To think about The Common Room : A Refuge From A Condition That We Cannot Escape beyond the workshop and the confines of MAGCD alone, I decided to create a social Face Filter that will allow for reflection and exchange including questions that were raised and discussed during the workshop.
Below are a few responses from those who have used the Reflective Q&A Face Filter by The Common Room:
1. Rebecca Li – Womenswear Fashion Designer
2. Teresa Fogolari – 3D Designer and Creative Director
3. Precious Opara – Fine Artist and Art Director
Offprint @ Tate
I also presented and sold 5 copies of ‘A Condition That We Cannot Escape: Dialogues Exploring the State of Creative Labour Under Crisis Capitalism’ at Offprint London @ the Tate Modern.
I see The Common Room expanding beyond the boundaries of MAGCD. Whether it’s through circulating the printed ephemera that results from the process of research and dialogue, or creating a social platform where the progress of The Common Room is being shared with others in the hopes of involving others and building a community around the exchange of ideas, knowledge and purpose of The Common Room.
Based on the results, dialogues and materials collected from the workshop, I developed a two part poster series titled ‘A Map to The Future of Creative Pursuit.’
First: I used each individuals’ manifestos and their notes from the dialogues prompted by excerpts from my publication, ‘A Condition That We Cannot Escape: Dialogues on the State of Creative Labour Under Crisis Capitalism,’ to develop a collective manifesto for The Common Room.
Second: I used each person’s ‘Present – Future Graph’ to plot the trajectory of the hopes and fears for future of creative pursuit.
I chose to continue working with text as a diagrammatic form to reflect the collaboration, complexity and reflective exchange that took place during the collective discussion at The Common Room Workshop.
In the publication the diagrammatic cadence matched the flow of dialogue between two people; whereas the manifesto and the plot are born out of a collective conversation that holds a multiplicity of voices. Also reflected in the choice to use layered Risograph printing techniques.
Riso Printing ProcessRiso Printing ProcessRiso Printing ProcessTactile Engagement with the PosterRisograph Scraps
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The workshop helped me think about this project beyond the publication and dialogue; I now see The Common Room as a starting point to build a community around.
The Common Room is a refuge from A Condition That We Cannot Escape. A condition of polycrisis under exploitative capitalism.
Inspired by Virginia Woolf’s, A Room of One’s Own, The Common Room aims to reshape our understanding of the barriers we face in pursuing sustainable creative work as not just being our own – but as systemic issues we face collectively.
Below is a text excerpt of the full manifesto that lays out the guiding principles and purpose of The Common Room.
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the purpose OF The Common Room IS To create space, build community, initiate dialogues and make demands that can allow us to take control of OUR FUTURES and shape the conditions of CREATIVE LABOUR UNDER CAPITALISM IN POLYCRISIS.
THE COMMON ROOM IS A COLLECTIVE METAPHORICAL SPACE: IT CAN TAKE MANY SHAPES AND FORMS. THE PURPOSE OF ITS SHAPE IS ONE that can unify us as a community of creative WORKERS AND THINKERS with common interestS.
THE COMMON ROOM AIMS TO BUILD frameworks and STRATEGIES that enable us to imagine and demand economically, psychologically, ecologically and creatively sustainable MODES OF WORKING.
WHILE IT MAY inevitably BE NECESSARY TO WORK WITH OR WITHIN THE LIMITS OF EXISTING institutions, SYSTEMS AND POWERS THAT BE; THE COMMON ROOM hopes to PUSH beyond the constraints of the failures of SUCH OPPRESSIVE systems of power THROUGH CRITIQUE, DIALOGUE AND IMAGINATION.
THE ETERNAL GOAL, HOWEVER, IS not TO seek PLAIN reform of existing bodies, but TO DEVELOP an active method to REVEAL new MODES of operating. THAT IS, TO build a totally different system of creatIVE LABOUR AND PRODUCTION.
USE THE COMMON ROOM AS A SPACE TO QUESTION EXPLOITATIVE AND OPPRESSIVE SYSTEMS. WE SEEK PATHWAYS TOWARS LIBERATION.
