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Workshop outcome:  NOT FOR US

NOT FOR US  is a:

SECOND LIFE OF PLASTICS

LOVINGLY RECYCLED IN SENEGAL

PRODUCT CATALOGUE THAT ALLOWS THE CONSUMER INSIGHT INTO THE CYCLE OF COLLECTION, RECYCLING AND PRODUCTION

PRODUCT WHICH USES 15-20 % OF COLOURS SENEGALESE DON’T LOVE, BUT WE DO!

MADE TO ORDER, HANDCRAFTED SOUVENIER WITH A STORY TO TELL, THE STORY BEHIND OUR PLASTIC

NOT FOR US  is a way to:

DISRUPT LINEAR WAYS OF PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION & EMBRACE CIRCULAR ECONOMIES

CHANGE PUBLIC PERCEPTION, WASTE = WEALTH

REINTRODUCE ECONOMIC & SOCIAL VALUE INTO SENEGAL

PROMOTE FAIRTRADE, SUSTAINING & SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES THROUGH TRANSPARENCY & TRACEABILITY

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Elisava Workshop Marathon Pt.I

For this years Elisava Workshop Marathon, myself and three other students from Interaction Design Arts have been invited to partake in one particular workshop, one which falls very close to home for me and my past work in particular. 

Jean-Francois Fillaut Director of international development and export from Proplast Industrie and Joel Karamath Course leader For Interaction Design Arts at LCC join forces to create a workshop which aims to speculate, dream and build new possibilities and pathways for recycled plastic. In particular, this plastic is recollected from fields, beaches and mountains of Senegal, by increasingly educated and conscious Senegalese individuals. It has been almost 23 years since Germaine Faye, the Community Projects Director and her sisters initiated the mammoth task of confronting stigma around plastic waste in Senegal. Proplast Industrie is today one of the most acclaimed models of social enterprise in Senegal. Focused on the establishment of a sustainable circular economy and fair trade, their growth is synonymous with social well-being for communities. 

In 2008, in partnership with the ESPERE firm, the project was made permanent and the social enterprise created. The collection system is continuously improved and the recycling of plastic popularized among households and individuals. A circular economy is created. Jobs for collectors and processors are created for unemployed young people and women. The objective is clear: to create a circular economy around recycling in order to have a positive impact on the preservation of the environment and employment. In 2015, RECUPLAST (trade name of the collection network set up by PROPLAST) was born. Collection points are placed in different districts of the cities of Senegal. More jobs are created and the sale of products from recycled plastic is implemented.

Proplast

Proplast’s role is at the core of changing social awareness, and physically solving the problem of plastic pollution.

Enterprises such as Ocean Sole, Conceptos Plásticos, Le Pavé, and many others, seek to revalue while recycling, as the pressing issue that comes alongside with the tonnes of plastic that must be addressed and managed is that it is behaving like stock. What is the value of plastic? What is its reputation? How are individual government regulations accelerating or obstructing the process to find new solutions that stem away from the same linear production-consumption system that has lead us here?

Conceptos Plásticos

Conceptos Plásticos recycled material construction material + infrastructures 

Ocean Sole

Ocean Sole’s products utilise recycled flip flops, one of the most discarded plastic objects currently being dumped and found washed up on shores.

Le Pavé

Le Pavé’s mission is to find better solutions for recycling, finding a way to revalorize the material through becoming a product of value and extended life span.

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Poster designed by me for an open dialogue event regarding circular economy, the role of art and design and human centred design.

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What is it that I want? open letter to my aspirations

Coming to terms with the end of a wonderful year of experiential learning has its costs. Assuming that time passes, that we are passengers of a journey curated by our own direction and external circumstances, that there are crucibles of our own making and of external pressures, that we may or may not measure up to the dreams and projections we began with… the validity of our path is, sure, affected by external flows and currents, but essentially we must carve our own graves and be content of the decisions made by our own free will.

What do we aspire to be/become/do/affect/create/change?

Where do we conform?

Where do we push?

How to get there?

It is so easy to freeze like a deer in the middle of the road, to be unsure of what you have accomplished so far, what it is you can do, to undermine the experiences lived when the road seems to steep into an unsurpassable mystery.

Take time, re centre, refocus.

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a snipet of a studio shoot done while working for Aba Art Lab.

Could not resist the allure of the mirror self-portrait!

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the usefulness of the useles

Why do we make? Why do we enquire?

