traditional lawns of grass to plant gardens from which they can eat. He builds alliances between neighbors and other community members by reshaping the urban and suburban landscape.

The first question we should ask when we find ourselves in the presence of an artwork is: Does it allow me to exist as I look at it or does it, on the contrary, deny my existence as a subject and does its structure refuse to consider the Other?

Relational Aesthetics

happy to create modus vivendi that make possible fairer social relations,

57

Does the space-time suggested or described by this artwork, together with the laws that govern it, correspond to my real-life aspirations? Does it form a critique of what needs critique? If there was a corresponding space-time in reality, could I live in it? These questions do not relate to an excessively anthropomorphic vision of art. They relate to a vision that is quite simply human; to the best of my knowledge, artists intend their work to be seen by their contemporaries, unless they regard themselves as living on borrowed 58

time or believe in a fascist-fundamentalist version of history (time closing over its meaning and origins). On the contrary,

those artworks that seem to me to be worthy of sustained interest are the ones that function as interstices, as space-times governed by an economy that goes beyond the prevailing rules for the management of the public.

The first thing that strikes me about this generation of artists is that they are inspired by a concern for democracy.

For art does not transcend our day to day preoccupations; it brings us face to face with reality through the singularity of a relationship with the world, through a fiction.

Andrew Sloat’s project Article II shows citizens spelling out part of the second article of the consitution, which created the executive branch. This section of the article is the oath of office for President of the United States.

No one will convince me that an authoritarian art can refer its viewers to any real–be it a fantasy or an accepted reality–other than that of an intolerant

Bulloch, Carsten Holler, Gabriel Orozco or Pierre Huyghe,

bring us face to face with exhibition situations inspired by a concern to ‘give everyone a chance’ thanks to forms that do not give the producer any a priori superiority (let’s call it divine-right authority) over the viewer, but which negotiate open relations that are not pre-established.

The status of the viewer alternates between that of a passive consumer, and that of a witness, an associate, a client, a guest, a co-producer and a protagonist.

So we need to pay attention: we know that attitudes become forms, and we now have to realize that forms induce models of sociability.

And the exhibition-form itself is not immune to these warnings: the spread of ‘curiosity cabinets’ that we have been seeing for some time now, to say nothing of the elitist attitudes of certain actors in the art world, which reveals their holy terror of public spaces and collective aesthetic experimentation, and their love of boudoirs that are reserved for specialists.

Relational Aesthetics

society. In sharp contrast artists like Gonzalez-Torres, and now Angela

59

Making things available does not necessarily make them banal.

60

As with one of Gonzalez-Torres’ piles of sweets, there can be an ideal balance between form and its programmed disappearance, between visual beauty and modest gestures, between a childlike wonder at the image and the complexity of the different levels at which it can be read. [ ... ] The Behavioural Economy of Contemporary Art ‘How can you bring a classroom to life as though it were an artwork?’ asks Guattari. By asking this question, he raises the ultimate aesthetic problem.

How is aesthetics to be used, and can it possibly be injected into tissues that have been rigidified by the capitalist economy?

Everything suggests that modernity was, from the late nineteenth century onwards, constructed on the basis of the idea of ‘life as a work of art’.

As Oscar Wilde put it, modernity is the moment when ‘art does not imitate life; life imitates art’. Marx was thinking along similar lines when he criticised the classical distinction between praxis (the act of self-transformation) and poiesis (a ‘necessary’ but servile action designed to produce or transform matter). Marx took the view that, on the contrary, praxis constantly becomes part of poiesis, and vice versa.

Georges Bataille later built his work on the critique of ‘the renunciation of life in exchange for a function’ on which the capitalist economy is based. The three registers of ‘science’, ‘fiction’ and ‘action’ destroy life by calibrating it on the basis of pre-given categories.Guattari’s ecosophy also postulates that the totalization of life is a necessary preliminary to the production of subjectivity. For Guattari, subjectivity has the central role that Marx ascribes to labour, and that Bataille gives to inner experience in the individual and collective attempt to reconstruct the lost totality.

‘The only acceptable goal of human activities,’ writes Guattari, ‘is the production of a subjectivity that constantly self-enriches its relationship with the world.’

Relational Aesthetics 61

Felix Gonzalez Torres’ “Untitled�, 1991 provides endless copies of his prints at the Walker Art Center. He turns the gallery into an interaction between the viewers and the piece itself. Although the prints are available, the power and desirability of their form is not lost.