THE COMMON ROOM CELEBRATES GAPS, UNCERTAINTIES AND UNKNOWNS. GAPS ARE ESSENTIAL FOR IMAGINATION. THEY ARE SPACES TO BE FILLED.
THE COMMON ROOM AIMS TO FOSTER A COMMUNITY OF MUTUAL SUPPORT. THERE IS NO ROOM FOR GATEKEEPING. ALL KNOWLEDGE IS SHARED FREELY IN THIS SPACE.
BOUNDARIES OF THE COMMON ROOM ARE ALWAYS SHIFTING. ITS IS A SPACE FOR PERPETUAL CONTINUITY, CHANGE AND REINVENTION.
ONLY IN COMMUNAL DIALOGUE CAN WE RECOGNISE THE PROBLEMS WE FACE AS NOT JUST OUR OWN, BUT AS RELATIONAL TO SYSTEMIC FAILURES. THE COMMON ROOM ENCOURAGES DEEP REFLECTION AND MUTUAL EXCHANGE THAT MAY ALLOW US TO ABANDON THE LONELY PUSUIT OF INDIVIDUAL ACTION IN EXCHANGE FOR A COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS.
AS THE BARRIERS TO CREATIVE PURSUIT GET STEEPER, THE COMMON ROOM AIMS TO UPLIFT THE VOICES OF THOSE WHO STRUGGLE WITH ACCESS TO KNOWLEDGE AND OPPORTUNITY.
PRODUCTIVITY DOES NOT COME FROM STRUGGLE . CREATIVE WORK REQUIRES SUPPORTIVE SYSTEMS AND CONDITIONS THAT ALLOW FOR productivity WITHOUT BURNOUT.
THE COMMON ROOM DEMANDS A FUTURE WHERE WE ARE NOT SACRIFICING OUR MENTAL WELLBEING TO MEET OUR MOST BASIC MATERIAL NEEDS.
THE COMMON ROOM BELIEVES THAT FINANCIAL SECURITY IS NOT A LUXURY. NO MORE WORKER EXPLOITATION, UNPAID WORK, LOW WAGES AND UNFAIR FEES.
AS TRADITIONAL CREATIVE JOBS AND CAREERS DISAPPEAR. AND PEOPLE ENGAGE IN A MIX OF BOTH FREELANCE AND EMPLOYED WORK, THERE NEEDS TO BE MORE SUPPORT FOR THOSE ENGAGING IN SUCH FLUID MODES OF WORK. INSTABILITY CANNOT BECOME THE NORM FOR CREATIVE WORKERS.
THE COMMON ROOM SEES AI AS A TOOL TO ENHANCE, NOT REPLACE, HUMAN COGNITION. APPLICATIONS OF AI MUST PROTECT THE NEEDS AND RIGHTS OF PEOPLE OVER PROFIT.
THE COMMON ROOM DOES NOT BELIEVE THAT EVERY CREATIVE AND CRITICAL ENDEAVOUR NEEDS A CLEAR PATH TOWARDS RESOLUTION. ENGAGING SOLELY with questions where the path to resolution can be preemptively laid out REQUIRES THAT WE ONLY DEAL WITH THAT WHICH CAN immediately BE solved. THERE IS NOTHING WORSE THAN ENDING UP WITH A CULTURE THAT ONLY FOCUSSES ON PROBLEMS THAT ARE EASY TO SOLVE.
AT ITS CORE, THE COMMON ROOM TREATS CREATIVE EXPRESSION AS THE ESSENCE OF BEING ALIVE.
For this term I wanted to understand how the dialogues captured in the publication from earlier in the unit could prompt further discussion and action amongst an audience.
My enquiry : how can dialogue help us make sense of the current state of creative labour and production in context of an economy in crisis under digital capitalism and prompt us to take control of our own futures as we cope with these conditions?
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To do this, I decided to conduct a workshop with a group of students at CSM MAGCD. I decided to keep this initial workshop small as it is an initial test. Therefore it made sense to initially set a boundary of common discipline and similar experience.
