Erik Sandelin defends his doctoral thesis “Design and Grace – An Ahuman Odyssey”.
In a world where human activities often violently constrict the lives of others, how can designers cultivate creative acts of withdrawal, foreclosure and leaving be?
Design is conventionally comprehended in terms of making new things; designers act through addition and intervention. But, in a world where human activities often violently constrict the lives of others, how can designers also cultivate creative acts of withdrawal, foreclosure and leaving be? This dissertation employs grace – actively not doing what you are able to do – to decouple action from force and passivity from resignation in design.
To explore the friction between design and grace Erik Sandelin conducts practical design experiments, and uses theoretical tools from Michel Serres, Patricia MacCormack, Simone Weil, and from critical animal studies. The dissertation operates in the nexus of two emerging design landscapes: design and animals, and design and negation. Through recomposing situations where humans consume other animals (eating, angling and shopping) the experiments seek to populate a growing palette of affirmative nos and nots in design.
“Design and Grace” tends to a friction at the core of design, that between proposing and imposing. It seeks to provide designers and design researchers with confidence, precision and generative exemplars in envisioning and manifesting vital, effective and beautiful nos and nots.