Suchergebnisse

ABSTRACT
Fashion suX is an artistic research project of imaginative utopia creation in the tradition of Thomas More. But instead of an imaginary society on an island, the project explores how a radically different fashion culture could emerge in the footsteps of hardcore and Straight Edge metal. The project specifically examines the underground fashion and craft movement that called themselves suXers (sometimes referred to as "sustainable fashion Straight Edge"). Radically opposing the "do-good" ethics of consumerist sustainability, the suXers embody an ethic that imbues not only clothes and lifestyle but also an infuriated rejection of the fashion system's sartorial betrayal. Opposition needs other motivations than pure virtue, and anger can be one such motivation, as exemplified by the suXers.

Over the last year, fierce discussion have raged about the trend of socially engaged design, where such projects have been scolded as new forms of "design imperialism" (cf. Nussbaum 2010; Pilloton 2010; Sinclair 2010). Resonating with this discussion, the latest US Army Field Manual has included "design" as a central feature in the core battle doctrine. Are we seeing the birth of a "social design doctrine" employed to wage war? It is tempting to draw parallels between design and the developments of military thinking to reflect some of the issues at stake as design turns to address social, cultural and ethnic issues. As its point of departure this text examines how design and warfare strive for opening new "fronts" in conflicts, new dimensions to strike the enemy, and also use games to train and expand tactical thinking. Today, trans-disciplinary "Human Terrain Teams" of ethnographers, anthropologists and military personnel are engaged in counterinsurgency warfare. Similar to the latest doctrines of warfare, design explores the use of interfaces, fronts and conflict zones, and social design might soon be the next social "surrogate warfare". As design goes social it urgently needs ethical research and reflection.

As we see a global culture appear across the planet identity politics simultaneously gravitate towards issues of the local. In society's top strata people strive to live in posh areas with the right postal code. Subversive counterculture activists try to keep their own multi-ethnic spaces free from yuppies who in turn try to gentrify the same areas into authentic bohemian-chic quarters. In the urban fringes gangs protect their territory and even tattoo their hood names as a sign of authentic pride. Caught in the line of fire of identity politics is the hoodie, an average street-style garment, the canvas on which social conflicts and criminal stigmata are drawn, but also where local pride and reconciliation can be brought about, inspired by its connection to the resonance of musical milieus. In a time of liquid consumerism and fear, the habitus of the hoodie seems to frame a problematic identity which has been exposed in the ban on such garments in some British malls. The Neighburhoodies expands on a practice-based endeavour where fashion students from London College of Fashion reflected on their glocal London identities through the design of a special hoodie - a Neighbourhoodie.

"Designers are often depicted as social change agents that serve the good in the world. Similarly, codesign tends to be described as a democratic mode of creativity that is somehow beyond reproach. But is change a virtue in itself, and do participatory practices always produce socially beneficial outcomes? Such questions are becoming more pressing as codesign has emerged as a dominant practice in planning and urban design, while also informing corporate management and public administration. In this book, Otto von Busch and Karl Palmås suggest that designers tend to over-emphasise the place of ideals in design, leaving them ill-equipped to deal with a social world of power-wielding and zero-sum games. Seeking to re-orient the concerns of the Scandinavian tradition of participatory design, they suggest that co-design processes are rife with betrayals, decay and corruption, and that designerly empathy has morphed into a new form of cunning statecraft. In putting forward Realdesign as an alternative conception of design practice, von Busch and Palmås ask: What hard lessons about the social must today's designers learn from realists like Machiavelli?"--