Domus India – March 2018

82

To be clear, if there is one valid project for design,
it is the revolution, but I do not mean the bloody
take-over by the Bolsheviks or the brick-throwing
protests of the ’68 Situationists (even if some
brick-throwing might still be necessary).
I mean the consideration of possible utopias,
the creation of a universal infrastructure based
on equality and liberty for all. It means discussing
the failure of neo-liberal capitalism to support
society and to propose an egalitarian global
communism with a form of democracy that works
and allows us to be fair to each other while getting
our individual kicks.

From reality to metaphor and back again
As a way of dealing with a design that is concerned
with a total picture, I introduce three main
concepts to my work: the Non Gesamt/Gesamt
Kunstwerk (how to look at a totality without being
a totalitarian), the Every-topia (using the here,
now and readily available as a way to uncomplicate
the modern), and the concept of constant humour
(as another access to the divine). I see my works
as prototypes or user manuals, existing somewhere
between reality (because that is the goal) and
metaphor (because sometimes the challenge is
so vast that only metaphor is capable of grasping
it). But I also see them as a meme, ready to be passed
on and modified as necessary.
The goal is of course “vivid blue every-colour
inhabitations of the planet, the transformation

of reality, and a multitude of happy endings”

(double entendre intended), or as Richard Rorty,

the American atheist pragmatist philosopher,

said, “My sense of the holy is bound with the hope

that someday my remote descendants will live

in a global civilisation in which love is pretty

much the only law.”^ We have a way to go.

Amateur Workshops and Dirty Art Department

In 2008 I began a series of exhibitions as workshops

to discuss the possibility of an Amateur society.

Using a technical wax both as a physical and

metaphorical connection between things, people

and ideas, capitalism was artificially cut out and

replaced with the idea of a libidinal economy. The

revolution was proposed as “the fulfilment of the

production in the hands of the people”.

It became evident that the discussion had to go

past the representational boundaries of the

museum and take a step into reality. Together

with a few colleagues, the idea of a non-institutional

school called Nuclear Banana was conceived. After

several failed attempts, the Sandberg Instituut

in Amsterdam made the invitation, and the Dirty

Art Department was founded in 2011.

The Dirty Art Department runs on a collective

basis, examination criteria are open to discussion

and can even be abolished, and there is a mutual

exchange in the student-teacher relationship.

Individually, students delve deep into singular

positions, while workshops discuss general social

issues, and the arrival of certain contexts creates

the grounds for collective action.

In 2013, many students found themselves

without housing in the Airbnb-fuelled climate of

Amsterdam real estate, and the idea of squatting

was proposed. Shortly afterwards, a series of

abandoned buildings were occupied and became

the Post Norma living and project space with its

manifesto of “medieval modernity”. The

department subsequently collaborated with the

Macao organisation – the biggest occupied

buildingn Milan run by open assembly – to produce

the Wandering School in 2016.

Lucky Larry’s Cosmic Commune and Macao

Taking inspiration from 20th-century utopian

novels such as News from Nowhere by William

Morris, Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

and Red Star: The First Bolshevik Utopia by

Alexander Bogdanov, I initiated the New Dirty

Enterprises project in 2013, a metaphoric agent

that will cause the revolution. Functioning as an

umbrella project for other works such as the Pizza

Delivery Franchise, the Orsimanirana Sound

System, the Extra National Assembly #112, the

Hyperplasmic Composition #113, the Energy

Totems #1 – #514, the Archive for Autonomous

Beginnings and the as yet unrealised Treatise on

Human Work and Property Rights, the plan is

eventually to create a user manual for the

revolution in the form of a film, titled Orsimanirana