Photography thanks to Marjo Loponen
WHERE IS DESIGN TODAY? AND WHY?
—Michael Oswell
Today’s setup does not seek directly to answer these questions; rather it is an intuitive response to a given situation, a situation where economic meltdown is met with frantic attempts to maintain or reinstate the status quo, where educational and public sector institutions are ‘streamlined’, where designers as professionals are expected to play along, and those entering the profession are expected to play along for free.
As recent graduates we are plunged into a situation of considerable uncertainty often masked with the rubric of flexibility. We are literally in a point of transition between imperatives – the assessment criteria of education and the fundamentally profit-led requirements of business. Where we go from here is a matter of personal choice, yet it is rarely a choice made freely.
In recent years designers have transitioned from being a productive force to being a discrete consumer category. As such, today we are focussing on production processes - the core of what we do as designers. Various workshops; letterpress, screen-printing and digital stencil printing are today put to various uses by students and alumni of the LCC, often in configurations that fall outside the requirements of professional practice.
Nearly twenty years ago, Gilles Deleuze wrote that when one is faced with a new sociopolitical situation, ‘there is no need to fear or hope – only to look for new weapons’. The task here is less to find overt weapons than to attempt escape routes from the prescribed forms of practice that are presented to us by industry; to find from our points of transition, a new space in which to operate.
22nd September 2010
Anti-Design Festival
RADLAB Londonewcastle
28 Redchurch Street
London E2 7DP