62

His [Guattari’s] definition is ideally applicable to the practices of the contemporary artists who create and stage life-structures that include working methods and ways of life, rather than the concrete objects that once defined the field of art.

They use time as a raw materiaI. Form takes priority over things, and flows over categories: the production of gestures is more important than the production of material things.

In Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (Placebo) candy spill, viewers can take candy from the installation once they decide to cross the line between their space in the gallery and that of the work itself. These works are as much about the interaction created as they are about the art objects themselves.

rules for radicals

from The New York Times Week in Review 64

Know Thine Enemy August 22, 2009

By NOAM COHEN

President Barack Obama read this text by Saul Alinsky when he was doing community organizing work in Chicago

Saul Alinsky, the Chicago activist and writer whose

in the 1970s. It was a seminal

street-smart tactics influenced generations of

text for many progressive

community organizers, most famously the current president, could not have been more clear about which side he was on. In his 1971 text, “Rules for Radicals,” Mr. Alinsky, who died in 1972, explains his purpose: “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. ‘The Prince’ was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power.

‘Rules for Radicals’ is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away.”

It is an irony of the current skirmishing about health care that those who could be considered Mr. Alinsky’s sworn enemies — the groups, many industry sponsored, who are trying to shout down Congressional town hall meetings — have taken a page (chapters, really) from his handbook on community organizing. In an article in The Financial Times last week, Dick Armey, the former Republican House majority leader, now an organizer against the Democrats’ proposals on health care, offered his opinion: “What I think of Alinsky is that he was very good at what he did but what he did was not good.”

The disruption of the town hall meetings has many Alinsky trademarks: using spectacle to make up for lack of numbers; targeting an individual to make a large point; and trying to use ridicule to persuade the undecided.

leaders in the making.

Much of the writing about comm-unism and socialism is rooted in another time and context, but the rules themselves are timeless.

RFR is a set of basic principles about human behavior and how to shape public opinion.

Rules for Radicals 65

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.

First Things First In common with an increasing

...

number of the general public, we have reached a saturation point at

In this book we are concerned with how to create mass

which the high pitched scream of

organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to

consumer selling is not more than

realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace,

sheer noise. We think that there

cooperation, equal and full opportunities (or education, full

are other things more worth using our skill and experience on. There

and useful employment, health, and the creation of those

are signs for streets and buildings,

circumstances in which man can have the chance to live by

books and periodicals, catalogues,

values thai give meaning to life. We are talking about a mass

instructional manuals, industrial

power organization which will change the world into a place

photography, educational aids, films, television features, scientific

where all men and women walk erect, in the spirit of that

and industrial publications and all

credo of the Spanish Civil War, “Better to die on your feet than

the other media through which we

to live on your knees.”

promote our trade, our education, our culture and our greater

This means revolution.

awareness of the world.

66

The significant changes in history have been made by revolutions. evolution, that brings about change–but evolution is simply the term used by nonparticipants to denote a particular sequence of revolutions as they synthesized into a specific major social change. In this book I propose certain general observations, propositions, and concepts of the mechanics

Because modernism was steeped in ‘oppositional imagery,’ to borrow a

future. It was based on conflict, whereas

Rules for Radicals

There are people who say that it is not revolution, but

relational aesthetics

the imaginary of our period is concerned

67

phrase from Gilbert Durand, it worked with breaks and clashes, and cheerfully dishonoured the past in the name of the

with negotiations, links and coexistence.

We no longer try to make progress thanks to conflict and clashes, but by discovering new assemblages, possible

design for the public domain

of mass movements and the various stages of the cycle of

This book focuses on a designer who

action and reaction in revolution. This is not an ideological

by building alliances between different

has succeeded in avoiding the dilemma

book except insofar as argument for change, rather than for

partners.

relations between distinct units, and

of autonomy and dependence.

Evidently it is possible to be a practising designer in a way that credibly combines relative autonomy, originality and social relevance...

The prerequisite for this turns out to be a not easily achieved position of

the status quo, can be called an ideology; different people, in

Like social contracts, aesthetic

different places, in different situations and different times will

contracts are seen for what they are:

construct their own solutions and symbols of salvation for those times...

moves between the state and the market in a socio-cultural field whose dynamic allows the repeated creation of new alliances.