Why do you care? What do you care about?

What difference does any of it make?

According to Effective Altruism, a movement which started coalescing in Oxford in 2009 looking to make radical altruism mainstream, stands by their opinion that Art as a form of expression is devoid of a reason. Even when we analyse a piece of art which looks to create awareness on environmental problems, because regardless of how provocative it may be, how useful is to a family with no running water? In fact, it goes as far as to clinically and rather quantitatively measure not only the worth of artistic action but surgically quantify the worth of our actions as human beings under their Replaceability Equation. 

Your Apparent Good Achieved minus the Good Your Counterfactual Replacement Would Have Achieved equals Your Actual Good Achieved.

This mind-boggling and radical logic presents itself as somewhat of a moral quandary to any human being, stating that their dreams and aspirations mean very little unless they can contribute directly to the improvement of human beings in need. This, of course, is a maxim which in theory, if you dedicate whatever money you make, or at least a part of it to humanitarianism, it quantifies your value as a human being in positive, you are in fact making the world a better place. But what happens to people with more precarious economic situations? Those of low-income jobs, are interns, or, and here comes the contentious one, have a creative job?

Kev Nemelka, a curator with a conscience, gave a fabulous and clear presentation for TEDxBerklee Valencia in 2016 “called Sustainable Practice: Reconciling Art and Effective Altruism” and attempts to return some semblance of hope to us creatives whose jaws and consciousness just dropped six foot underground. 

He clarifies that despite art and creativity being embedded to base ideas of economic stability and bannered by what he calls ‘privilege mantras’ such as  “do what you love” “express yourself’ and “follow your dreams, he goes on to say that there is, of course, a way to meet in the middle and even create great social value from art. 

The words utilitarianism and pragmatism are perhaps the trigger words that frankly make me feel uncomfortable, torn in two directions. For one, the maxims of extreme humanitarianism that EA promote are arguably something that we could really benefit from as a civilization. On the other hand, however, the level of sacrifice of the individual, unidirectionality of lifestyle, models of success and projected and apparent worth feels inadequate and even repressed, but I guess all radical and extreme views have problematic similarities.

Kev asks a question which  many ask themselves in the art world “have I dedicated my professional life to something that in the end often amounts to little more than privilege, narcissism and art I can't even convince my parents to hang or pay usable money for?”

What do you gear yourself, your life, your career and practice towards? Do you fall under the sort of socially accepted pragmatic chap that looks to make a profit out of a valid yet selfish need to fulfil yourself? Or is there a humanitarian component to your practice? 

I would like to believe that despite us mostly falling in the first category, one looked down upon by Effective altruism, like Kev outlines in his talk, it is possible to encompass successfully a humanitarian outlook and aim in our journey to self indulge in “our dream job”. That is of course if you last long enough to actually make it. 

Art is famously hard to quantify and even justify. What does it actually change? Art is also actually historically unsustainable and the absence of pragmatism in art is problematic, more so nowadays where no institution is free from scrutiny, from accountability. 

But this quantitative way of measuring up actions based on the impact of their reactions is laced to rhetorics of usefulness, which not coincidentally, stem from the same utilitarian notions that target education and again, the arts. Nuccio Ordine masterfully critiques the values of our modern society based on consumerism and materialism in his book ‘The usefulness of the useless’.  In it, he warns us of the perils of continuing down a path which looks down on non-profit investigation, literature and art, eventually leading us to the dehumanization and illiteracy of our society.

The close structural proximity between our neoclassic economic model, which is defined by seeking maximum profit in the least amount of time, and Effective altruism, defined by seeking the maximum humanitarian actions (also based on monetary contributions) in the least amount of time, is slightly discomforting. The truth is that perhaps what I find problematic is the fact that neither care of how and by whom this profit is made, so long it is exponentially superior to what has been made by alternative models and therefore quantitatively superior.

But most importantly, I feel critical of a model which upholds values stemming from our current economic model, the king of modern oppression, the maxim on bought self-idolatry and the culprit to some of the steep environmental and social problems which EA feels so compromised towards. Sustaining their humanitarianism from the system which caused the problem is not going to break the cycle. Perhaps making an exhibition about plastic won’t either, but in so far it has inspired, made people dream, design, try and fail. We have coalesced and we have made projects like the ocean trap cleaning our oceans, social change rippling through our society and preconceptions being demolished which would not be possible if we micromanaged every action in base of an economic gain to be made.

