Design Politics

The way I see it is that if you’re designing something for a political cause (and do a good job) then you’re furthering the mission of that organisation. Depending which organisations you will and won’t work for results in a kind of natural selection of ideas, the best communicated surviving. This may well be over-estimating the role of design, but I do that the Green party had the best looking junk mail at the last UK election.

/quis 14/06/2005

Ignoring the idea for the moment that it’s impossible to be political anymore, which seems to negate any potential to discuss this issue at all, I’m going to go with the idea that it is…

If I get John Miller right, it’s at the point that symbolic capital is rewarded with real money - if an art writer is lucky - that the political potential of their work (or the work that they are commenting on) starts to be questioned. Most famously, in the graphic arena, the ‘brand’ of Naomi Klein has been subject to such criticism. ‘No Logo’ itself was criticised as being a book with a title tantamount to a logo.

This highlights the recurrent problem with trying to be political within the graphic arena proper –it already operates largely within the commercial realm and so a negation of intentions is inherent. I have heard Virus type designer Jon Barnbrook, who signed the FTF manifesto that you mention, speak on this matter. He says that he always gets criticised for the commercial nature of his clients (see the Limited Language post ‘Illustrators, like women…’ for an example of such criticism…).

Even if ‘graphic protest’ tries to operate outside of the commercial realm, in the sense that it isn’t making the protestors a fortune for their efforts, then the fashion for using the means and medium and language of those one wishes to critique against them, places them right in the middle of the commercial realm again. (Here, I am thinking of Adbuster’s re-workings of famous ads and even the glossy magazine style that Adbusters as a journal replicates).

People sigh now at the mention of Adbusters and Naomi Klein and how pseudo political/ ‘commercial’ their work has become. However, I suspect that it’s less that this is true, than that we are at the mercy of fashion. When something has become an idea with currency and coverage to warrant winning it attention and fiscal reward, we like to have already moved on…looking for someone with more ‘political potential.’

Recently an Irish comedian on mainstream tv (hence inherently pseudo political) was talking about potential. “Leave it! Just enjoy the fact that you’ve got it, while you have it,” his act went. “Don’t go there. Don’t fuck it up…that’s exactly what it is -it’s potential.”

I’m not saying that Adbusters are great, I have a whole view on that, but it do think that ‘political design/writing’ is worth pursuing. Would it really be better that all political action was left as mere thought so as to preserve it’s potential?

/Monika 14/06/2005

isn’t a pseudo political act political? Surely political design is a debate that will chase its own tail. Its like say you have a politcal pencil. It all down to what you write with it

/Anonymous 14/06/2005

if we accept the idea that meaning (assumed here to the expressive political intention, or not, of this or that designer or artist) is not given, and that texts ‘mean because people want them to mean’ (Nowell-Smith, 2000), then quarrels such as these will only become meaningful once we consider the wider audience; the ‘addressee for whom the text is intended’ (Jauss, 1970). t. todd

/t. todd 15/06/2005

The wider audience in a design context is often other designers as personal projects that express political opinions are often self-initiated, self-published ans then show-cased in cool/glossy magazines with all the political gravitas that that entails…
Artists seems to get to express their ideas to a wider public but so often a sympathetic/on-message one I imagine…the 2004 Turner prize was the least controversial it’s been last year year for ages and it was the year it went ‘political’ -what does that say to us?

/Katy 16/06/2005

Yes, Jeremy Deller seems to be a darling of the establishment now -is this a measure of how ready we are to get political again, or is it as Monika seems to say a sure sign that Deller’s work is pseudo?

/Ross Dyer 16/06/2005

I didn’t specifically say that Deller’s work was ‘pseudo’…

/Monika 19/06/2005

How can Deller make pseudo work? Given that he is the art ‘darlingggg’ that he is at the moment, surely the fact that his narrow vision of ‘folk’ art, in an increasingly ceterist environtment makes it very political, as it tows the line.

/joel 21/06/2005

Joel - I assume you mean his current show at the Barbican in London. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing it, although I waslked passed it on the way to a Design conference Semi-Permanent (Res-fest/Diesel combination) - an orgy of self-congratulating daarlings of another establishment.

I’m not sure what you are saying about Deller though…do you mean that it ‘makes it political’ because it forces a discussion about it in response to his non-radical stance? Has that happened though?