Kirsten Mosher’s Ball Park Traffic transforms the crossing of 22nd Street and 9th Avenue into a baseball park. She has intervened in the streetscape by adding a backstop, bases, and home plate.

This urban intervention engages with our creative selves and creates a small revolution in our rushing, workaday lives.

ushered in on this earth, and we are quite happy to create modus vivendi that make possible fairer social relations,

The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt

more dense ways of life, and multiple,

whether we are right, while those who believe with complete

fruitful combinations of existence. By

certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice...

equality with clients with whom one shares certain values. This designer

no one expects the Golden Age to be

To diminish the danger that ideology will deteriorate into dogma, and

to protect the free, open, questing, and creative mind of man, as well as to allow for change, no ideology should be more specific than that of America’s founding fathers: “For the general welfare.”

the same criterion, art no longer tries to represent utopias; it is trying to construct concrete spaces.

Niels Bohr, the great atomic physicist, admirably stated the civilized position on dogmatism: “Every sentence I utter must

design for the public domain In the political sphere there is a permanent struggle to gain entry

be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.” I will

to the centres of power and the agenda

argue that man’s hopes lie in the acceptance of the great law

of political decision-making. In no period has that struggle been more

of change; that a general understanding of the principles of 68

change will provide clues for rational action and an awareness of the realistic relationship between means and ends and how each determines the other.

vehement than in the second half of the nineteenth centure and the first half of the twentieth. The main line of this history–it ahs continued to this day– is the modernization and rationalization of the political and economic system.

I hope that these pages will contribute to the education of the radicals of today, and to the conversion of hot, emotional, impulsive passions that arc impotent and frustrating to actions that will be calculated, purposeful, and effective.

Our enthusiasm for the sacred right of revolution is increased and enhanced with the passage of time. The older the revolution, the more it recedes into history, the more sacred it becomes. Except for Thoreau’s limited remarks, our society has given us few words of advice, few suggestions of how to fertilize social change.

To the status quo concerned about its public image, revolution is the only force which has no image, but instead casts a dark, ominous shadow of things to come.

When, in the throes of their revolutionary fervor, the HaveNots hungrily turn to us in their first steps from starvation to subsistence, we respond with a bewildering, unbelievable, and meaningless conglomeration of abstractions about freedom, morality, equality, and the danger of intellectual enslavement by communistic ideology! This is accompanied by charitable handouts dressed up in ribbons of moral principle and Occasionally we will accept a revolution if it is guaranteed to be on our side, and then only when we realize that the revolution is inevitable. We abhor revolutions. We have pennitted a suicidal situation to unfold wherein revolution and communism have become one. These pages are committed to splitting this political atom, separating this

Civil society came to be politicized and polarized into two camps, capitalism and labour, and the two sides were kept apart by the political ideologies of liberalism and socialism.

identification of communism with revolution. If it were possible for the Have-Nots of the world to recognize and

hate and war, cold or hot, from the United States, that alone

if not regressive. Almost thirty years

revolutionary handbook not cast in a communist or capitalist

ago, Felix Guattari was already

I will argue that the failure to use power for a more equitable distribution of the means of life for all people signals the end of the revolution and the start of the counterrevolution...

All of life is partisan. There is no dispassionate objectivity.

THE IDEOLOGY OF CHANGE

An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth–truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.

He is a political relativist. He accepts the late Justice Learned

recommending the neighbourhood strategies on which contemporary artistic practices are based:

‘Just as I think it is illusory to count on the gradual transformation of society so I believe that microscopic attempts – communities, neighbourhood committees, organizing creches in universities – play an absolutely fundamental role.’

Hand’s statement that “the mark of a free man is that ever-

vanishing lines, and through the

gnawing inner uncertainty as to whether or not he is right.”

provisional and nomadic constructions

The consequence is that he is ever on the hunt for the causes

disturbing situations.

of a marginality that is now impossible,

of man. This is a major reason for my attempt to provide a

My aim here is to suggest how to organize for power: how to get it and to use it.

artists use to model and distribute

pointless if it is based upon the illusion

of man’s plight and the general propositions that help to make some sense out of man’s irrational world.

He must constantly examine life, including his own, to get some idea of what it is all about, and he must challenge and test his own findings.

‘The only acceptable goal of human acitivities,’ writes Guattari, ‘is the production of a subjectivity that constantly self-enriches its relationship with the world.’