I stand with Ordine when he objects to such treatment in education, in art and in the fields of the research and expression of our humanity that develops Knowledge. He goes on to argue that we focus our efforts on the prioritization of the wrong ends. The last decades, we have focussed so much in the amassing of wealth, that we have gone past the point where we do not have a market economy, but we are a market society.  And what more evidence do we need of our assimilation of such toxic values but to observe them in an honest initiative whose only purpose is to make the world a better place at the cost of ourselves? 

illustration by Vladimir Radunsky

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Plastic, a.k.a modern domination

Exploring the democratization of plastic, its role in expanding the societal benefits of lower SE (Andrady and Neal, 2009) which account for its popularity as a material. Plastics represent a low-cost, easily formable, high-modulus, hydrophobic, bio-inert material that finds use in a bewildering range of consumer products. Plastic, however, is a mirage of equity across social classes, once which jumps off the American dream, as it plays an important role in advertising a world where we can all be equal and gift ourselves with shiny coated plastic objects which facilitate, commodify and glamourise our day to day.

Someone dreamt up the idea of selling the plastic dream as a path to economic gain, and the call was so successful and the need of the people to improve their lives so strong it has been the most successful advertising campaign in the world.

To begin with, it’s an agent in a system flawed from conception, as an economic model based on extraction, manufacture and disposal of resources (i.e. take, make, use and dispose), creates waste and toxic flows at each stage of the process. At the scale at which plastic began, nobody envisioned the breadth of the consequences we see today, in fact, the general mindset of western society in the past centuries has aligned to the aforementioned linear economic model, and our awareness of consequences was somewhat mitigated by the scarcity or rather the ignorance of their effects on larger scales of quantity and time.

If all waste goes to the trash – multiply it by 7.125 billion people on earth – that's 31.2 billion pounds of waste in landfills every single day. The impact of not recycling for one day will be most noticeable on the planet as a whole because our natural resources are finite, but the first and most affected by this will be those for whom plastic was sold to as the answer to resolving their poverty.

Globalisation has been mentioned before as a modern tool for domination (Peter d’Errico) and plastic’s role it is that of toxic substance dependence, without which the world does not function. It is so integrated into our lives that we cannot deny its control and our subjugation to its power, one that has spun out of control and affects every single person on the planet.

Travelling to Senegal was important because it made us wonder, where are these deserts of plastic in Europe, America? The vastness of these places, of plastic eroding away under the sun and into the sand, the rivers and forests of the African continent cannot elude the thought that maybe we have been fooled yet again.

Because dominance just evolves and hides in aggressive marketing, in fake promises of progress and an ultimate in the disengagement of the actions and motions it sets in place, refusing to take responsibility for them and destabilising and diminishing those who it aims to dominate.

In Senegal, we visited Proplast, a local Senegalese plastic recycling plant which is competing head to head with leading European plastic recycling projects, which allowed us to learn and see the extent and reach of the problem, the difficulties it presents to extra-occidental nations to develop solutions and the zealousness and net worth of the recycling industry as a whole. 

About 80-90% of the production of recycled plastic is sold back to manufacturers in Senegal in a logic of circular economy. The problem is, this is only about 4% of the plastic in Senegal, not to mention an infinitesimal fraction of the plastic of the world. This solution appears to be a necessary measure for a problem which requires larger and more dramatic changes, but how permanent is it? If we look at another example of the circular economy of plastic, such as China, it becomes evident that as their economy and level of life grows, the interest to nurture the recycling industry falls. The China which once took waste shipments from first world countries to their own countryside and other less economically developed areas, for small business to profit, today looks to place a ban of certain waste imports, amongst one of the reasons the intense pollution their air has suffered from being the main recycling plant of the world since the 80s.

And so the problem is continuously changing hands, not from the countries or entities with far more responsibility towards their own waste, but rather to the countries who are at a level of development meagre enough for this to represent progress, education and a semblance of parity.

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Exciting Professionals:  Pacto Collective

After discovering this event and learning it was fully booked I got in touch with them almost immediately. I had known about their existence for about half an hour and the more I read about their individual practices as well as their joint manifesto, the more it resonated with ideas that I wanted to be surrounded by. The exciting thing about the way DPS has panned out for me is that it has in the same way a residency allows artists to focus solely to their work allowed me to search for my tribe, my community and or network of individuals and collectives who truly excite my mind and that I desire to work with or simply be around of.

