(Parsons School of Design – A Constant Work in Progress)
The Red Thread of Fate (of Design)
Manifesto for the Creative Practice
of Katya Danziger.
I believe that all the artifacts, objects and projects we are meant to design in our lives already live inside of us. I believe that we are connected to them by an invisible red thread that has been there since birth.
The project of play that is fostered by the red string is our Jungian (subconscious) manifestation of accessing the deepest self.
The physical representation of this project was born out of a semester of play under the direction of Dr. Robert Kirkbride at Parsons School of Design, where we tried to come up with our own working definition of the Poetics of Design.
“Artifacts are therefore never simply the representatives of human intentions and abilities.
They are also openings, possibilities of something new in the human, even a new human.
There is always a gap between intentions and what is produced. The artifact offers something unexpected, some additional quality or resistance.
This excess opens up new ways of thinking, new modes of design.”
― Colomina & Wigley, 2016
Many East Asian cultures believe in an unbreakable cord that creates a fixed destiny between two people who are meant to meet and marry in their lives. For the purpose of my manifesto, I have abstracted this idea to include the work we do as designers. I believe that the notion of the red silk thread is not merely a romantic one and that a similar energy exists in the world of design. I believe that the red string of fate connects us to all of the design work we are meant to complete in our lives. The work we bring into this physical reality already lived (and lives) within us. We, as designers, have responded to a deeper call by bringing these previously hidden artifacts into being, into the light.
What within us dictates that we make the work that we make? Why is it that ideas are seemingly activated inadvertently... that the act of simply having a vision seems to subterraneously create the cause for resources to pool themselves together? Where there is an energetical charge to a concept, gravity will bring it forwards.
This is a fundamental belief I have in my design work. That what is meant to be created, has been created, will be created, is in the process of being made. Good designers are harbingers of change, people responding to a higher calling.
“Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it of myself.
I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.
I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living.
That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5: 1947-1955
Good design connects us to something higher than ourselves. I believe that good design is prayer manifested in physical form. In both design and spirituality, we are uplifted by our imaginations. Visual disconnection triggers spiritual disconnection. Visual connection points to the truth. Good designers seek to create things that connect people to themselves, to their reality, and the pure potential for freedom they have in this world.
Through design, we access a way to solve problems that goes beyond what can be thought linearly. Design is the tool that takes us beyond the limitations of thinking. Through design, we access a world where nothing is impossible.
Although we’re so often told that art and design can’t really change anything, I believe it can. It shapes our ethical landscapes and opens us to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living.
The spiritual, to me, is the part of existence that goes beyond what we can think, because we are limited by language. The space that goes beyond imagination because we are limited by culture. Many people have tried to describe the spiritual. But since it’s a space that is out of reach of language, there are so many versions - so many spiritual stories and traditions. Many people have tried to visualize this space. But since it’s a space that is beyond the cultural limitations, there are so many different images. Design's transcendental beauty lies in that it goes beyond thinking but still operates very much within the culture we live in. Images and artifacts have meaning because of cultural conventions.
The world of my ark works (and doesn't work) exactly as it was designed. The artifacts encased within it become more of what they are, the more they become entangled in the thread, the more they disappear into the ark.
There is a very beautiful expression in the Hebrew language that's borrowed from the spoken Torah... "All is predicted, and permission is given at any point to change anything." I am trying to tap into this idiom, by creating an ark that is activated by magnets... an ark that is held up between a balancing act of strings and the act of play.
"A place is not only a geographical area; it's also a state of mind. And trees are not just trees; they are the ribs of childhood."
- Mahmoud Darwish, from Journal of an Ordinary Grief (tr. from the Arabic by Ibrahim Muhawi)
"A genius is the one most like himself."
- Thelonious Monk (1917-82)
I think I think in the way I think I breathe…. In the way that if you were to ask a fish what water is, it would have no way of finding words for all that it has ever known. My thought is synonymous to life and synonymous to being. I think myself into being and the words become my flesh.
I think in dependence upon all that has come before me and all that awaits. On the precipice of what the physical world represents and the possibilities my mind holds. I think my thought is a disease for as long as it lives in my brain so I try to dissolve the boundary of my face. I try to capture the shape of my thoughts before they solidify into form, so not much of what lives inside my heart reaches my hands.
I think often about the precipices of thought. Where the boundary dissolves and I am met with the edge of the mind as I know it. I think I think between the two pillars of my two worlds. Negotiating the balance between inner and outer, outer and inner, matter and “me”.
Napoleon told six hundred thousand men to go to war and they did, the consciousness I am most familiar with says I am alone, and all that exists is only I. Consequently, I include space. I measure fleeting time by the unmoving moment of the present, for I feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation in my life. I think I think I would like more than anything to live the experience of being the “other”. But I am a fish in water being asked how I survive my own condition. I think I think I understand my thought is my breath and my breath is my being and if to reverse this great weight for a moment would lie truth untold.
“Depth must be hidden. Where? On the surface.”
- Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929)
I think about death all of the time. In the way that it is the thought that gives me the most energy to be present in my life. In the way that it symbolizes the infinite possibility of gods and men who came before me and were equalized by the force of this impermanence. Nobody is above or below in the face of death and I have been taught that sanitizing this truth does not make anything easier. The fact that I, and everyone that I know and love, are not in this world forever means I must be responsible towards time.
Death can happen at any time. Any joy in life is always and necessarily intermingled with death and transience.
"The plain fact is that the planet does not need more successful people.
But it does desperately need more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of every kind. It needs people who live well in their places.
It needs people of moral courage willing to join the fight to make the world habitable and humane. And these qualities have little to do with success as we have defined it."
- David W. Orr