Priscila Lena Farias / Anna Calvera Marcos da Costa ... - Blucher

KEULEMANS, Guy
Affects, as the product of the arts, are always on the outer surface
of the senses, like a skin through which everything must
pass (Bogue 2004: 2) As we ingest them we feel; mapping the
affects into compounds, forming concepts and changing our
thoughts. In this case, Baas, working affectively, produces a
model or simulation of affect.
Moss continues to explain that this chemical alteration is rebranding.
The flame of the blowtorch ingests the authorship
and transfers/transforms it to Baas, marked onto the furniture.
As Baas’ gallerist, this is intelligently self-serving and in positive
contrast to the alternative and conceivably self-wounding interpretation
of burning design icons as an angry, iconoclastic act.
7. Destruction and Mockery
The use of destructive forces in design is, in a way, a kind of
cheap shot because of the powerful sensations they cause. Perhaps
especially so if the result is to conceptualise them into a
marketing system. However, there are examples of destructive
design from the Droog catalogue which communicate robust,
sophisticated concepts which are not co-opted by marketing,
and in fact are somewhat at odds with their sales pitch. The Do
Hit Chair by Marijn van der Poll (2000) (fig. 6) is described by
Droog as a chair you ‘co-design’ by smashing it, sledgehammer
included. This is laughably unlikely to occur - surely considered
knowing the dry sense of humour prevalent in the Netherlands.
Instead the chair is offered for sale pre-smashed, which is of
course of primary interest to museums: one such sale was to
the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Smashing
it yourself has no appeal, at least because it looks like a sweaty
job, but not least because it lacks authenticity. Despite its framing
as co-design, in no way is it a successor to the Whole Earth
Catalogue, or DIY design, nor does it preempt open-source design.
In fact, it mocks the seriousness of those movements.
However, the value of the design is not in the idea that you actually
could or would smash out a chair yourself, but in the idea
that you consider it virtually. The photo of the chair taken for
the 2004 book Droog 10+3 (despite the pretentiousness of the
white garmented models, or perhaps because of it) suggests
this quite well by presenting the chair in both its pristine and
brutalised states. The physicality of the steel is not nuanced; it
is crushed by aggressive force, the violence of the hammer upon
the metal palpable in the jagged steel. Heavy metal becomes armature.
When we interpret these sensations, we are led to the
concept of a chair, a physical structure supporting the body. The
body is an intuitive concept, so the sense of our own body in
relationship to this chair is immediate; hard steel against soft
skin. A secondary consideration - how is it moved? Can I move
it around the house, or pick it up and put it in a truck? The Do Hit
Chair invades the concept of mobility with the clanging of broken
bone and torn ligaments. The hum of a forklift is a soothing
sound - soothing as much as the guy who drives it is careful with
your $10,000 artwork. The object affects us, forming concepts
which activate more affective sensations. They fly at us and
within us at speed. Affect is working in two movements, from
without, producing concepts from sensation and from within,
sensations from concepts. Van de Poll’s intelligence with this
design is that our conceptualisations are perfectly legitimised
by his invitation to smash the chair ourselves. As a result, the
concepts produced by the chair are open and mutable, freely
changing shape and connecting through through affects to an
extended set of concepts.
Figure 6. Marijn van der Poll: left, Do Hit Chair (2000) and right, from “Droog 10+3”
(2004)
8. Conclusion
Its not true to say that the conceptual value of the Do Hit Chair is
greater or less than that of the Smoke series or that together the
individualistic plurality of Dutch conceptual design is more or
less attractive than the shared ideology of the Italian Radicals.
Such suppositions probably correspond to personal values. However,
there is something to say about the the relative affective
power of these works and the robustness of the concepts they
produce which may be of interest to designers and researchers
i.e. the intensity of their affects or their conceptual strength in
the face of critical or marketing force. The Deleuzian perspective
also gives insight into the processes of experimental design
practise and order of conceptual and aesthestic production.
Acknowledgment
Thanks to the University of New South Wales for research assistance.
References
Ambasz, E. & Museum Of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.). 1972. Italy:
the new domestic landscape; achievements and problems of
Italian design. New York, Distributed by New York Graphic Society,
Greenwich, Conn.
Antonelli, P. 2011. States of Design 04: Critical Design: A design
report from New York , Domus. (Last accessed:
30th April 2012).
Bogue, R. 2004. Deleuze’s wake: tributes and tributaries. Albany:
State University of New York Press.
Buchanan, R. 1995. Branzi’s Dilemma: Design in Contemporary
Culture, in Design: Pleasure or Responsibility? edited by Päivi
Design Frontiers: Territiories, Concepts, Technologies 560