However, I see this expanding beyond these boundaries as the idea of The Common Room grows; the eventual aim is to unify creative labour across disciplines and levels of experience.
Since the MAGCD cohort brings people with varying practices and backgrounds – this still maintains the broader definition of creative work.
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The Workshop Invite
The Common Room Reflective Workshop, Conversation and Free Snacks!
The Condition Capitalism has encroached into every facet of our lives. Our ecologies are collapsing. Wealth and power are held at the hands of a few. Wages are stagnant. Social safety nets are non-existent. The idea of community has been destroyed. We. Must. Be. Productive. Every minute must be monetised. If it is not commercially viable it must be sacrificed. Studio space is expensive. Rent is due. We’re all burnt out. And apparently we’ve all got to worry about AI taking over?!
Give us a break.
It feels as if we’re stuck in a condition that we cannot escape. Doesn’t it? How do we cope with this condition? What does it mean to pursue a life in the creative industry at this moment in time? Are you anxious about the future that awaits us? Where do we find supportive creative communities? The Workshop I know I’ve painted a bit of a bleak picture of the world. But there is good news. Whatever the condition is that we find ourselves within; we are not alone. We’re lucky to find ourselves at university, amongst each other, experiencing these anxieties together. But we only have a short while before we’re all out in the real world.
So, if you find that you share some of these anxieties, I would love to have you join The Common Room. The Common Room is a refuge; it will be an introspective workshop that allows us to take some time to think about our creative practice in relation to the world. With some free snacks, sweet treats and conversation, you will be encouraged to reflect on your practice, connect with others, exchange perspectives and come up with ways to cope with the future.
The workshop will feed into the construction of a Manifesto for Creative Work that will make up part of my final project and I would be extremely grateful for your participation and input!
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The Workshop Structure, Prep & Materials
I created a 4 part workshop structure to guide participants’ reflections, dialogues, positioning and future projections. I also created worksheets for each part of the workshop, and slides that include an introduction to the workshop and instructions for each part.
Task 1 : Plot Your Practice Participants will be asked to reflect on their practice and plot their positions in relation to FULFILMENT & DEPLETION + EXCITEMENT & STABILITY according to where the see themselves in the PRESENT, FUTURE [HOPE] & FUTURE [FEARS].
A few participants will be chosen to share their plot. And open up dialogue between people that have similar or even differing views.
Task 2 : Read, Reflect, Discuss Participants are given an excerpt from my publication ‘A Condition We Cannot Escape: Dialogues on the State of Creative Labour Under Capitalism.’ They will read the excerpt. Reflect. And in groups of two exchange what they have read and their reflections with one another.
There will then be a wider group discussion on the various topics discussed.
Task 3 : Manifesto | A Framework for the Future of Your Practice Based on the discussion and reflections so far on conditions of creative work, participants will be given the chance to develop a manifesto for the future of their own creative practices with the help of a worksheet that provides certain lenses and frames to think within.
The workshop also provides a list of existing manifestos to use as a starting point to build and collage a new one of their own.
Task 4 : A Message to Your Future Self | Time Capsule To close off the workshop. Participants will be given a postcard to place in a time capsule. They will be asked to write a message to their future selves a year from now. This helps participants to start a conversation with themselves in the future. These cards will be sent to each participant via email/mail in a year’s time.
In Adam Arvidsson’s (2019) book, Changemakers, he describes a condition of people yearning for connection and productive change from a space of precarity during periods of flux. I see myself as one of these people, and am sure there are others seeking the same. The motivation to pursue this project was first and foremost for myself. But it is also for fellow students, practitioners and educators that are navigating their studies, curriculums and careers within creative industries seeking change even when a tangible path to change seems unclear. Through the course of this project I hope to involve those who are engaged in, those who are frustrated by and those who can influence the current systems we occupy.
Engagement So Far
My intention with this first part of the project was to make myself and my conversation partners audiences to one another. I did so by creating a framework to engage in mutual dialogue, rather than a one-sided interview. In the case of work that place such a demand on participants and audiences, they, ‘must exhibit a commitment to the idea … and be willing…’ to involve themselves (1969: p.190). The willingness of all those involved, needless to say, greatly impacts the nature of the results.