(By the thinking, and I don’t belevie this myself) would Semi-Permanent be seen as a political catalyst if it actually kick-started (in response) a change in format to design conferences. (the discussion’s already been wafting around about this problem, but it still awaits action).

/Ross Dyer 22/06/2005

Anon: “Its like say you have a political pencil. It all down to what you write with it” Well, yes anything can be political. A chair can be political if you smash it over someone’s head. 0r stand on it to give a speech but my original point was that, the case used to be made, that design occupied a privileged position as regards the structures of communication and was therefore in a position to strategically transform/subvert these structures. As I said in the original post: “…the generally held belief that because design is in the business of communication it is in a privileged position to manipulate this communication to political effect.”
This seemed to be the claim implicit in, for instance, the First Things First manifesto but perhaps no one feels confident enough to defend this position nowadays.

Monica: I guess I would argue that you’ve got your chronology the wrong way around. The Issue is not whether “it’s at the point that symbolic capital is rewarded with real money - if an art writer is lucky - that the political potential of their work (or the work that they are commenting on) starts to be questioned. ” And I don’t think it’s a case that Adbusters are at fault because they use “the means and medium and language of those [they wish] to critique against them” or the fact that this “places them right in the middle of the commercial realm again.” What seems problematic to me is that Adbusters, Naomi Klein or other more populist examples eg The Simpsons can be seen to be performing a “corrective” moral function (as in Christianity). And so contemporary art and design (and their politicality) exist only as an affirmation of something else to the dominant order. This approach - seems to be only about showing the current social and cultural order that it does not match its self image (because of certain endemic inequalities and exploitation in Capitalism, for instance). And so Art/design of this sort is affirmed by liberal society for providing a display of something that is closer to their ideal than they can be.

Tony: the idea that texts ‘mean because people want them to mean’ is one way of looking at texts. Obviously people want texts to do lots of things eg: impress, inspire, insult, deceive etc etc - not all of these are consistent with the idea of meaning. The idea of audience is even more problematic”…quarrels such as these will only become meaningful once we consider the wider audience” Which wider audience is this? Much art/politics etc is created speculatively with the idea of a missing or future audience/society in mind or with the intention of creating/naming new constituencies (for example Marx’s Capital). I guess this could fit with your idea of a “wider audience”.

/John 24/06/2005

John, I do take your point about the ‘corrective’ moral function of some forms of political design orart/politics…I think this is what puts people off the idea of ‘feminism’ for instance -they imagine some older woman in a teacher-like corrective stance wagging a finger at them. But in anything I have seen or read, that’s not exactly how it works at all -it’s a popular perception that that is the function because it’s easier to attack the people who are asking us to think, than to think with them for a while. Back to you original point, it’s easier to attack something for being pseudo-political than it is to engage the imagination (physical body) and go with it for a while.

/Monika 27/06/2005

Monica
That’s not what I was saying.
I don’t see the connection between feminism and No Logo/Adbusters etc (I wouldn’t make one) and I think it’s a bit patronising to suggest that: ” it’s easier to attack something for being pseudo-political than it is to engage the imagination (physical body) and go with it for a while.” This seems a bit like saying if you don’t agree with me, then you haven’t “engaged your imagination”.
I was not talking about whether certain types of cultural products “wag their finger” at you or not. My point was that “critical” Art and Design is affirmed by liberal society for providing a display of: “…protest in the name of the society itself against those aspects of society which are unfaithful to its own self image.” [As Suhail Malik writes in his essay ‘Why Contemporary Art is so Disappointing?’
But as he goes on to say this is a purely a symbolic/regulatory moral function - it doesn’t say or do anything.
Intrinsic to this is the fact that being liberal is tied to the willingness to recognise that your beliefs are historically formed and held only on a personal basis. They are precisely not universal. This is what Richard Rorty calls “liberal irony”. It is to have a conviction about the individuality and non-universality of personal beliefs. That is in a sense you must have the strong conviction that you can’t have a strong conviction and as such presumably the conviction that your convictions can never be acted upon with any real seriousness.
Saying something vaguely critical doesn’t mean it has any critical function. As has been debated for last 50 years etc even when art/design is at its most critical it has an affirmative function by virtue of existing within the society its criticising and thus providing some kind of legitimation to that society (which allows it to exist). “Hey look we even allow people to criticise us”.
In this respect, I would argue, art/design of the No Logo/Adbusters variety just plays to the crowd - preaches to the converted - a kind of knowing (but fairly lucrative) hypocrisy which is welcomed by its audience, trundling out a series of trite clichés “Capitalism bad - corporate capitalism bad etc”. That is why I would say they are pseudo political. It exists only as a kind of self-flagellatory, feel-good exercise. There is never any intention to say or do anything.

