3. Exploring beyond the screen: Decolonial design

Action 3 | Grad Studio I
Teammate: Zahra Jalali

Extending and Seeking:
As confusing and broad as this action seemed at first, It actually turned out to be a very thought-provoking one. During the past couple of years, my studio has become my screen and my design process has become a comfort zone, so seeking and exploring beyond this zone was intimidating at first.

This action started when Zahra and I were talking about an article we had read earlier in our Contemporary Dialogues in design class on Decolonial design by Ramon Grosfoguel; A very insightful and informing read! While discussing, we both remembered a vintage map in our studio that was from the early 20th century. Before this, we had never bothered to look closely at this map and always considered it just a pretty object!
We took a closer look at it and were surprised to see how degrading this map was. Not only the map had color coded the colonized states with the same color as their colonizing country (taking away their own identity) but it also had cut Eurasia in half just to put north America in the center of the attention! This seemingly pretty object had all of a sudden turned into a very infuriating and disturbing one.
And This was the spark of this action.

The World By C. S. Hammond & Co., N. Y. Date: 1904

Action 1:
Understanding Colonialism & Coloniality | Exploring through making

Initially, we started our action by trying to gain a better understanding of colonialism, before actually advancing to Decolonial design.
– We started by cutting around the colonized nations from the map and placing them somewhere else to show how these nations were cut from their own home ground and their roots.
– Colonialism did not stop at cutting people from their lands, they wanted to erase their identity and their culture. In an action to do that, we put these cut-out nations in bleach. To our surprise, the bleach did not have much of an effect on the map’s colors, so we had to use more aggressive tools. During this process, it dawned on us that erasing a nation’s identity is not easy, they fight back because people are more resilient than we think!

Initial steps of recreating colonialism

-Through brutality, Colonialism was able to achieve a faded identity in many places. However, the colors still peaked through; their identity still remained.
– Colonialism presumes a hierarchy of race; a superior identity. That is why in order to achieve their goal of creating a homogeneous world, they wanted to enforce their own presumed superior identity, on other nations. We showed this step, by coloring the nations White!

White-washing

– Colonialism was planning on achieving a euro-centric universality, where all colonized nations would be heavily dependent on their way of thinking. We depicted this, by sewing all these colonized states to Europe as the center of this world view. We used thick visible threads to illustrates the level of dependency.

Taking Europe as a representative, as we couldn’t cut out each country separately

Colonialism attacked, robbed and displaced indigenous lands and their people. The world that had been created through it was damaged, unknown and altered!

The displaced World, through the lens of colonialism

After the historic era of colonialism ended in mid 20th century, most states gained dependence, however, the impacts of this era still remains to this day. This means that many states and nations do not have full autonomy. We tried to depict this, by first cutting the original threads (showing the eradication of colonial establishments) and then used a lighter thread to make visible the current impacts of global Coloniality.

Global Coloniality, Present time

Action 2:
Understanding Modern/Colonial & Decolonial Design | Exploring through making

In order to start our exploration in this part, we decided to go outside and hunt for more natural inspirations. We went to a park close to where we both live and as we walked through it, picked up interesting objects off the ground: leaves, pine cones, flowers and …

Seeking natural materials

As we were walking through the park, we encountered a tree, with a mark on it. We decided to take that mark (a human-made scar, not naturally made) as a design problem metaphor and explore the ways of designing. The initial basic solution was plastic; a cheap, easy, and universal “fix”! Obviously plastic not only doesn’t solve anything, but it adds to the problem as well. This was a modern/colonial design, without paying attention to the context of the problem.
At another attempt, we had found some flowers on the ground and decided to try with this one as well. The result looked beautiful; drawing more attention to the tree than before. We were torn about this one though; the flower was going to eventually fall off in a couple of days and it was quite a temporary fix, but it was meaningful and aesthetic!
A while later, we discovered a piece of tree bark on the ground, and decided to try that as well. The process for this one was much harder and more intricate, it was not temporary and it looked blended as well. It was not as beautiful as the flower but it was from the same context.
After this making, we asked ourselves: Now that we know more about colonial/modern and universal design, what exactly is the language for Decolonial design?

A Design metaphor

Action 3:
Understanding The impacts of Colonial Design | Exploring through making

In an attempt to explore without thinking, we started experimenting with the natural materials we had gathered and came up with different combinations.

Playing around with natural objects

Around this time, we remembered another article we had read during our dialogue’s class: Sorting things out: classification and its consequences by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star. The book had a discourse around the topic of Monsters and Boundary objects.

We thought about this idea and how one of impacts of Modern/Colonial/Universal design had been the creation of monsters in many communities. An object that for some reason doesn’t sit right at the context of its community and doesn’t blend in.
A monster occurs when an object refuses to be naturalized” (Haraway 1992).

With this idea in mind, we set out to create monsters! Our initial idea was to mix and match artificial and natural materials in order to create eccentric looking objects.
The result surprised us, because we did not quite found them scary or abnormal. They looked aesthetically interesting. But looking back at them and revising our thoughts, we figured monsters are not suppose to be easily spotted, they could be beautiful objects but in the wrong setting. So what really defines a monster? How can we spot them?

Beautiful Monsters

P.S: After my 1:1 meeting with Zach, he pointed out something about these “beautiful monsters”. The fact is that the notion of monsters is not understood completely when we separate them from their context. (Something which we had done). They find meaning when they are set in a surrounding!
Also after the meeting, I went back to the Bowker and Star reading and reread the chapter on monsters. This quote was quite elaborate on this topic:

P.S: After my 1:1 meeting with Zach, he pointed out something about these “beautiful monsters”. The fact is that the notion of monsters is not understood completely when we separate them from their surrounding. (Something which we had done). They find meaning when they are set in a context!
Also after the meeting, I went back to the Bowker and Star reading and reread the chapter on monsters. This quote was quite elaborate on this topic:

monsters were united not so much by physical deformity or eccentricity as by
their common inability to fit or be fitted into the category of the ordinary—a category that
was particularly liable to cultural and moral construction”. (Ritvo 1997, 133–134
)

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