The mass popular dissent which has marked the early twenty-first century, from al-Qaeda to the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement, can be read as expressions of collective, subjective, existential mutation. This reading is inspired by Félix Guattari, who described the 1979 Iranian revolution, the Polish Solidarity movement and the 1989 Chinese student demonstrations as demands for subjective singularisation. In each of these examples of social discontent, past and present, demands vary widely even within the same movement, spanning economics, lifestyle, (...) religion and politics, and ranging from cries for liberation to conservative returns to ancient tradition. In order to perform a schizoanalysis of such amorphous movements, Guattari developed a four-part ecosophic object, composed of existential Territories, Universes of value, material-energetic Flows and machinic Phyla. Assemblages can be dynamically mapped along these four dimensions. Of crucial importance in the age of extreme deterritorialisation is the existential Territory, which could potentially take the form of a homeland based on poetry or music rather than on ethnicity or even place. Such portable homelands would characterise the dissensual processual post-media era for which Guattari longed. (shrink)

This paper will examine how innovation should respond to intellectual traditions outside of its normal purview, in order to keep the creative engine of its activities vibrant. Drawing mainly from philosophy, but revolving around a single sentence from Arujun Appadurai’s ‘Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy’ – in which he asks refugees “not to let their imaginations rest too long” – this paper will argue for a theory and practice of innovation to be ‘restless’. A ‘restless’ innovation will (...) have a number of particular characteristics, and this paper will note especially those that relate to its space. Not simply because the refugee noted by Appadurai is determined as such by its relation to space, but also because innovation will be determined by the spaces it creates and by which it is created. A ‘restless innovation’ will therefore be one that is topologically complex and ontogenic. (shrink)

'And ecstasy is the way out! Harmony! Perhaps, but heart-rending. The way out? It suffices that I look for it: I fall back again, inert, pitiful: the way out from project, from the will for a way out! For project is the prison from which I wish to escape : I formed the project to escape from project!' Georges Bataille Inner Experience, p. 59 The most notable feature of the last ten years of going to Milan to visit design companies, (...) studios, manufacturers and the Salone di Mobili, has been the lack of change in outlook on the part of the Milanese Design community. The focus of any discussion centred around what has made Milanese design so special and always seemed to be focussed on the past. We revisited the 1960s and 1980s mainly—the Pop and the Postmodern, the bright colours and sensual shapes attesting to the stereotype of Milanese Design as energetic and desirous. The 1990s revisiting of a Scandinavian Modernist æsthetic particularly in furniture and kitchen appliance design seemed only to reinforce such a stereotype: “we can engage with this styling,” they seemed to say, “but it will always have our signature elegance and sophistication, that demands display and passion rather than objective appreciation.” Only Studio Mendini seemed to have no truck with the vagaries of fashion. Asked in Spring 2002 whether the studio’s playful style—so reminiscient of Design’s Postmodern turn of the 1980s as well as Pop’s 1960s exuberance—was still relevant in a world experiencing suicide terrorist attacks in many of the world’s cities, our guide told us that Signore Mendini believed that now, as much as ever, was it necessary to have some joy in people’s lives. And that is all.1 This is design as frippery, as an escape from the everyday, from the dirtiness of culture, of society and of politics. This is design which ignores the everyday experiences and concerns of people. This is design which has turned in on itself. This is not good enough. (shrink)