Specifically, it intrigued me that their manifesto is a collection of buzzwords which make for a rather interesting self-humour and yet a completely serious standpoint.  Moreover, their translocality and desire to build a non-competitive network of support between individuals of different practices really spoke to my own interests.

Statement PACTO is an international alliance of artists, artistic researchers and writers, gathered to discuss and explore collectivity, and to support one another's individual endeavors. Rather than being led by form or structure, PACTO seeks to inquire how to work together and what that means through practice-led processes. PACTO is an actively growing intersectional, anti-hierarchical and decentralized group. PACTO came together through a MilesKm research project initiated in August 2017, and founded itself – themselves – as a collective in July 2018. Currently PACTO members live and work in London, Leiden, Amsterdam, Istanbul, Milan, Porto, and New York City. Our projects and working practice, which range from exhibitions to workshops, from discussions to collaborative writing, reflect this trans-locality. We investigate the possibilities of collective work as an alternative to individualized practice. We understand the art world to be one in which collectivity, communality and sharing are vital, and as such, we seek to facilitate collaborations with other artists, researchers, writers and collectives. We value supportive, self-organizing, alternative and para-institutional models and we aim to reflect on these practices throughout our work together.

I promptly emailed them and asked if It was possible to arrange an interview in the future so that I could write a piece about their collective for my industry Journal. They responded enthusiastically and added me to a list for the event and asked me about what type of journal I was writing about. Little did I know the impact one silly email would have in 3 weeks time!

Finally managing to secure a place in their symposium (which of course overlaps with another meeting and a committee meeting) and make it in time for the last 2/3 of it, I quietly took in the inner workings of how a collective works.

What felt like half an hour where in fact more like six, and after one of the most engaging dialogical sessions I have been a part of recently we packed our things and left Ravens Row as they found it, an empty white space. The poetic nature of this alludes to how collectives exist not in the permanence of things, but rather the experiences and the relations with people, ephemeral but substantially more nurturing than matter. And of course, we went to the pub afterwards where we drank, made small talk and made some excellent connections! That email I wrote a while back even came up in conversation, as they commented it was a source of pride and endearment to the members to read someone so interested in them! As embarrasing as that might be, I wouldn’t take it back passion and enthusiasm is the core of my drive to engage with new things and it mustn’t be stifled.  As Demelza Watts put it during her panel, it was essential!

Pacto has really inspired me to continue pursuing the paths I already gaze upon my horizon, critically engaging and working collectively, because it is what truly fulfils my practice.

Best research/networking I have done so far!

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Exciting professionals:  Risk Hazekamp

Risk Hazekamp graduated from Willem de Kooning Academy and Jan van Eyck Academy exhibited solo and in contemporary art fairs such as Arco Madrid, Art Cologne, Photo Miami and Paris Photo. Risk is used to viewing the world from an outsider’s position and makes the audience consider a very different perspective when peering into the photographs and installations. Their identity and that of the photographs intertwine as Hazekamp explores the intersections between gender and identity and the role this plays in excluding or including individuals from gender normative society. 

Risk’s awareness and understanding of otherness via trans identity is the lens they use as a mechanism of questioning. This, they share in an interview with me, is the approach used as an entry point to discuss decolonial practice in their 2018 exhibition ‘The Dissolution of the West’. 

They revealed to me that it was around 2010-12 when they realised that to delve deeper into the construction of identity, and to see beyond their own, they had to open to switching positions and to sink into what taking place in the world as a white person had meant in that process.  This positioning as an outsider is part of a prism that considers multiple realities converging in a single individual and inevitably its relationship to the hegemonic narrative. To grapple with the pluralistic nature of our identities as well as our inherent privilege or lack thereof as a simultaneous happening is core to the decolonial practice Risk states is important that every individual face. 

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FarrenxEspart takeover

Working with Lucy Farren will become more of a commonplace thing on the new year, and I look forward to the great work that we will produce. Having already partnered up in the past for the IOT speculative pitch, we will soon be taking on the production of an art book and a series of published photoessays by Joel Karamath. 

Moreover, from the 29th of April to the 10th of May, we will do a blog takeover of WOW: DPS.

My pitch for this would be to combine our practice with the DPS collective and make a kickass takeover of the blog by producing a series of risograph publications with DPS stories, images and accounts. 