Rules for Radicals

micro-utopias and mimetic strategies:

regardless of the color of their skins or their politics.

the invention of individual or collective

hopes have given way to day-to-day

any ‘direct’ critique of society is

mold, but as a manual 101” the Have-Nots of the world

contemporary art is now fulfilled through

...Social utopias and revolutionary

accept the idea that revolution did not ineVitably meaD

would be a great revolution in world politics and the future

The subversive and critical function of

relational aesthetics

69

Official Ballot for General Election Springfield County, Nebraska Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Instructions Instrucciones

Irreverence, essential to questioning, is a requisite. Curiosity

Making selections Haga sus selecciones

becomes compulsive. His most frequent word is “why?”

better sense of direction and compass than the c1osedsociety 70

organizer with his rigid political ideology. First, the freesociety organizer is loose, resilient, fluid, and on the move in a society which is itself in a state of constant change.

To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations our society presents.

In the end he has one conviction–a belief that if people have the power to act, in the long run they will, most of the time,

Fill in the oval to the left of the name of your choice.

You must blacken the oval completely, and do not make any marks outside of the oval. You do not have to vote in every race.

Rellene el óvalo que está a la izquierda del nombre de su preferencia. Deberá rellenar el óvalo totalmente y no hacer ninguna otra marca fuera del óvalo. No tiene que votar en todas las contiendas.

Do not cross out or erase, or your vote may not count. If you make a mistake or a stray mark, ask for a new ballot from the poll workers.

No tache o borre, pues esto podría invalidar su voto. Si comete un error o hace alguna otra marca, pida una papeleta nueva a uno de los trabajadores electorales.

Optional write-in Voto opcional por escrito

reach the right decisions...

each unforeseeable future crisis as they move ahead in their eternal search for those values of equality, justice, freedom, peace, a deep concern for the preciousness of human life, and all those rights and values propounded by Judaeo-Christianity

Josep and Josep Blue /

Adam and Greg Yellow

Danie and Amy Purple

Alvin and Jame Orang

Austi and Jame Pink /

Marti and Clay L Gold /

Elizab and Antoi Gray /

Charl and Andre Aqua

Believing in people, the radical has the job of organizing them so that they will have the power and opportunity to best meet

President a Vice-Presi United Sta Presidente de los Estad

Vote for 1 p Vote por 1 p

Does this then mean that the organizer in a free society for a free society is rudderless? No, I believe that he has a far

Papeleta Oficia Condado de Sp Martes, 7 de no

To add a candidate, fill in the oval to the left of “or write-in” and print the name clearly on the dotted line.

Para agregar un candidato, rellene el óvalo a la izquierda del espacio designado ‘o por escrito’ y escriba claramente el nombre de la persona en la línea punteada.

Marze and Welto Brown

or wr o por

Turning in the ballot Entregue la papeleta

and the democratic political tradition.

Democracy is not an end but the best means toward achieving these values...

Insert the completed ballot into the ballot sleeve. Hand in the ballot to be counted.

Cuando termine de votar, introduzca la papeleta en la funda protectora y entréguela para ser contada.

Do not fold the ballot.

No doble la papeleta.

Precinct 0001 Ward 0002 Split 0003 Poll Worker Init

1

al para las Elecciones Generales pringfield, Nebraska oviembre de 2006

and ident of the ates y vicepresidente dos Unidos

U.S. Senator Senador de EEUU Vote for 1 / Vote por 1 Dennis Weiford Blue / Azul

ph Barchi

Lloyd Garriss Yellow / Amarillo

m Cramer

Sylvia WentworthFarthington Purple / Púrpura

Vuocolo w / Amarillo

John Hewetson Orange / Naranja

el Court

Victor Martinez Pink / Rosa

Blumhardt e / Púrpura

n Boone

es Lian ge / Naranja

in Hildebrand

es Garritty Rosa

in Patterson

Lariviere / Oro

beth Harp

Heather Portier Gold / Oro or write-in o por escrito:

U.S. Representative Representante de EEUU Vote for 1 / Vote por 1

Bruce Reeder Yellow / Amarillo Brad Schott Purple / Púrpura

les Layne

Glen Tawney Orange / Naranja

zena Pazgier

on Phelps n / Marrón

rite-in escrito:

tials _______ _______

We must work with it on its terms if we are to change it to the kind of world we would like it to be.

Brad Plunkard Blue / Azul

ine Jefferson / Gris

ew Kowalski / Agua

The basic requirement for the understanding of the politics of change is to recognize the world as it is.