/Anonymous 28/06/2005

I’ve read this exchange with interest since John brought it to my attention. There are some basic confusions which people are struggling with that should be addressed quickly in order to move on.
A key point to clarify is the difference between politicised content or political ideas and political action. In my original article, my basic criticism was the observation that in many creative disciplines (art, design, architecture) there are growing calls for the politicisation of the forms of activity that are available to those disciplines. However these calls emerge during a period where political mobilisation more generally is in decline: voters do not vote, Unionists do not strike, and generally political contestation is muted.

What this suggests is a narrowed sense of how to be political as an individual and as a collective. Whether designers, architects or artists, the calls to be politically effective/engaged tend to limit themselves to the professional forms of activity of those practitioners as pratitioners; there is very little sense in which practitioners understand themselves to be political subjects outside of their professional lives. This is why it appears that such actions remain ’symbolic’ or can be criticised for being ‘gestures’ - because they can effectively be nothing other, pointing inwardly and reafirming a professional discipline and not taking it outwards or disolving it in some other form of activity.

This then produces the next argument, which is that such action cannot escape its own commercialisation. Of course, if an apparently political act is circumscribed within a professional form of activity, sooner or later the potential for its commercial success may be realised. Some contributors see this as the political failure of the work, suggesting that it’s opposite, being ‘non-commercial’, is the only real alternative. Again, the grounding assumption is that commerce = capitalist interest, therefore to be commercial is in some way to become compromised. This replaces the effective communication of political ideas as a goal, with professional abstentionism as a form of puritan self-denial.

I would propose that this reinforces a narrowed and attenuated self-definition of what it means to be a political subject and a political actor. Instead of looking outwards to other individuals, not on the basis of professional-creative affiliation but as a common citizen engaging with others in one’s common interest, this approach simply reinforces the too-common intuition that nothing can be done, and that nothing can change. Such a position does not do this explicitly; rather it is by emphasising that action should be taken within professional-creative discplines that it avoids dealing with the real problem of the political disenfranchisement of atomised individuals, who in effect do not communicate with each other as free subjects with potentially common goals at the level of soceity as a whole. It therefore works as a kind of comforting collective affirmation amongst a clique of professionals, which is why perceptive individuals quickly realise that such activity eventually always ends up as a kind delusional group-hug.

This disguises what is effectively a form of subjective cowardice; not going outside the confortable confines of professional life-as-usual. It’s easy to gripe about having to make a living servicing Nike or McDonalds, because ‘we all need the money’. Working up a little ‘political’ side-project may be a way of making your self feel better, but it isn’t a political act by a long way.

To grasp the narrowness of this formulation of creative-professional activity and general political action, it would be useful to look at historical examples. A good example would be John Heartfield. Heartfield’s partisanship mean that he would never have worked for the Nazis. Yet the Nazis’ objection to Heartfield was not that he was a bad communicator - they recognised the power of communication design only too well; the Nazis might quite probably have thought Heartfield a good designer, but would have opposed him because of his political partisanship, that is, as a general political subject and actor. Here a graphic artist’s life and the choices he makes about the mobilisation of his creative work is dictated by a broader necessity, that of his active political partisanship with a greater cause. Such commitment necessarily requires an independent context of organisation outside of one’s political life, within which it that commitment can be given shape, and that is crucially what is lacking currently. This is what I mean by ‘disarticulation’.

There is another point though, that highlights this narrowed sense of political subjectivity and the disarticulation of independent political action. This is in the endless wrangling about ‘making money VERSUS making uncompromised work’. I would suggest there is no necessary contradiction here except if the current context of atomisation and demobilisation is conceded to, explicitly or implicitly. That is, there is no contradiction in making money off a job for a client you detest, and syphoning off the proceeds into organisations that directly oppose them. Das Capital is not a worse book because Marx kept borrowing money off that notorious capitalist, Engels. Nor is there any contradiction in working for an employer you detest and using your free hours to organise their overthrow: Millions of union men and women did this for over a century.