This is a response to my wish to produce more frequently opportunities to be able to curate artist’s work in exhibitions, podcasts and publications. Celine, my design partner and I are producing a show before the end of the academic year where we trial out a series of briefs by asking people of different practices to  respond to them, and we will curate and produce a show. 

Similarly, I think that using a similar concept to create a publication can be a great way to engage with our fellow DPS peer’s practices, develop our own and promote working as collectives rather than individuals.

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Volunteering 2019

Offprint

http://offprint.org/

I attended this event last year, and inspired me to engage with book art, editorial and in general, to be unafraid to get stuck into the process of making and being part of the publishing world. I have never really seen the publishing world as something I would be able to do or even find appealing as the corporate and commercially pragmatic side of it seemed unrelated in appearance to my own interests and work. Focusing principally on printing as a possible entry point to employment, I was at a loss in where to find places to apply to. After visiting the show I was filled with ideas and possibilities as well as business cards. Most importantly I had also absorbed a few ideas to create projects of my own, and one particular publication truly influenced work I carried out in Senegal and now. 

I have emailed them to see if I could participate in any way in their 2019 events, either in Paris or London. Hopefully, I will be based in Mallorca at the time, but I am sure that both compatible!

Fixperts

http://fixing.education/insights

Having attended to Daniel Cherney’s talk about creative prototyping has really struck a chord with me. His energy and innovative initiative, Fixperts are really inspiring and conceptually interesting. As a result, I have decided to volunteer to help with their archives, a way to help distribute and perpetuate knowledge and skills as well as a sense of community and social good. As well, being exposed to the environment and Cherney’s projects will only result in the broadening of my understanding of things like participatory practices, curation and social design as well as improving my skills as a curator through knowing my way around archival work. I am very pleased with this opportunity because I can work on this from London or anywhere else in the world, which is ideal for when I get confirmation that I have obtained Aba’s internship position. 

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Onomatopee

This past October I was in Eindhoven and had the opportunity to attend the Field Essays Éloge Créole lecture and Round table moderated by Sophie Krier at Onomatopee. I was blown away by the tenacious environment of dialogue and intellectual exchange happening over a relaxed and unpretentious setting. Further exploration of the place surprised me with three excellent exhibitions that framed discussions in ways that had a very unique feel.

Onomatopee recently posted a call for internship applications, and I feel that I did apply a bit too late, as the founder Freek, promptly responded and kindly informed me that they where currently undergoing changes and were unable to employ me.

“The work spans graphic design, the building of exhibitions, dissemination of publicity, operating as host/hostess to visitors, organising events, printing material on the risograph, selling books, doing graphic design, writing, photography and more. Work depending on skill and interest. We prefer able multitaskers.”Regardless he suggested I did so again in a few months time and I wholeheartedly appreciate the time he took to respond and encourage me nevertheless. This only fuels my quiet admiration of the place frankly, as it is one of those spaces that quietly hum with creative energy and exude critical thought and design through every pore. I am certain that I will eventually end up working with them, be it during Dps or after. I intend to pursue a masters in the future, and The Design Academy does stand at the top of that list. Eindhoven will be sure to call my name at a later stage and so will Onomatopee, fear not, Freek, I shall be back!

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ABA ART LAB

For as long as four months I have been dwelling on the influx of self-doubt, a sense of unpreparedness and impostor syndrome that crippled my ability to finalise my portfolio, to send a perfectly written cover letter and a frankly overqualified application to a role that I wasn’t even sure I wanted to apply to.

Aba Art Lab is a gallery and as the name suggests, an art room where artists create site-specific work in response to stimuli. At first glance, looking at their role of illustration intern seemed like an easily attainable internship that would fill the quota of work placement weeks that I required, and would allow me to spend time in Spain near my Catalonian family while learning the language. It doesn’t get more ideal than that. However overqualified I felt, however good the perks, I could not muster a portfolio that satisfied me, as it felt dishonest to who I am as a practitioner. True, all the work is mine, but did it really tell a story I wanted to describe to my practice? The answer is probably not.

Change is good, and growth is impossible without change, but like growing pains, it is a process that can cause quite a lot of discomfort and confusion. It paralysed me as I processed the changes that had already happened, and frankly, being able to travel for a month and a half and not *actually* making any decisions about my future was a blessing.