Thus, I see my conversation partners as participants, contributors and audiences to the ideas presented through my work. They are those who are willing. Willing to be involved, share and listen. Have an attitude of care towards making some change, however small or impossible it may seem. I reached out to people in my networks expressed what my project was aiming to explore, and chose five people who were most willing to discuss the subject of creative pursuit under Capitalism – and all of the other connecting threads.
The response post-dialogue was encouraging: each of the people I conversed with felt these were absolutely necessary conversations to have. We agreed that these are conversations we have with each other all the time. But often they’re conversations we brush off as we resign to the fact that nothing can be done.
In the context of this project, the process of documenting and being able to look back and reflect on the thoughts and feelings we express in such conversations, many (including myself) felt it would be incredibly useful to tangibly pick up on the systemic failures we come up against all the time. Things we are all aware of, yet we find that we cannot focus on them as they are concerns that are much larger than we as individuals can meaningfully deal with.
On sharing the completed publication back with those whom I dialogued with, again I was encouraged. All were interested in what the others had to say. And comforted by the commonalities in our experiences. Beyond that, they were even more intrigued by those with different perspectives.
I have also shared the publication with friends and fellow students on MAGCD. And one of the bits of feedback that stuck out to me was that each the individual character of each of my dialogue partners shone through. It was very important to me to preserve the qualities of the very idiosyncratic characteristics and human dynamics within dialogue.
Plans For Future Audience Engagement
To involve people outside of MAGCD and those I have dialogued with, I have arranged to speak to a group of 14 final year students at London College of Fashion studying BA Critical Practice in Fashion Media on April 21st 2023.
I will be speaking with them about navigating creative career paths within the current condition and distributing copies of the publication. I will also engage them in a group discussion, to encourage them to share their experiences, perspectives, hopes and concerns as they are on the precipice of entering the creative industry. This will be an opportunity to receive feedback on my project, but also to push it forward. Perhaps it is a chance to ask them about what they speculate the future might look like? Or how they might like to be engaged in these types of discussions further? Perhaps this may give me ideas on how these conversations can be facilitated through different formats and circulated in different ways?
Additionally, this project is also aimed at those in positions of power within creative industries and institutions; for their acknowledgement of these issues they should be concerned and involved with. For now I will specify the audience within my reach at university: heads of college, those who allocate funding, work in careers development, student union leaders, those who develop curriculums and initiatives. This is a bit more nerve-wracking but I think it would be important to at least make an attempt to engage with someone in such a position.
To keep it specific. I might try to send a copy to the Head of College at CSM, Rathna Ramanathan. With Rathna being a Graphic Communication practitioner and working within publishing I can get her perspective on the format, design and circulation of my project. And also, hopefully start a discussion on some of the topics covered through the dialogues as well. Along with the publication I will include a note outlining key points about the project and publication that can help me open a dialogue with Rathna.
Further Development
I think while I am still a bit unsure about where to take this project next, there are a few threads that I can follow to help me get there.
The first being: how can such dialogues can take place and be documented on a different scale. Can there be a bigger discussion with more people? What might that look like? Can this be a physical group workshop? Or a digital forum? How can this be circulated in other ways? Can the content from this publication be translated into prompts for further discussion?
The next being: if the first part of this project was about exploring the present conditions. Can the next part of the project be about involving others to speculate and visualise scenarios for the future?
Below is the full excerpt written by me for the Preface from the publication, ‘A Condition We Cannot Escape.’
Capitalism has encroached into every facet of our lives. Our ecologies are collapsing. Wealth and power are held at the hands of a few. Wages are stagnant. Social safety nets are non-existent. The idea of community has been destroyed.
We. Must. Be. Productive. Every minute must be monetised. If it is not commercially viable it must be sacrificed. We’re all burnt out. And apparently we’ve all got to worry about AI taking over?! Give us a fucking break.
It feels as if we’re stuck in a condition that we cannot escape. Doesn’t it?