Carroll Forrest Pink / Rosa or write-in o por escrito:

Continue voting next side Continúe votando al otro lado

We must first see the world as it is and not as we would like it to be. We must see the world as all political realists have, in terms of “what men do and not what they ought to do,” as Machiavelli and others have put it.

It is painful to accept fully the simple fact that one begins from where one is, that one must break free of the web of illusions one spins about life.

Most of us view the world not as it is but as we would like it to be. The preferred world can be seen any evening on television in the succession of programs where the good always wins– that is, until the late evening newscast, when suddenly we are plunged into the world as it is.

We live in a world where “good” is a value dependent on whether we want it.

English / Spanish

Design for Democracy pairs designers with local election authorities to work on ballots and explanatory materials.

This redesigned ballot uses illustration to explain how to fill it out. It also shows a redesigned voting area to clarify which candidate a voter is choosing.

In the world as it is, the solution of each problem inevitably creates a new one. In the world as it is there are no permanent happy or sad endings. Such endings belong to the world of fantasy, the world as we would like it to be, the world of children’s fairy tales where “they lived happily ever after.”

Rules for Radicals

pair par

ph Hallaren / Azul

/8

71

In the world as it is, the stream of events surges endlessly onward with death as the only terminus. One never reaches the horizon; it is always just beyond, ever beckoning onward; it is the pursuit of life itself.

72

This is the world as it is.

This is where you start.

It is not a world of peace and beauty and dispassionate rationality, ...

Disraeli put it succinctly: “Political life must be taken as you find it.�

Once we have moved into the world as it is then we begin to shed fallacy after fallacy. The prime illusion we must rid ourselves of is the conventional view in which things are seen separate from their inevitable counterparts.

We know intellectually that everything is functionally interrelated, but in our operations we segment and isolate all values and issues. Everything about us must be seen as the indivisible partner of its converse, light and darkness, good and evil, life and death.

From the moment we are born we begin to die. Happiness and misery are inseparable. So are peace and war. The threat of destruction from nuclear energy conversely carries the opportunity of peace and plenty, and so with every component of this universe; all is paired in this enormous Noah’s Ark of life. Life seems to lack rhyme or reason or even a shadow of order unless we approach it with the key of converses.

Rules for Radicals

Seeing everything in its duality, we begin to get some dim clues to direction and what it’s all about. It is in these contradictions and their incessant interacting tensions that creativity begins.

73

As we begin to accept the concept of contradictions we see every problem or issue in its whole, interrelated sense. We then recogni7..e that (or every positive there is a negative,· and that there is nothing positive without its concomitant negative, nor any political paradise without its negative side.

Niels Bohr pointed out that thc appearance of contradictions was a signal that the experiment was on the right track: “There is not much hope if we have only one difficulty, but when we have two, we can match them off against each other.”

Bohr called this “complementarity,”

The [Condensed] Rules of Power Tactics 1

4

8

Power is not only

Make the enemy live

Keep the pressure

If you push a

what you have but

up to their own book

on, with different

negative hard and

what the enemy

of rules.

tactics and actions,

deep enough it will

thinks you have.

11

and utilize all events

break through into

5

of the period for your

its counterside;

2

Ridicule is the most

purpose.

this is based on the

Never go outside the

potent weapon.

experience of your people.

principle that every 9

6

positive has its

The threat is usually

negative.

A good tactic is one

more terrifying than

3

that your people

the thing itself.

Go outside of the

enjoy.

experience of the

12 The price of a

10

successful attack

enemy. Cause

7

The major premise

A tactic that drags on

is a constructive

confusion, fear, and

for tactics is the

too long becomes a

alternative.

development of

drag.

operations that will

13

maintain a constant

Pick the target, freeze

retreat.

pressure upon the

it, personalize it, and

opposition.

polarize it.

tactics

74

Tactics means doing what you can with what you have.

Tactics are those consciously deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them.

In the world of give and take, tactics is the art of how to take and how to give. Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the HaveNots can take power away from the Haves.

For an elementary illustration of tactics, take parts of your face as the point of reference; your eyes, your ears, and your nose.

First the eyes; if you have organized a vast, mass-based people’s organization, you can parade it visibly before the enemy and openly show your power.