The point is that political action cannot solely be contained or restricted to one’s narrow professional or institutional contexts. To do this is do deny the potential of one’s self as something other or more than what we do for a living. However, this does presume that there should be an project for action based on a politics worth acting in support of. This is where the core problem lies: if one looks carefully, the politics that are espoused by ‘political’ art or design is not something that you could locate in a group of individuals or an organisation of some sort. Such politics is mostly the circulation of political truisms amongst a largely inactive population; that inactive aspect of the discursive space of contemporary political concerns is actually ideally suited to commercial consumption, the reality that many people in the west don’t do much else but work and buy stuff. The commercialisation aspect of the discussion points out the truly ’symbolic’ nature of the situation: People buy the artefacts that represent their agreement with certain political worldviews, as a form of expression of wished-for solidarity, yet this rarely goes further in terms of action, or if it results in an action, it is in the narrow form of consumer choice protest. The circle is a vicious one; artists and designers complain that their work is becoming commercial, because (surprise!) their work communicates to people who then want to buy it! Consumer are told by a ‘consumer politics’ mindset that to be political merely entails them buying one brand of trainer over another, ie to continue to only be consumers, but to be GOOD ONES.

Thus, if political action is solely understood as merely a modification of one’s personal choices either as a professional producer or as an individual consumer, there can be no broader sense of what political action, and political subjectivity can mean. One should not be surprised if one’s professional work eventually generates a commercial market for pseudo-political content. To call it pseudo-political is to indicate that in essence, there is no substantial political action that can be identified as distinct from professional or consumer life-as-usual.

JJ

/JJ Charlesworth 28/06/2005

Having read JJ Charlesworth considered and clear post, which helped provide further context to the original question(s) asked by John. I find on most issues I agree with them both - especially concerning the mistaken belief of many of the professionals involved in the visual arts that visual communication, a priori, means a privileged position in how we communicate our world. I also comply with the position that the rhetoric on the evils/virtues of commercial and non-commercial production, provides a banal binary position which facilitates simple (pseudo) fixes to many ‘political’ issues i.e. The ‘first things first manifesto’ for graphic design. In part the reasons for this misplaced belief is due to the broader context of the West’s fixation with the ocular and a continual prioritization of the visual (according to certain narratives)

Where I have a problem – or at least a different interpretation, is in the ‘narrowed sense of how to be political as an individual and as a collective’ I think the truth might be the opposite, with the political now a constellation of positions. Neither am I in a accord with the assumed belief that we need cohesion – history, I would argue, should make us weary of political unity… to paraphrase Marx ‘everything is pregnant with its contrary’

JJ mentions the lack of political coherence since the end of the cold war – and certainly a unifying metaphor has not been found to replace it’s demise (axis 0f evil is too conceptual for a geo-illiterate West)– but the end of a confrontational or antagonistic political arena does not mean a narrowing of political expression – this lack of evil ‘other’ has led to a pluralism of political causes – from the BNP in Britain, neighbourhood watch schemes to wiping out world debt – and this is the rub, an atomism not solely of individuals but political context too – a response to a feeling of disenfranchisement from oppositional politics vis a vis the cold war paradigm.

Rather than denying communication as ‘free subjects’ meta-politics provide micro-communities that share common goals etc. I feel, I hope, this provides possibilities for design beyond a comforting group hug. I think a designer like Kenya Hara works in this area – not afraid of the hand of Capitalism whilst providing the social interstices, which articulate a subjective self.

It is when design, or art in general, tries to articulate more grandiloquent aims – like feed the world, stop starvation etc that ‘politics’ become kitsch; a list of the dead or starving, amputees, diseased and other voiceless rational data.

This weekends Live8 is an example of this par excellence – and a cogent example of JJs comment ‘Such politics is mostly the circulation of political truisms amongst a largely inactive population; that inactive aspect of the discursive space of contemporary political concerns is actually ideally suited to commercial consumption’ and as such, they become part of the political hegemony which, by inculcating pseudo protest, both legitimises and disenfranchises itself.