Working for the DDW was the best thing that happened to me in October, it was a thrilling experience that allowed me to meet designers, students and really inspirational makers. Looking at industry on all levels was insightful and decidedly developed my understanding of what possibilities lied in it other than illustration as a pure form.

It was also uncomfortable because I felt that the more I learned the more I distanced myself from the way I understood art and design, and decidedly it was changing my relationship with it. I could no longer apply as an illustrator to ABA, but was I a good enough designer to be accepted through that application?

Onomatopee really defined much of how I currently feel about the places I want to work with/for, but I will outline more specifically why here.

Applying for the job has had a cathartic effect on me, one that has been propelled by little victories like writting out s.i.p.’s with my design partner, Celine, receiving responses from curators like Risk Hazekamp and in general, a new years fresh and clean slate.

The final factor that contributed to me applying to the gallery was an email I received from Sarah, suggesting I considered the fact someone else had already applied for it with a different set of skills to mine. Mulling over that sentence I rather quickly decided that this was the way to proceed. It is almost like it clicked into place, and within two days I had a portfolio and cover letter ready and a CV that contributes to improving my chances thanks to working with DDW.  Soon after I received an email with a questionnaire which I responded to and returned yesterday. Now I am just in the process of waiting patiently and looking at potential flats to move in...I am not discouraged yet I am essentially a realist; I know that this application was the right move and I have a good feeling about it. 

I will copy the questionnaire here for the same reason as with the Newbridge call; to leave milestones for me to look back onto and to reevaluate my progress and skills.

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Call for ‘Socially Engaged Artists in Development’

The NewBridge Project has appointed Lady Kitt as lead artist for a project (Jan–Mar 2019) exploring ways of taking a socially engaged approach to creative practice. We are seeking expressions of interest from artists to work alongside Kitt on the project: this is a professional development opportunity where you will also be able to support the lead artist in a hands-on manner.

This opportunity is suitable for artists at any stage of their career who want to gain experience in social practice. Prior experience working in this way is not necessary, but an interest in doing so is!

I found this through the website ‘ArtRabbit’ a fabulous site where not only I can update curatorial projects and create platforms of interest and networks for future collaborations, but also search for competitions and opportunities.

My application did not get selected, but I found that writing up my expression of interest helped me collate a few ideas I have been mulling over recently, in particular as I read and intersect ideas of critical and speculative design with reflections on the ‘milenial burnout’ and participatory curation practices.

I would like to share it below, as a sort of milestone totem that I can look back at and help me outline the path that I am currently unwinding before me, one idea and project at a time.

I am a BA student in London, currently undergoing my third year. I do illustration, design and curation. Recently I had the opportunity to curate and produce an exhibition which invited individuals of a multicultural low-SES community in central London to form an active part of the show. By engaging with the available material and through making a series of objects during workshops, we established a dialogical and critical enquiry. They fulfilled our purpose of informing them but most importantly they provided us with valuable insight and feedback into the perceptions different demographics had on the topic. Even though there is no measurable learning outcome, the significance of the project lies in the dialogue facilitated between the artists and the audience, from which not only they profit by learning about their own culture and how it intersects with others. This experience has highlighted new priorities for my practice and deepened my desire to reach people with my work. Improving communication and more specifically to be able to work with broader audiences creates a mutually beneficial ecosystem of art practice and critical thinking.

A study by Create London and The Barbican outlines how out of touch and insular content creators have become, severely distancing the demographics they aim to attract. Developing participatory practices as a standard not only brings closer the audience and art but allows spaces to be used for dialogue and mutually beneficial learning. I believe that my most valuable work is not the one that makes me more ‘employable’ or ‘commercially successful’ but rather the one that makes me feel like I contribute to a collective dream for a better society. I always considered myself a dreamer, but even so, I see how myself and my peers have exchanged dreams for hopes in a world where ‘This is the way things work’. We have become a very pragmatic and stoic generation where we rather forecast the probable, even if it means resigning to it than to speculate and imagine possible futures where we can effect drastic changes to the way we think, make and are.

I believe the mainstream acceptance of design has played a part in this, as it has commercialised the idea that all design and therefore, art must be employed to solve a problem or to make naturally occurring systems more efficient just because we can. The way that design has seamlessly integrated into all levels of our lives showcases the way in which we have interiorised this idiosyncrasy of constant achievement. Taking a step back from result-achieving algorithm based methods is necessary, we should rather foment and support practices that promote creativity and critical thinking and seek to free individuals from established boundaries of performance and worth.

