Week 1 - What even is Anarchy?
Upon receiving the brief, the group contemplated the paradoxical nature it contained.
How can a design framework, which is rooted in order and decision-making coincide with a philosophy like Anarchism, that resists hierarchy?
Why would anarchists opt to join a course within a structured institution like UAL?
The many restrictions and contradictions within the brief seemed daunting and unachievable.
To move forward, we realised defining what Anarchy is, for the sake of this brief, is crucial. Even though anarchists differ in opinion, and might resist the idea of defining it at all, we agreed on two key elements: it is non-hierarchical and voluntary.
These elements of anarchy in our definition are important as it pertains to access to knowledge and fostering collaboration without authority - core anarchist philosophies that aim to deconstruct power dynamics.
In an attempt to answer our queries, we turned to the references provided in the brief.
I read “Making Trouble: Design and Material Activism” (Busch, 2022). What stood out to me was the concept that matter has an inherent attitude and humans refine and impose their intention onto it. This reinforced my understanding that design is filled with power dynamics. So how can we use this framework to design a system that resists it?
Another reading came to mind, Frayling’s notion of research through design (1993). In it he argues we can use design as a tool for research. With this in mind, I thought we can use the design framework to explore non-hierarchical systems rather than create them ourselves. This perspective allowed me to reconcile the role of design in this brief.
Inspired by the different ideas and possibilities each group member had, we settled on a concept of a toolkit. Instead of choosing just one idea to move forward with, we thought it would be best to not choose - instead provide students with an array of resources they can pick from. This would respect the voluntary nature of anarchism as we viewed it while allowing us to design the resources to include, and avoid potential imposed power that can happen during the process of eliminating ideas.
This would provide students with a non-hierarchical educational experience, one that gives them the freedom to explore topics of interest independently, based on their needs, preferences and motivations.
We refined a few questions to explore in the following weeks:
Can students be in charge of their own curriculum?
How can a globally dispersed community connect without mainstream technology?
How do we motivate students to engage with the course material?
↑ Initial exploration of the brief. We each looked into references provided in the brief and introduced them to the group.
↑ Conducting individual interest and concept explorations, we then discussed them in the group to assess common areas of interest.
↑ Arrival at the initial “toolkit” idea inspired by everyone’s directions.
Feedback:
Presenting both items to the class (the skirt and the spiral), it was apparent the skirt was a crowd-favourite. We were suggested to have merged both designs rather than scrapping the skirt and starting entirely over.
Reflection:
This brief was a good exercise in cultivating confidence in your design ideas, which we lacked and resulted in the decision to pivot to an entirely new design. I agree we should’ve added on top of the skirt design and expanded upon it rather than casting it aside entirely. We spent the majority of our time working on the skirt, and therefore ended up slightly disappointed with both end results. Additionally, upon further research, we realised our assumption of the location’s purpose was incorrect. Had we conducted preliminary research we would have possibly experienced it differently which would have resulted in different designs.
References:
Busch. O.V, (2022) Making Trouble: Design and Material Activism. London; New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts.
Frayling, C. (1993) Research in Art and Design. Royal College of Art Research Papers, 1(1), pp.1–5.