Reflections

I used to have a linear process in my design practice. In this project, however, the sequence question, research,ideas and development was challenged. Instead of thinking and making, instead to go from image to object and from object to image, this project was based on a process of thinking through making1: a dialog between me as a designer and the materials I have worked with.

Constructing the rubble scenario was an attempt to connect the images of destruction caused by war to something real. It was an experiment to create a concrete relationship between me and the image of this “displace” and to set up a dialog between my body and the materiality of the rubble where a different way of thinking could happen. Tim Ingold’s concept of making can clearly explain this process. It was what he calls a process of growth. It means to put myself since the beginning as a participant in what he calls “a world of active materials”. In the process of making, I “join forces” with the materials, “bringing them together or splitting them apart, synthetisising and distilling, in anticipation of what might emerge.”1 The rubble process of constructing, mapping, deconstructing, archiving, cataloguing, reconstructing and reproducing reformulated my original question and added new questions to the project. Its materiality informed process and refections, guided my research in different directions and connected the design to other disciplines such as art, archaeology and social anthropology.

Relating to the topics of cultural heritage and humanity, a potential area for designers was speculated in this project. In a new approach of cultural heritage, in which communities have the ownership of their own heritage discourse, designers can contribute in the path towards a more humanitarian heritage practice. The mechanisms to ensure that communities viewpoint to be heard requires the inclusion of multidisciplines, beyond the archaeology and related fields. The necessity to involve a trans-disciplinary approach is result of the landscape concept getting more relevance in heritage discourses. According to Graham Fairclough, the complex and multiple concept of landscape, which is “not simply (as some archaeologists treat it) just as heritage covering large areas”, implies a “trans-disciplinary integration”. He claims that landscape might be “the most inter-disciplinary forum of all” and therefore the link between the professionals and academic disciplines that work with different aspects of environment is crucial.2 It means that designers can work with archaeologists and anthropologists for instance in order to give voice to those groups.

The conversation with Majed, Rana and Muhammed, who fled from Syria to escape the war, was guided by a script developed under this perspective, where design skills and tools were used to map their stories related to landscape. Although it is an interesting issue, this part of the project was briefly explored and it is necessary a deeper research and experiments to reflect on how designers can work in this field. Designers can also be important in the process of framing destruction of cultural heritage as a “form of construction” and giving to the destructed buildings and artefacts “another life through their representations”.3 These representations depict and construct meaning over the acts of violence against landscape and “demonstrate that in many cases, destruction is less an end-point—the straightforward expression of political will—than the beginning of a process of meaning-making”.4 So that, the absence of a monument does not mean it will be lost or forgotten but rather than its existence could be defined for instance through a “specific mode of image production”.5 This image production that Stubblefield refers to is very related to exhibition design practice and other design fields. 

My intention when I started the project was to open up new perspectives to my practice as a exhibition designer. Instead of my usual practice of translating a content developed by others to a space, I was interested in producing the content and narratives and not only design a format for it. This process allowed me to produce this content in a way that I have never experienced. But more than that, it allowed me to look critically to the usual design practices in Western societies as well to other disciplines related to exhibition making. In the end of this project, I reflected that the design process should allow us to reflect in our responsibility on reproducing problematic ideologies and then criticise, intervene and help to change these ideologies. Tim Ingold’s view on making explains my role in this project: not to “[impose my] designs on a world that is ready and waiting to receive them. The most [I] can do is to intervene in worldly processes that are already going on […] adding [my] own impetus to the forces and energies in play.”

1 Tim Ingold, Making : Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London : New York: Routledge, 2013. Print.

2 Graham Fairclough, ‘New Heritage, an Introductory Essay – People, Landscape and Change’ in The Heritage Reader, ed. Graham Fairclough, Rodney Harrison, John H. Jameson Jr. and John Schofield (London: Routledge, 2008) pp. 298

3 Thomas Stubblefeld, ‘Iconoclasm beyond Negation: Globalization and Image Production in Mosul’, Aggregate, <http://weaggregate.org/piece/iconoclasm-beyond-negation-globalization-and-image-production-in-mosul> [accessed 6th April 2017]

4 Keith Bresnahan and J. M. Mancini, ‘Introduction’ in Architecture and Armed Conflict ed. JoAnne Mancini and Keith Bresnahan (Taylor and Francis, 2014) pp. 3

5 Thomas Stubblefeld.