Design - Economies - Designers

or, Let’s tweak power relations

Bianca Elzenbaumer / Brave New Alps

www.brave-new-alps.com

@bravenewalps

The Expanded Designer, Camberwell College of Art,

University of London, 19.10.2015

Premise

Premise

- as designers we create imaginaries

Premise

- as designers we create imaginaries

- we perpetuate or transform value-practices

Premise

- as designers we create imaginaries

- we perpetuate or transform value-practices

- we can enact prefigurative politics

Premise

- as designers we create imaginaries

- we perpetuate or transform value-practices

- we can enact prefigurative politics

Our skills put us in a pretty powerful position!

Premise

- as designers we create imaginaries

- we perpetuate or transform value-practices

- we can enact prefigurative politics

Our skills put us in a pretty powerful position!

But precarious working and living conditions* often

act as a blockage to fully take on responsiblities.

*precarious working and living conditions:

- underpaid work

- irregular work

- hyper-flexibility

- work taking over life

- no sick pay

- no parental leave

- no pension scheme

- no paid holidays

*precarious working and living conditions:

- underpaid work

- irregular work

- hyper-flexibility

- work taking over life

- no sick pay

- no parental leave

- no pension scheme

- no paid holidays

But passion, ambition and disorientation seem to

keep us going.

Let’s use our design skills to tweak these power

relations!

Let’s use our design skills to tweak these power

relations!

Designing (empowering) economic cultures

as prefigurative politics.

Let’s use our design skills to tweak these power

relations!

Designing (empowering) economic cultures

as prefigurative politics.

Economy not as a distant sphere, but as something

we make every day.

Let’s use our design skills to tweak these power

relations!

Designing (empowering) economic cultures

as prefigurative politics.

Economy not as a distant sphere, but as something

we make every day.

Mobilise design “to become different economic

beings” (J.K. Gibson-Graham, 2006) and to shift

precarising socio-economic dynamics.

Two suggestions

Two suggestions

a) learn the business tools of our trade

Two suggestions

a) learn the business tools of our trade

b) enact prefigurative politics:

in how we structure our practice and

through what we produce

Formes Vives (Brest, Nantes, Marseilles)

- 3 graphic designers & illustrators

- work with non-profit organisation, activist

groups, public institutions, artists

- 3 different cities (large client base)

- constantly learn from each other

- common website

- daily one hour online meeting

- occasional work sessions in the same place

See interview: http://precaritypilot.net/formes-vives/

Kate Rich / Feral Trade (Bristol)

- artist, hacker and radical trader

- 1 project since 2003

- part of the loose collective irational.org

- low cost living

- minute attention to monetary and

non-monetary resources

- not growth oriented

See interview: designingeconomiccultures.net

Importance of designing economic cultures

Importance of designing economic cultures:

- undo (or at least deal proactively with) own

working conditions in this precarising industry

Importance of designing economic cultures:

- undo (or at least deal proactively with) own

working conditions in this precarising industry

- making space for design practices that are less

market-driven

Importance of designing economic cultures:

- undo (or at least deal proactively with) own

working conditions in this precarising industry

- making space for design practices that are less

market-driven

- open the field of design for people from less

privilged backgrounds

Importance of designing economic cultures:

- undo (or at least deal proactively with) own

working conditions in this precarising industry

- making space for design practices that are less

market-driven

- open the field of design for people from less

privilged backgrounds

... in order to activate our collective design skills to

shift power relations to a more hopeful place.

Thank you.

Some reading suggestions

Askins, K., 2015. Participatory geographies, in: Richardson, D. et al. (Eds.), International

Encyclopedia of Geography. Wiley-Blackwell with Association of American Geographers,

Washington, DC.

Brave New Alps, 2015. Precarity Pilot: Making Space for Socially- and Politically

Engaged Design. Modes of Criticism.

Gibson-Graham, J.K., 2006. The Community Economy, in: A Postcapitalist Politics. Univer-

sity of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis/London, pp. 79–100.

Graziano, V., 2014. Neither Scylla nor Charybdis: some muses on forming one’s practice

and resisting bad arguments.

http://precaritypilot.net/valeria-graziano-organising-your-practice/