Designing Sideways, Inefficient Publishing as a Mode of Refusal
Within the contemporary design landscape much attention has been paid to modes of designing together, emphasizing process over outcomes, and inviting others (other human and non-human perspectives) into the process. Yet, even though such perspectives have contributed to a critical design discourse, they insufficiently question efficiency-laden techno-solutionist models of mainstream publishing that is driven by advertising and marketing data.
Proposed here are several collective attempts, subtle tactics, as to (re)shape the discourse around technical innovation from narratives of progress and innovation, 'software as a service' at the cost of continued extractivism and exploitation, towards an understanding of free / libre open source publishing as a collective 'inefficient' process of mutual entanglements.
Collective design, as it is proposed in this talk, challenges notions of individual authorship, separations between disciplines, between product and process or between the user and maker. ‘Things’ that evolve with collective design—i.e. publications, tools, technical infrastructure as well as social conduct—require unconventional design criteria to determine their purpose, or lack thereof. Such criteria are context-specific. Thus, it is difficult to speak about such collectively designed objects in general or finite terms. Collective-design-in-action constantly challenges and erodes boundaries, organizational hierarchies, boundaries between formal planning and spontaneous impulse, between friendship and work relationships.
In this talk Anja Groten traces the convoluted ways of designing publications collectively⸺how unreliable publishing infrastructures and awkward work-arounds shape and bind together collectives of tool-makers and experimental publishers. More specifically, it will explore and discuss the intersections of self-organization, self-hosting, (of technical infrastructure) and self-publishing (of small edition experimental books and websites) drawing from the experience of working collectively as a designer.
Taking the example of several experimental publishing tools and experimental publications, the collective aspect of such a design practice will not be explained solely through a designed object—the publication itself or the tool that was used and built to design the publication. Articulating the meaning of such an object, one has to shift the focus towards the manifold of people, things, environments and practices this object has assembled throughout the process of its making.