What you are about to read is a document of five conversations between myself and my friends; all of whom are engaged in different kinds of labour within the creative industry. It is a record of the frantic discussions we’re all engaged in. All the time. About everything that is happening. All at once. Together, these dialogues construct a portrait of each of us in relation to the state of things in the world we currently inhabit.
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While constructing the visual form of these dialogues, it became important to preserve the idiosyncratic qualities of each conversation.
Conversations are messy, layered and contradictory. Often, we interrupt ourselves and each other with new trains of thought. We may leave several points unfinished, only to later go back to them. Many parallel conversations may take place within the wider conversation. And a conversation that took place at another time may leak into one that you’re currently having.
The spatial organisation of text on each page is therefore informed by diagrammatic compositions that mirror the dynamic cadence of the ongoing, unresolved nature of thoughts shared through dialogue.
Repetitive systems, immediacy and smoothness are qualities that have been deemed desirable due to Graphic Design’s designated role as a tool for commodification under capitalism. In which case, friction and ‘aesthetic discomfort can also be a position of liberation,’ (Krishnamurthy, 2021). Visualising conversations that are largely critiquing the state of creative labour under capitalism, it seemed congruous to introduce such friction. Friction that preserves complexity and allows you to pause, engage and take your time with conversations that are difficult to have.
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Inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (2019), I originally conceived this book as a carrier bag:
‘The shape of a book might be that of a sack, a bag. A book holds words. Words hold things. They bear meanings… In a particular, powerful relation to one another and to us.
Conflict, competition, stress, struggle, etc., within a narrative conceived as a carrier bag, may be seen as necessary elements of a whole, which itself cannot be characterised either as conflict or as harmony, since it’s purpose is neither resolution nor stasis but continuing process,’ (ibid., p. 34-35).
Le Guin disputes the importance of murderous tools in our histories such as the spear, the swords and the arrows in favour of the carrier bag. She retells a story of our history as early humans; as gatherers before hunters (ibid.). While it emphasises a less violent story of our histories, unfortunately, even this imagination does not go untainted within our present condition. As what tool is more abundant today than the plastic carrier bag? The ones that fill up our oceans and landfills. Well. Let’s keep that to one side for now.
Unlike the singular trajectories that spears and arrows represent, the carrier bag symbolises a variety of things, all tangled with one another, all existing at the same time. Rejecting the linear, slick, streamlined ways in which we conceive time, history and the stories we tell, a carrier bag narrative doesn’t aim to tell stories of heroes in a series of conflicts, victories and neat conclusions. Instead, it leaves room for the messy simultaneous contradictions we find ourselves faced with in our realities, our day to day experiences and our conversations.
As it does for Le Guin, the carrier bag approach is an attempt to ground myself in our shared existence, ‘in human culture in a way I never felt grounded before,’ (ibid.: p. 30). The process of understanding the state of our realities needs to be grounded in collective understanding. And that requires us to relinquish simple narratives, satisfying conclusions and solutions in favour of a multiplicity of trajectories and possibilities.
Through conversation, I construct an entangled – admittedly limited – carrier bag to record the chaotic condition we find ourselves in. This is a continuous process that may not necessarily neatly tie up every loose end. It is an excerpt of a permanently ongoing discussion of what is and what could be.
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Finally, I want to acknowledge that my project is not trying to identify and solve everything that is wrong with capitalism. It would be incredibly stupid for any one individual to claim the ability to do so. I don’t believe that every endeavour must follow a specific path that leads to a tidy resolution. Foreseeing a resolution assumes that every question has a correct answer. It assumes that a singular and conclusive solution is always desirable. What is even worse is to engage only with questions where the path to resolution can be preemptively laid out. What happens then to issues that cannot be immediately solved? Do we simply place them in a plastic carrier bag? One that can be tied up, binned and quickly relegated to an obsolescent matter of the past.
The point is, I feel compelled to gather these conversations because I have the opportunity to learn how people think, feel and cope with the world.
‘The difficulty in imagining a direction for change results from a virtually complete colonisation of the imaginary on the part of commercial culture… But perhaps another reason is because it is still early days’, (Arvidsson, 2019: p. 2).