Second the ears; Walid Raad’s project, The Atlas Group, has created a story about its existence and has justified its actions through documentation and showing of artifacts. The Atlas Group ostensibly ‘locates, preserves, studies, and produces audio, visual, literary, and other documents that shed light on the recent history of Lebanon.’ The artist uses traditional forms to build credibility that a full organization produces the work.

if your organization is small in numbers... conceal the members in the dark but raise a din and clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more than it does.

Third, the nose; if your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place.

additional readings of interest

1964

First Things First

Read Like You Give a Damn

Further reading suggestions on doing work for the common good and design intervention in public space

1971

Rules for Radicals

77

1941 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans

1973 Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered by E.F. Schumacher 1997 The Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History by Dolores Hayden 2000

First Things First

2002 Surpassing the Spectacle by Carol Becker 2002 Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud 2002 Rural Studio: Samuel Mockbee and an Architecture of Decency by Andrea Oppenheimer Dean and Timothy Hursley 2003 Citizen Designer by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne 2004

Plop: Recent Projects of the Public Art Fund by Susan K. Freedman, Tom Eccles, Dan Cameron, Katy Siegel, Jeffrey Kastner, and Anne Wehr

2005 The Interventionists: Users’ Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life by Nato Thompson, Gregory Sholette, and Joseph Thompson 2006

Participation ed. by Claire Bishop

2006

What is Graphic Design For? by Alice Twemlow

2007

The Gift by Lewis Hyde

2007 Looking Closer 5: Critical Writings on Graphic Design by Michael Beirut, William Drenttel, and Steven Heller 2008

A Guide to Democracy in America by Yates McKee, Anne Pasternak, Gregory Sholette, and Liam Gillick

2008 Droog Event 2: Urban Play by Droog 2008

My work is not my work: Pierre Bernard–Design for the public domain by Hugues Boekraad

2009 Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People by Emily Pilloton

the gift

That art that matters to us– which moves the heart, or revives the soul, or delights the senses, or offers courage for living, however we choose to describe the experience–that work is received by us as a gift is received.

78

relational aesthetics

...Contemporary artists ... create and stage lifestructures that include working methods and ways of life, rather than the concrete objects that once defined the field of art. They use time as a raw materiaI. Form takes priority over things, and flows over categories: the production of gestures is more important than the production of material things.

Read Like You Give a Damn

design for the public domain

Evidently it is possible to be a practising designer in a way that credibly combines relative autonomy, originality and social relevance...

79

Pierre Bernard’s work for the French parks system uses silhouettes from nature to create a system of symbols.

Turning natural elements into graphic symbols, he creates an identity sytem for the place we find the origins of the symbols–the parks. This inventive identity system for a non-commercial client shows Bernard’s values at work.

First Things First 2000

We propose a reversal of priorities in favor of more useful, lasting and democratic forms of communication – a mindshift away from product marketing and toward the exploration and production of a new kind of meaning.

The scope of debate is shrinking; it must expand.

80

The New York Times’ Year in Ideas issue highlights the most innovative, most groundbreaking ideas of each year. It is an editorial project that uses design to further illuiminate new areas of thought. It expands the scope of debate.

Read Like You Give a Damn

relational aesthetics

‘Just as I think it is illusory to count on the gradual transformation of

81

society so I believe that microscopic attempts – communities, neighbourhood committees, organizing creches in universities – play an absolutely fundamental role.’

rules for radicals

What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.

82

Designers who devote their efforts primarily to advertising, marketing and brand development are supporting, and implicitly endorsing, a mental environment so saturated with commercial messages that it is changing the very way citizen-consumers speak, think, feel, respond and interact.

To some extent we are all helping draft a reductive and immeasurably harmful code of public discourse.

Read Like You Give a Damn

First Things First 2000

83

84

...Social utopias and revolutionary hopes have given way to day-to-day micro-utopias and mimetic strategies: any ‘direct’ critique of society is pointless if it is based upon the illusion of a marginality that is now impossible, if not regressive. Almost thirty years ago, Felix Guattari was already recommending the neighbourhood strategies on which contemporary artistic practices are based.

Read Like You Give a Damn

relational aesthetics

85

86

Andrew Sloat’s project Article II shows citizens spelling out part of the second article of the consitution, which created the executive branch. This section of the article is the oath of office for President of the United States.

