of running a design office with many employees, or
engaging participants in a design process, question-
ing them and observing what they do and how they
perform certain procedures. It is a design practice
bringing them all together and in collaboration pro-
duce, craft and share the findings, wit the purpose of
inserting the design endeavours into an existing flow,
economy, meaning system or professional practice.
This means another form of transdisciplinary work
that from the engaged amateurs is built into the ex-
pert production facilities of knowledge, culture or
products.
This would be similar to the symbiogenesis that has
been discussed in the earlier chapters. At this level
the whole idea is to bring the collaboration into “the
system”, but simultaneously renegotiate the entry
conditions to ensure the mutual exchange of ener-
gies.
It does not mean to sign a contract for your ideas or
designs to be produced and then withdraw and let
the company do the work. It means the creation of
new interfaces where meetings occur and new terms
are discussed and prototyped, directly connecting
user and producer. To orchestrate a process like this
means to bring everyone in, to facilitate the exchange
of skills, energy and knowledge.
This type of designer role would be a furthering on
the “catalyst communicator”, the change agent model
discussed by development practitioners White &
Nair (1999). Their idea is that a change agent is a me-
diator for wide communication and understanding
between partners, one that is also capable of address-
ing the bigger picture and of connecting the local,
national and global decision-making processes. The
catalyst communicator is a social chemist, a “fearless
facilitator”, building capacities through new channels
of shared understanding and producing catalytic
loops. White & Nair’s emphasis is on the collabora-
tion, of participation among equals, yet propelling
catalytic loops through coalitions.
Consequently, the hacktivist designer equivalent
could be that of a “catalyst crafter”, a craftsman that
orchestrates shared practices and the forming of
symbiogenetic “material publics”, but with the inten-
tion of reinserting this new energy into the system
and of riding on the existing forces within. This has
to be done on renegotiated terms where this new
symbiosis facilitates growth and pride among the en-
gaged amateurs and where the energy does not seep
out during the process, but on the contrary is in-
creased or intensified.
It is here we also can see the full potential of the de-
signer be realized, in the role of helping to actualize
potentialities and connecting professionals with am-
ateurs in new ways. We have discussed earlier the de-
signer as a skilled producer of “provotypes”
(Mogensen 1992). The designer challenges precon-
ceptions and dead-locked relations and instead
makes small experiments so as to demonstrate how
things could be different. The hands-on crafting of
this type of projects can then become micro-experi-
ments towards micro-utopias using existing flows of
material, skills, dreams, energies – riding flows in the
system, drawing new lines between practices before
separated.
We can learn from the Pro-Ams and the user-inno-
vators the way to demystify the gap between high
fashion and the users. We can assist users who want
to engage on a deeper level in the production of fash-
ion, most probably on another level than the haute
couture, and yet doing something more than only
engaging with recycling the surplus of the McFash-
ion system. The scene is set, let us start building, let
us start plugging our fashion hacktivism back into
the system.plugging hacktivism back in
So what would this Pro-Am approach mean for the
fashion system? I see it as another layer of fashion, a
rhizomatic, viral and engaged level, that cuts diago-
nally through the system, that draws unexpected
lines and consciously connects to the existing flows.
It would consist of Pro-Ams, user-innovators and a
distributed scene that dissolves the strict borders be-
tween designer and consumer. New tools and prac-
tices would create a broader grey zone between these
roles, in which a multiplicity of practices experi-
ments with new protocols, models for organization,
and where hacktivist practices would form to create
a wild blend of fashion intensities and energies.
&In our age when “time is money” one can argue that
DIY culture is the new luxury, as it would mainly be
wealthy people who had the time to develop their
craft or DIY skills. For some privileged people that
might be true, and nowadays it might be few in the
welfare state who sew or recycle garments simply out