It was a shit logo too…

/colin 03/07/2005

Anyone interested in designing a poster to notify people about the next demonstration against raped women being stoned to death? (Northern Nigeria)

I agree with those who question the concept “pseudo-political”. Armchair criticism of “pseudo-activity”, “pseudo-politics” and the “disarticulation of political agency” is criticism of a fiction. There is nothing ‘new’ about “an excess of representation of the political.” Thank the Enlightenment for ridding the West of excessive representations of Christianity. The argument which sparked this post is detached from reality and reeks of leftist puritanism. Politics, even in the West, has never been more authentically political. Outside the West politics is screamingly real.

Not many designers in our thankfully almost corrected West are aware of what it is actually like in practice to even attempt to challenge political dictatorship. Symbolic action or pseudo-activity are necessary inextricable parts of action or activity, to be positively enjoyed rather than condemned. The 1970’s cigarette advertisement “You’ve Come A Long Way, Babe!” - a paradigmatic commercialisation of women’s liberation - was a joy. Many people are looking forward to the future when designers are commissioned to create witty knowing advertisements signalling the increased wealth and consumer choice liberating people in African countries from poverty.

In reality all ‘design’ is a fist remove from primary political action. Can we prove that awareness of politics affects the impact quality of any design?

Do people know of the political art (graphics/painting/films) - the making of which risks imprisonment and state murder - coming out of China over the last 10 years!? Ditto Iran? Have those who discuss pseudo-politics in design ever tried to live in parts of the world as yet uncorrected by feminism or democracy?

Armchair designers could look at websites run by women who will, for instance, be killed for demonstrating against a political system that forbids women from walking down the street unaccompanied by male ‘chaperones’, let alone driving cars. (Saudi Arabia)

Anyone interested in designing a poster to protest about having your ‘home’ bulldozed with your children still inside? (Palestine; Zimbabwe)

Political design: Can we prove, with design examples, that a designer who is committed to a political position will create better, more eye-catching designs for that particular political position than one who is not committed to it?

/Caroline Coon for Cunst Art 04/07/2005

“What this suggests is a narrowed sense of how to be political as an individual and as a collective. Whether designers, architects or artists, the calls to be politically effective/engaged tend to limit themselves to the professional forms of activity of those practitioners as pratitioners; there is very little sense in which practitioners understand themselves to be political subjects outside of their professional lives. This is why it appears that such actions remain ’symbolic’ or can be criticised for being ‘gestures’ - because they can effectively be nothing other, pointing inwardly and reafirming a professional discipline and not taking it outwards or disolving it in some other form of activity.”

There seems to be a contradiction in JJ Charlesworth’s idea that one must act outside of one’s own professional (or consumer) sphere to avid reinforcing that sphere. Everyone will end up being ‘political subjects’ in areas that are within someone else’s professional spere and outside of their expertise. Is that any better? I suggest that we do use our expertise, but outside not for the ultimate entertainment/consumption of our professional peers. That was Live8’s trouble -as if the rich people of the world need to her more music. Maybe if some the musicians had thought of playing to crowds who won’t just consume the music like just another summer festival amongst a host of others.

Here’s and example of someone who’s with their expertise but not within the normal professional confines or for the normal proffessionl audience. Anthony Burril has set up workshops in Kenya with locals where by the end of it, the locals have designed their own posters to call for an end to corruption. He has ‘lead the group and lent them his time/knowledge, but knows that only they know the most graphically immediate and effective way to commuincate with the people they need to -an often disenfranchised group of people who feel they have no power indivudually to combat widescale corruption of an organised nature. The workshops not only empowered the locals in the sense of fostering thier own design and commuincation skills and knowledge, but also gave them space for them to act as a group with a powerful voice -facilitated by Burrows but ultimately of their own making. This web link only shows the final images -the full storey with photos of the workshops in progress were discussed in Creative Review earlier this year.

/Katy 06/07/2005

Sorry, here’s the weblink for anthony burrill…

/Katy 06/07/2005

In today’s papers:
Designer faces court after G8 protest violence -
Daily Mail, page 7, July 7th 2005

“Jason Ervis, 26, a graphic designer from Bournemouth, pleaded guilty to a
breach of the peace and was fined £350. The court was told he repeatedly
shouted at police arresting a woman: ‘Leave her alone you f****** *****’.”

/Caroline Coon for Cunst Art 07/07/2005

In 2009 we released the book ‘Limited Language: Rewriting Design: Responding to a feedback culture’ which re-engaged with this original post.

For more on the book as a whole: http://bit.ly/bookcomments

Colin + Monika

/colin 15/11/2009

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