Quid Deinde Fit
For man, reality is a huge mental experience. Ideas inevitably change the world. Awareness of these ideas is the vehicle for change. This can be generated through micro-impacts designed to arouse new imaginaries in people's minds, through which it is possible to cause chain reactions that can lead to profound changes, even on a large scale, within our societies.
The creator spirit of this collective stems from a strong desire to instill in the world alternative visions compared to the canonical interpretations to which we are all accustomed.
Why doing that?
Undoubtedly globalization has not only produced distortions of a world that was instead mostly local, but has led to a broad democratization of resources and services, generating positive realities and a general improvement in lifestyle.
However, with time, societies ended up standardizing themselves in a widespread manner. The standardization has been forgotten, it is no longer recognized and separated from reality, hidden under the mantle of incessant progress.
Free will is increasingly confused with the wide range of choices made available by this type of system. On the contrary, this multiplicity appears limited by dogmas and cultural practices that have settled in the mind of man and in society by visions dictated by prejudice, ignorance, approximate thinking and what is commonly considered the most advantageous. Mankind, therefore, ended up by organizing himself into a mass, "a provisional entity, consisting of heterogeneous elements welded together for an instant" (Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyze, Sigmund Freud, 1921).
What was interesting until recently, in the blink of an eye has been replaced by a new content to be captured by. Attention and interest tend to be extremely weak due to the countless sterile stimuli to which the single individual is subjected. The direct consequence is the affirmation of a fearful, psychotic, lazy and classist nature, which, now which can achieve results with minimum effort, thanks to the efficiency and speed of the system, no longer pauses to activate critical thinking, but absorbs, with greater or lesser distinctions, everything that is served up.
Humanity is delegating its knowledge to the technological tools it has created, moving the centers of knowledge and power, from hitself to outside, not even taking into account all the possible cognitive biases that can be interposed in this operation.
Why designers?
It could be said that this category of crafters has developed during the time with different meanings, one of which is quite effective, namely "making life easier and more pleasant for humanity" through aesthetic, practical and ethical design operations. Which makes it a particularly suitable practice to arouse reactions in people, given its extreme proximity even in the simplicity of everyday life.
But today believe it or not, as designers we’ve lost ourselves. The vast majority of us, in most cases, ended up making products or services that were simply more salable or attractive in the mass markets. So the practice of design, surely linked with the industrial environment, merely ended up following in its footsteps.
But we serious problems are emerging in the world and we have no time left.
How?
Therefore this movement aims to arouse a profound estrangement from the reality of our global civilization. This won’t happen by superimposing further levels on existing reality and solutions, but by moving away and by means of abductive thinking, operating an imaginative operation, in order to systematize the balance of a new reality.
Not being antithetical to the current system, but involving different designers to imagine alternative universes, positive for the planet and man. Becoming enablers of new systems and far-sighted visions.
To do this, it is necessary to move away from the idea of Design, now a hundred years old, tired, abused, misrepresented and too little specific to be incisive on a cultural level. We need to allow people to enjoy a renewed view of the reality that surrounds us, to ignite new processes of cognitive and experiential investigation. This is not professing as a bearer of “Solutions by Design” but as creators of debates around the alternative and speculation about the future, to arrive at the concrete implementation of ways to improve reality.
It is therefore essential not only to make visible the invisible but to go further, imagining the unimaginable, creating new possibilities within our world. We need to get involved as human beings, talk about unspeakable worlds, translating them into reality, close to people, so that they can grasp their inputs and give birth and nourish
Who?
The Designer becomes an Enabler.
Thus the designer detaches herself/himself from the industry and its production processes to put her/his skills in the systematization and concrete production of alternative visions.
Thanks to the practices acquired over time, the eclectic disposition and the mental predisposition dictated by intuition, the enabler will be able to create artifacts aimed at expanding the field of the public imagination.
She/he will not rise up, she/he will not proclaim itself part of an enlightened oligarchy. This movement won’t be eschatological, but it will exploit its knowledge to translate the opportunities contained in future potentials from the unknown.
In deep harmony with a global spirit, the enabler must be able to grasp the real essence of mankind, far and bare from the liquid reality in which he is immersed, to conduct his studies and guide projects by providing proposals, not solutions, and never absolute truths. The power of thought will be used to convey messages in an innovative and disruptive way.
The enabler will propose herself/himself as the lever, the sidestepper, the "unreasonable man", will trust her/his own intuitions discussed and approved within the Collective to give life to an ethical world, restoring measure to man, restoring his own dimension in the contemporary world.