Month: April 2023

The Intended Audience

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? 

Bibliography

Arvidsson, A. (2019) Changemakers. Cambridge: Polity Press. pp 1 – 38.

Halprin, L. (1969) RSVP Cycles: Creative Processes in the Human Environment. New York: George Braziller.

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. 

*

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.

*

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.

*

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.

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.

THE FINAL PUBLICATION

---

---

---

Publication Experiment One

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.