During my research for my thesis, I have found great solace in the teachings of Deleuze and Guattari - a philosopher and psychologist who aimed to decolonise and decentralize the vertical structures of hierarchy inherent in systems of our society. In particular, they looked at education and mental health, two areas where it is of essence that the individuals treated or taught feel like part of the process as the practitioners. The plurality of interactions that contribute to the building of knowledge is more akin to the model of a rhizome, like an interconnected system of roots and therefore a perfect model to dismantle the binary thought that conditions us. I am just starting my path as a socially engaged artist, but it is my fervent wish to work with inspiring people and enterprises that want a better and more engaged art community. This is why I am thrilled with the possibility to work alongside Lady Kitt. My current availability is flexible as I’m doing a two day per week traineeship while also writing my thesis. Mid-March I will move abroad to complete a design and curation internship.

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The infectiousness of social enquiry,  interconnectedness and the power of making.

It is truly amazing what networks of knowledge and idiosyncrasies can do for one’s development as a practitioner. Recently, I have been exposed to a series of ways of working through symposium events and lectures. The most relevant one to this post would be the talk given by Daniel Cherney, a product designer a curator and an educator, founder of the initiative FIXPERTS.

According to their website, Fixperts is a learning programme that challenges young people to use their imagination and skills to create ingenious solutions to everyday problems for a real person. In the process, they develop a host of valuable transferable skills from prototyping to collaboration. Fixperts offers a range of teaching formats to suit schools and universities, from hour-long workshops, to a term-long project, relevant to any creative design, engineering and STEM/STEAM studies. FixEd is the think-and-do tank concerned with inspiring and equipping creative, ingenious and generous problem-solvers around the world (especially, though not exclusively, Fixperts).

Thinking about the current categorisations of ‘design’, ‘making’, ‘craft’ and other similar terminology relevant to the act of producing something with a set of skills, or ethos or education, it is important that we distinguish what it is of this chart which we value, and if we really understand the importance of its permanence and transmission for our future.

Because, can we envision a future with no space for making? Could we survive it without removing the spine of individual and collective critical thought?

As someone who is constantly struggling to define what my label is, and in a constant internal debate between self-definition and media agnostic practice, I found his way of focusing on ‘making’ clear, simple and masterful as well as tailored to each individual. Daniel pinpointed exactly what I and anyone  should keep in mind when doing just about any project;

-Where do you want to see change?

-What is your entry point?

Why you apply ‘design’ and how are crucial questions and defining aspects of your interaction with it and the world.  I found it particularly inspirational that Daniel’s background lies in technical engineering, product design, and most importantly education. Through curating exhibitions for his students he then curated a non-commercial interdisciplinary space at the Aram Galler, where he came across a new way that he could effect change in an area he feels strongly about as a practitioner and deeply cares as an individual.  Improving the future by giving kids the tools and skills to think creatively and use design thinking to foment a renewed and healthy making environment.

This became his ‘area of desired change’ and his training, his teaching and curation the way he produced change, his entry point.

Copy and paste these simple questions, and find yourself someone in need or an issue you feel strongly about, a team to help and you have yourself the formula to be part of change! Junko’s bulleting board tool is just one of the many solutions that the world is in need of, and harnessing our skills and applying them collaboratively to solve a communal issue is in fact as old as society!

I am deeply impressed and inspired by the worldwide network of individuals that are touched on a daily base by the principles of their project. Fixperts has become more than a centralised and local initiative, transcending into a translocal collaborative think tank, which promotes and exercises a dialogical process between design and people. Their archives of videos are in constant expansion and new tools for the next team to research and feel inspired by. As a result of the talk, I have offered to volunteer to organise and update this archive as I'm very compelled to become a part of this network, and there is no better place to start small but in a deep immersion of the outcomes of social design!

Through Fixperts I find bamboozling initiatives such as the floating university. I believe that when we engage all ages in the process of making, questioning and discussing currently established notions we progress a little bit every time. Each question can spark an idea, and like roots, we become a rhizomatic interconnected network that becomes infectious and progress is but a few synapses away from us.

[clauetheart]

Making mistakes is better than not making them.

Recently I went to a show at the Pennings Foundation by Risk Hazekamp, an artist known for challenging established notions of normalcy and nominations of the self. In the show, she tackles colonial legacies, the concept of ‘the other’, the reification of privilege and the way that these intersecting gazes create dichotomies, knot points which can be used in turn to dismantle outdated preconceptions. 