Read Like You Give a Damn

87

88

Read Like You Give a Damn 89

Gabriel Orozco’s Ping Pond Table from 1998 creates a new way of relating to the table itself, the other players, and to the gallery space. It suggests possibilities for exchange other than the prevailing ones of gaming or the gallery.

the Gift

90

Furthermore, when gifts circulate within a group, their commerce leaves a series of interconnected relationships in its wake, and a kind of decentralized cohesiveness emerges.

Read Like You Give a Damn

91

92

Read Like You Give a Damn 93

Using the tools of graphic design for a different message, John Briggs makes a modest suggestion in his 2008 project with Stefan Sagmeister’s Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far workshop project.

94

Read Like You Give a Damn 95

relational aesthetics ...Contemporary artists who create and stage life-structures that include working methods and ways of life, rather than the concrete objects that once defined the field of art. They use time as a raw materiaI. Form takes priority over things, and flows over categories: the production of gestures is more important than the production of material things.

design for the public domain

In the political sphere there is a permanent struggle to gain entry to the centres of power and the agenda of political decisionmaking. In no period has that struggle been more vehement than in the second half of the nineteenth centure and the first half of the twentieth.

96

Colophon

Chapparal Pro

The Gift by Lewis Hyde

Prensa

My work is not my work: Pierre Bernard–Design for the public domain by Hugues Boekraad

Chronicle

First Things First

Akkurat Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud Caecilia

Rules for Radicals

X

Offi ficial Ballot for General Election ty Nebraska Springfield County, ty, Tuesday, ay November 07, ay, 07 2006

Instructions Instrucciones Making selections Haga sus selecciones

President and Vice-President of the United States Presidente y vicepresidente de los Estados Unidos Vote for 1 pair Vote por 1 par

Fill in the oval to the left of the name of your choice.

You must blacken the oval tely and do not completely, tely, make any marks outside of the oval. You do not have to vote in every race.

Rellene el óvalo que está a la izquierda del nombre de su preferencia. Deberá rellenar el óvalo totalmente y no hacer ninguna otra marca fuera del óvalo. No tiene que votar en todas las contiendas.

Do not ot cross out or erase, or your vote may not count. If you make a mistake or a stray mark, ask for a new ballot from the poll workers.

No tache o borre, pues esto podría invalidar su voto. Si comete un error o hace alguna otra marca, pida una papeleta nueva a uno de los trabajadores electorales.

Optional write-in Voto opcional por escrito

Joseph Barchi and Joseph Hallaren Blue / Azul Adam Cramer and Greg Vuocolo Yellow / Amarillo Daniel Court and d Amy Blumhardt Purple / Púrpura Alvin Boone and James Lian Orange / Naranja Austin Hildebrand and James Garritty Pink / Rosa Martin Patterson and Clay Lariviere Gold / Oro Elizabeth Harp and Antoine Jefferson Gray / Gris Charles Layne and Andrew Kowalski Aqua / Agua

To add a candidate, fill in the ov oval to the left of “or writ write-in” and print the name clearly on the dotted line.

Para agre regar un candidato, rellene el óvalo a la izquierda del espacio designado ‘o por escrito’ y escriba claramente el nombr nombre de la persona en la línea pu punteada.

1

Papeleta Oficial para las Elecciones Generales Condado de Springfield, Nebraska Martes, 7 de noviembre de 2006

Marzena Pazgier and Welton Phelps Brown / Marrón or write-in o por escrito:

U.S. Senator Senador de EEUU Vote for 1 / Vote por 1 Dennis Weiford Blue / Azul Lloyd Garriss Yellow / Amarillo Sylvia WentworthFarthington Purple / Púrpura John Hewetson Orange / Naranja Victor Martinez Pink Pi nk / Rosa Heather Portier Gold / Oro or write-in o por escrito:

U.S. Representative Representante de EEUU Vote for 1 / Vote por 1 Brad Plunkard Blue / Azul Bruce Reeder Yellow / Amarillo Brad Schott Purple / Púrpura Glen Tawney Orange / Naranja Carroll Forrest Pink / Rosa or write-in o por escrito:

Continue voting next side Continúe votando al otro lado

Turning rning in the ballot Entregue gue la papeleta

Insert tthe completed ballot into the ballot sleeve. Hand in the ballot to be co counted.

Cuando termine de votar, introduzca la papelet papeleta en la funda protectora y entréguela para ser cont contada. ada.

Do not fold the ballot. ballot No doble la papeleta ta.

Precinct 00 0001 Ward 0002 Split 0003 Poll Worker Initials _______ _ ______

/8

English / Spanish