D.I.D
HOW TO GET OUT OF THE LIMBO IN WHICH WE ARE STUCK?
framing the world
What you can say, do, think or change depends on the metaphysical frame you give yourself.
The metaphysical frame is how we look at the world. We could say that it is a bit like looking through a camera’s viewfinder: what we are framing exists. What we talk about takes shape, takes on more and more defined contours. So, in a forest, we can decide to give prominence to a leaf by focusing on it, or widen the shot to all the trees that surround it.
This does not mean that one or the other ceases to exist if excluded from the frame. Much more than what we can or want to see exists at all times. We simply decide to bring out a certain reality, because otherwise, living would actually be quite complicated, an incessant and exhausting challenge for our mind.
As we have seen, what has happened so far has been the exclusion a certain part of reality, aiming only at what contained the ideal of profit and economic growth.
The time has come to move the frame, change the narrative of the world.
Only by changing how we understand the reality we live in can we bring out a new world and a new field of possibility. What can we think about? What can we do? What exists, what is important and what is not?
History has always showed us how what was considered unthinkable in one era turned out to be possible in another, frequently going beyond the boundaries of the imaginable.
what lever can trigger
such a powerful change?
the invisibile practice
There is a practice that is very close to people, placing itself, be it seen or unseen, in everyone’s daily life. It has always stood as a deforming element of reality, moving its boundaries according to aesthetic, ethical and technical codes. It does not operate on the same the level as art, but over time it has shown to be able to universally reach people’s lives. This practice is Design.
Design has always set itself the goal of solving problems related to everyday life. Thanks to its nature, it is able to offer new forms, new meanings, highlighting, at every level of detail, unexplored aspects of our world. This happens thanks to the “inventive leap” it is able to execute, making the unknown known through lateral thinking.
In simple terms, it is about not seeing reality as fixed and trying to find alternatives to concretely improve people’s quality of life, through the invention of new elements to populate reality both on a smaller and larger scale.
So one could say that this practice, although industrial (the term was first proposed with this meaning in Nikolaus Pevsner’s book “Pioneers of Modern Design”), has always “turned new lights on”, illuminating new possibilities, stimulating alternative thinking, innovating what exists and launching silent, “everyday” revolutions.
This has inevitably contributed to increasing people’s level of awareness, giving them greater freedom and flexibility of thought.
now that the nature of Design is so assimilated
to the industrial one, what remains?
The answer is very little. For the most part, a series of productions aimed at the aesthetic or purely practical.
Once infected by the seed of Technic, Design has suffered the same fate as our societies: to annihilate itself.
We must move away from the idea of Design, now centenarian, tired, abused, misrepresented and too fragmented to be culturally incisive.
We must allow people to take a renewed look at the reality that surrounds us, starting new processes of cognitive and experiential investigation, not by professing to be a bearer of “Solutions by Design” but by creating debates about the alternatives and the speculation on the future, to arrive at the concrete implementation of paths to improve reality.
Not by professing to be antithetical to the current system, but by involving different thinkers to imagine alternative universes which would be positive for the planet and for mankind. By becoming enablers of new systems and visions beyond time.
how would be worth living?
the courage to propose a new imagination
It is necessary that our societies begin to find new ideas and artifacts within them to enable people’s awareness.
Only through a greater awareness of reality can we move more solidly inside the chaos of reality surrounding us.
For decades we have followed the same path that was designed for us within our societies. Now that everything is upside down, now that the balance has shifted, we are looking for a new imagination, wondering what will happen in the end. What reality will we reach once the pandemic is over?
Speculation applied to design is an activator of new worlds.
The Gestalt we must assume is that of a scenario or imagination, both declined as a potentially unspeakable world, which nevertheless affects the observer and arouses deep interest within them. Vehicle of generative meanings even when not immediately understandable by people.
On the other hand, for example, the scenario could be seen as an extremely pragmatic and achievable social experiment by the people who can confront it directly, expanding their vision.
a new figure
The Designer who wants to take this path must abandon this same professional definition. The designer must detach himself from the industry and its production processes in order to put his skills in the systematization and concrete production of alternative visions.
The Designer can give himself a new definition and configure himself as an enabler, who, thanks to his character and mental predisposition, will be able to create artifacts aimed at expanding the range of people’s imagination.
It will be necessary to transform the logic in which design is operated today. No longer closed in a production cycle whose sole purpose is to generate more business for companies, but instead aiming to stimulate others’ thinking, also involving it with artifacts and participatory solutions.
In deep harmony with the Global Spirit, the enabler must be able to grasp its real essence, distant and stripped of the liquid reality in which it is immersed, to conduct his studies and manage projects by providing proposals instead of solutions or absolute truths.
Thanks to the awakening of the imaginative spirit of society, now more than ever, it is essential to propose new paths and indicate alternative directions. The whole world is in turmoil, the divisionist currents of recent years have shown all their deep limits and dramatic implications. People are asking for more truth, for more human, just and sustainable systems based on solidarity and collaboration.
Therefore, proposing alternatives should not be a destructive or suppressive gesture, casting the memory of the present into oblivion. Instead, it must be a magical act that holds our shattered reality together and inscribes people in a prophetic dimension, allowing them to ferry themselves from one world to another.