I talked to the invigilator, and although she offered brilliant insight into the little anecdotes of this or another piece, my thirst for exploring the questions shooting in my mind was not satiated. She suggested I wrote a piece for their website, to contact Risk as well. Sheer happiness fueled my step as I left the exhibit, wondering what would I way to the curator. 

I have been struggling to order my ideas, to collate my questions. I’m altogether interested in the content as much as her way of putting it together and how she herself came to encounter the topic and tackle it. I’m fascinated by the way she single-handedly pulled off a show of that stature, and how varied the work in it is, albeit focused in photography as a medium, the use of the definition was pushed in many ways. I'm deeply intrigued and impressed by this person as she checks a lot of the boxes I myself have been exploring recently as a practitioner (curation, decolonization theorisations, art installations).

It has been a month now, and although I mustered the courage to send the email praising the expo and suggesting an interview, I have yet to ask anything. I feel so blocked and uninspired, I feel I know nothing about the questions I supposedly want to ask, nor the field of curation. I feel like an impostor. I suppose I feel intimidated by the idea of sounding like an amateur, and not reaching the bar I have unconsciously set myself.

But I'm stopping this right now. It has been long enough and I owe it to myself to take the risk, to fail, to err. I was quick to forget my favourite piece of advice, that one doesn’t ever stop learning, and that those who truly inspire me are those who are in constant evolution, renewing themselves and pushing forwards by being fearless. Because fearlessness is not about never failing, but knowing that you will and getting up after it and doing it over and over again, walking one step at a time and being gracious with yourself for it.

[clauetheart]

Risk Hazekamp at the Pennings Foundation

Recently I engaged with the curator of Social Dissolution of the West, and I prepared a series of questions for her. With them, I aim to explore the insights behind the curatorial work as well as the critical idea development behind the installations and pieces. 

Questions:

DECOLONIAL AND POSTCOLONIAL THOUGHT:

You talk about reversal of perspectives, which implies tacit acknowledgement of the dichotomous position they take as opposing elements.

-When where you first aware of this ‘difference’ and did that make you question your own standing point as a person and practitioner?

Despite progress made in recent times, decolonisation, postcolonial thinking and doing are concepts that feel academic and inaccessible to the broader public.

-Do you find bridging the gap of education and reaching the audience in an engaging way difficult?

-Can you perceive noticeable reactions from the non-academic audience, be it surprise or shame and/or the desire to contribute to change?

“The narrative in which we grew up is a dynamic and changeable process”

-Are we, however, subject to commodification of ‘otherisation’ to fulfil our own establishment of status?

-Do we carry then, a need for responsibility as individuals benefiting from a model of structural privilege to actively question the established narratives?

Historical memory is a volatile topic rooted at the core of the decolonial practice. The accepted narratives when discussing postcolonial legacies is that of the ‘acculturation’ of new territories with a succinct acknowledgement of the suppression and horror indigenous inhabitants endured. -

Do you believe that the role of institutions in the process of decolonisation should involve a drastic shift in the way that the story is taught nowadays and therefore treated with a more objective and self-critical lens?

CURATION:

This show has a mixture of archival photographies and new takes on the same footage, be it playing with exposures, overlaying or cropping.T he photographs framed sliding off the wall, the double exposure of film or the mirrors installed to show the back of the archival images allow for multiple layers of depth and meaning to emerge to the viewer.  The way in which the images have been organised and made to engage with space create a narrative of questioning but leaves it open to the viewer’s interpretation.

-In your own words, what is the purpose of creating these overlaps?

-During the duration of these installations, do you work out these approaches with an element of spontaneity while putting up the exhibition or is there a more pre-empted planning parting from specific questions you want the audience to ask?

-When you prepared the rationale of the identity of the exhibition, what inspired you to use elements that ’slide off the wall’, that lay cropped on a table, that is taped with bright red tape to other images side by side to neatly (and traditional) aligned frames?

I was told by the foundation that this has been a project with a long research and development process and that you singlehandedly created almost 100% of all the work, the curation and the installation of the exhibition. This is no small feat as you take on roles of researcher, writer-producer, artist-curator and instal team. It’s clear that you have the capacity to see a bigger picture and are capable of materialising ambitious visions you create.

-Do you have any advice for a young maker/thinker who wants to pursue projects in a similar way?