- CollegeCentral Saint Martins
- CourseMA Graphic Communication Design
- Graduation year2023
How can dialogue help us map out the current state of creative labour and production in context of an economy in crisis under digital capitalism and allow us to take control of our own futures as we cope with these conditions?
The Common Room: A Refuge From A Condition That We Cannot Escape is a research project that explores what it means to pursue a future in the creative industry under capitalism in a state of permacrisis.
The project took shape through a publication, printed artefacts, prompts, participatory workshops and manifestos to document the experiences and expectations of those engaged in creative work. Together this collection builds a portrait of the condition of our working cultures, sentiments, hopes and anxieties under capitalism.
The Common Room: A Refuge From A Condition That We Cannot Escape creates space for us to pause, engage and take our time with conversations on the implications of capitalism on our lives and creative pursuits. When everything has been subsumed by the throes of capitalism, including our feelings of hope and our ability to imagine alternative ways of being, it can be valuable and liberating to meaningfully engage with each other as we try to navigate our creative practices under the influence of these systems.
Ultimately, the aim of this project, and my practice, is to develop methods to facilitate and give form to dialogues and reflections that might enable us to cope - perhaps someday even thrive - and imagine alternative, economically and psychologically sustainable ways of operating as artists, designers and patrons of creative and cultural production.
Research and process
The Perpetual Process
This project has shaped my understanding of Graphic Communication Design practice as a method to conduct research through dialogue and collaborative workshopping. Designed artefacts can transform into integral tools in the process of encouraging dialogue, gleaning perspectives, generating new knowledge and ideas, prompting imagination and helping us to speculate on the future.
This method allows me to see my practice as an opportunity to engage critically with complex issues and systemic failures in a meaningful way while acknowledging that an immediate solution may not be clear. But through the involvement and participation of multiple voices, we might at the very least begin to develop processes that help us to take on a more active role in shaping and demanding better conditions for our futures.
This process of prompting through design is perpetual and ongoing. As the conditions of our systems rapidly evolve, the responses, frameworks and actions required to cope will need to metamorphose as well. The hope is to continue circulating the publication and the manifesto, to involve creative practitioners from various disciplines in dialogue, to continue to raise consciousness around systemic failings and their consequences on our collective and individual lives, and to perpetually replicate the participative co-design process to evolve along with the condition of our time.
Share this project
The Common Room: A Condition That We Cannot Escape
How can dialogue help us map out the current state of creative labour and production in context of an economy in crisis under digital capitalism and allow us to take control of our own futures as we cope with these conditions?The Common Room: A Refug...
A link to this page has been added to your clipboard