PRECARITY PILOT

Brave New Alps (2015) Precarity Pilot: Making Space for Socially- and Politically-engaged Design Practice

https://modesofcriticism.org/precarity-pilot/

Main quotes:

- How can one walk the line between some sort of financial sustainability and the production of design work that critically challenges accepted power structures and discourse? How can one organize a design practice that creates space for work that is socially- and politically-engaged and aims for social transformation? At the time, the only answers we could get were centred around a) living in a country where the government supports critical cultural work, namely through state funding; b) setting up a successful commercial practice and taking 10% of your time to do pro-bono or other kinds of socially-engaged work; c) getting into teaching to monetarily stabilise and feed your practice; d) being able to count on the wealth of your family.

- If design work was to be supportive of naturocultural justice, i.e. a justice that does not only consider humans but also non-humans (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2014), there was a need to put in place strategies that would allow socially- and politically-engaged designers from diverse geographical and social backgrounds to develop viable practices.

- Although designers and design education do not openly speak about it, within the creative industries most people are exposed to exhausting precarious working and living conditions, such as bulimic work patterns, long hours, poor pay, anxiety, psychological and physical stress, and lack of social protection (c.f. Elzenbaumer & Giuliani, 2014; Lorey, 2006;)

- The workshops should contribute to the creation of economies— within and beyond design — that foster naturocultural justice and equality. Through PP, we invite designers to experiment with tackling the tensions between the production of engaged content and precariousness by embarking in the co-creation of economies (and ecologies) of support that allow long-term viability of design practices that aim for social transformation.

- We see the current notion of success within the field of design — focused on individual visibility and market value — closely entangled with the precarising rat race typical of capitalist economies. It contributes to the rarefication of more radical social engagement, and as this engagement often hinders one’s ability, but also willingness, to participate in the aforementioned race. In this individualising climate, we see the need to introduce ways of working and living that follow an “ethics of care” (Tronto, 1993) towards others and that are thus grounded in a more thorough understanding of the politics engendered by one’s individual and collective ways of practicing design.

- PP recalls that designers can work and organise themselves in different ways, and that these can be functional under current, difficult conditions while also being prefigurative of a different future.

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