In times of crisis, mutual aid becomes paramount. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, new forms of sharing had gained momentum to redress precarity and stark economic inequality. Today, a diverse array of mutualistic organizations seek to fundamentally restructure housing, care, labor, food, and more. Yet design, art, and architecture play a key role in shaping these initiatives, fulfilling their promise of solidarity, and ensuring that these values endure.
In this book, artist Marisa Moran Jahn and architect Rafi Segal converse about the transformative potential of mutualism and design with leading thinkers and practitioners: Mercedes Bidart, Arturo Escobar, Michael Hardt, Greg Lindsay, Jessica Gordon Nembhard, Ai-jen Poo, and Trebor Scholz. Together, they consider how design inspires, invigorates, and sustains contemporary forms of mutualism-including platform cooperatives, digital-first communities, emerging currencies, mutual aid, care networks, social-change movements, and more. From these dialogues emerge powerful visions of futures guided by communal self-determination and collective well-being.
Marisa Moran Jahn is an artist, filmmaker, and Sundance Fellow who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, and Parsons/The New School, where she is the associate director of integrated design. Artforum has praised her work as exemplifying the possibilities of art as social practice.
Rafi Segal is an architect and associate professor of architecture and urbanism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current work focuses on how emerging forms of sharing and collectivity affect the design of buildings and cities.
Title: Design and Solidarity: Visions for Collective Futures: Conversations on Collective Futures
Author: Segal,Rafi
ISBN: 9780231204057
Binding:
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Publication Date: 2023-01-23
Number of Pages: 232
Weight: 0.2495 kg
Say good-bye to grandiose master plans. Say hello to temporary monuments, pop-up services, and mutualist economics. Design and Solidarity is a field guide for rebuilding public life from the bottom up. -- Ellen Lupton, author of Design Is Storytelling
Concise, rich, and cross-disciplinary, Design and Solidarity offers essential insights on how art, architecture, and design can fundamentally re-imagine how we will live together. -- Hashim Sarkis, Dean, MIT School of Architecture and Planning, and Curator, 2021 Venice Biennale Architettura
We see the emergence of collectives everywhere; from Black Lives Matter to the platform cooperativism movement, we are observing a proliferation of new kinds of social ties building. This book is among the first to bring together these scattered practices in a single frame. It also presents practical guidelines for action and design across disciplines and sectors, providing the readers with a list and discussion of resources that can be used to pursue communitarian or collective interests. -- Koray Caliskan, author of Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity
How can art and architecture help create a society of greater mutualism and care? This book not only inspires and challenges readers to create worlds of greater mutualism, it also provides multiple blueprints, metaphoric and real, for how art and architecture can enhance communal self-determination, wealth, and well-being. -- Noam M. Elcott, author of Artificial Darkness: An Obscure History of Modern Art and Media
