Wednesday, March 8, 2017

OUGD501 - Lecture - Politics

Political satire mainly illustration which acts as the voice of the people against rulers.

First things first, Garland 1964
Use your talents to contribute to industry, medicine, science, education (humanitarian call)

This manifesto got rewritten by adbusters, 2000
They seek to use design as a weapon against capitalism by being design anarchists.
Culture Jamming, disrupting the smooth flow of capitalist society
Meme warfare, a catchphrase, an image which sticks to a concept, potent memes can change the mindset of the viewer.

Adjusters buy nothing day 29-11-08 (Detournement)
Design as an intervention that makes you stop and think critically.

All of the adbusters manifesto have ethical issues, it is implying that you are doing something morally wrong by working for the products within the text. You are part of the human exploitation in the world. Coffee (exploiting third world coffee beans), Diamonds, butt toners (women as sexual objects) etc...

Through our skills we are manipulating the minds of people in the world, we are discussing the evils in these companies.

But in contrast, we cannot live without money. Some of these jobs have to be completed to fund our own lives.


Victor Papanek

Realising that designers have a special talent and if we use our talents we can really change the world.

'Most things are designed not for the needs of the people but for the needs of manufacturers to sell to people' (Papanek, 1983:46)

They make cars out of a material that will rust so that it perpetuates a system of revolving consumption.

By not addressing the real worlds problem we are perpetuating the problem and becoming part of it.

RSA Crisis of Capitalism

Owning a house is a disciplinary system which ties people down to a job by the state. People are less likely to go on strike or move on if they are afraid of loosing their house. Their ability to get in debt and own a mortgage attaches them to a system of perpetual stagnation. Another example of this is a student loan, it will tie a person down to work and be tamed by the elite society.

Just as political is the modernist project which embraces the modern world. Internationalism which is common to every country in the world. One language of architecture, one language of visual communication, giving the world a common shared understanding. It desires a world which is based on common values.

Globalisation - Globalising the aesthetics of architecture or art or language
Global Village
Is there a need to return to this idea as we now have become more interlinked than every with the internet etc...
Language technology and devices is now allowing us to all be under one world language. This is the idea of utopian society.

Socialist - The world produces enough profit to feed all of the world 8 times over.

The Bauhaus
Gender equality
The divisions between the high arts and the low arts became blurred
interdisciplinary programme
neutral fonts with sans serif typefaces

They are being invented at the same time as Times New Roman with connate Brittish imperial hierarchy. Sans Serif fonts are an anti fascist font, the Bauhaus got shut down by the nazis which shows what they represented.

After the Russian Revolution 1917, the society overthrow the king and queen and instil the worlds first socialist government, the start of the soviet union. Political moment of rupture starting a communist government.

Russia went from having no culture with oil paintings and realism etc.. to having the most avant garde and unique visual culture. They experimented with abstract art and design which attempted to communicate the message of the boltovic revolution and spreading the political agenda to a society that could not read. The red connotes comradeship, martyrdom, the fallen brothers. They split through the capitalist ideology with a revolution to reach out to a unitopian society of equality.

'Books' by Rodchenko, asking the public to self teach. A woman shouting it.

The cuban revolution shay gavara, irradiated illiteracy in just over a year by teaching each other to read.

Constructivists - Experiments and sculptures to help build a more egalitarian new world. Proposals for structures which could help develop a visual language.
Aim - Material structures are made for everyone now instead of just the elite.

Dresses and wallpaper which celebrates the equality, women and a classless society.

VKhUTEMAS - Progressive Art School (very similar to the Bauhaus)

The fashion design at the time was completely gender equal in contrast to the capitalist design at the time which sexualised women.

However, what is wrong with individuality, variety and personality. The drive to have a shared culture or the drive to be free

Stepanove &
Malevich & Suprematism
El Lissitzky

Breaking down the barriers that the capitalist system has imposed on us, you are a coal miner, you are a dress maker, you are a baker etc...


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