When everything has been subsumed by the throes capitalism, including our feelings of hope and our ability to imagine alternative ways of being, it can be valuable to meaningfully engage with each other as we figure out what is actually going on.
As we stand at the precipice of a future that is quickly approaching us, sifting through the clutter of the present may be able to reveal potential threads that lead to some of the many possibilities and eventualities. And perhaps we might want to ask ourselves if any of the eventualities that are most likely to emerge are in any way desirable to us.
A Condition We Cannot Escape: The Carrier Bag Edition
References: Arvidsson, A. (2019) Changemakers. Cambridge: Polity Press. Krishnamurthy, P. (2021) On Bumpiness, In Letters. [Recorded Lecture]. Le Guin, U. K. [1988] (2019) The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction. Ignota Books.
BOOK LAYOUT Below are some images of the process of developing the layout designs, separated by colour.
RISO PROCESS Once I created the final layouts for the publication, I decided to print it in Risograph as the method of separation and layering were congruous to the ways in which dialogues were layered, complex and would allow me to differentiate between different trains of thought.
Below are some images taken throughout the process of printing, arranging and binding the final copies of the book.
I created an initial publication experiment, bringing forward the diagrammatic elements from work in the previous unit to being to give visual form to conversation and dialogues.
In making this experiment I was inspired by Johanna Drucker’s ‘Diagrammatic Writing’ (2013).
Drucker’s visual, poetic essay emphasises the importance of the visual format of text and its appearance on the page by illustrating how the way text is arranged imparts meaning that supplements the content.
It can superimpose a rhythm, cadence and tone to the writing. It can control the pace at which information is absorbed.
The spatial organisation of text on each page of the publication I have created is therefore informed by diagrammatic compositions that mirrors the dynamic cadence of the ongoing, unresolved nature of thoughts and words shared through dialogue. This is something I will take forward more strongly in the final publication.
I have also experimented with AI generated images and found archival material from to juxtapose with the contents of the conversations. However, I believe they distract from the depth of the conversation being had. So in the final publication I will focus on the dialogues and the visual form of dialogues.
I also experimented with different paper stock, I will carry forward a slightly transluscent paper that allows the dialogues and conversation to layer and build over and seep into one another.
I began to explore the metaphorical nature of diagrams. And their ability to give shape to complex and even inconceivable concepts. I also formulated a set of unanswerable questions that – when drawn in parallel with open-ended diagrammatic constructions – could prompt the act to resolve, think, respond and dialogue. To prompt this process, I created two sets of cards where the objective is to pair an unanswerable question with a diagram that helps you formulate an open-ended response to the question. Or perhaps, the question gives you a framework within which you develop an understanding of a diagram. The objective here is to trigger a process of developing meaning. And exchanging the meanings you have inferred with another.
There are no correct answers to these questions. Rather than working towards a fixed and correct way to respond to the questions, it is about developing a shared understanding that people can interpret things differently, and come to their own conclusions.
The purpose here is to accept the existence of gaps and difference in our interpretations – which may leave us open to accepting and learning other viewpoints. The exercise here is not telling you how to think about something. But encouraging you to think and be open to new ideas in return.
Diagram Cards: Forty-four abstract diagrammatic cards and two blank cards in case you want to expand on the set of diagrams.
My original card experiments were in risograph. However, I have printed the final set of cards using a digital inkjet machine as I wasn’t looking to make multiple copies of the same set of diagrams, but print a number of different diagram cards. I have preserved the colour and layer separation style of the risograph experiments.
Unanswerable Questions: Twelve unanswerable questions and two blank cards in case you want to note down and attempt to navigate any difficult questions that you’ve been pondering.
Instruction Sheet: This document includes a set of diagrammatic and verbal instructions that illustrate how to use the two sets of cards in a way that might trigger the process of resolution, thought and dialogue.
This document has been risograph printed to complement the layered elements of the diagrams; moreover, this method of print allows for easy multiplication to make multiple copies of the instructions to share with participants.
