Design as Craft. Performativity and Interpellation in Design History

Abstract

Teaching design history to future designers poses great challenges to me as an academic in the design field. There is a constant need to further describe and analyze how design and its history continuously are being made. The role of the designer implies the crafting of artefacts or at least an ability to communicate the possibility of them being materialized. Design history has mainly focused on the object. Some concern has been directed towards the consumer aspect and the societal context, an approach that ultimately should raise questions as to what kind of performative action is needed to make design and its history. This paper presents part of a research project dealing with the performative aspects of craft practice. In the project, gender and genre in craft-, art- and design magazine are being examined from a critical perspective, focusing on the discursive limits at play. The project explores the performative aspects of practical skills by studying how notions of gender are used to communicate craft - or hand made aspects of the design process. In this paper I will discuss how the discursive limits of design have been conceptualized in Swedish design history and how representations of art-, craft - and design-making in magazines relate to the historical narrative. The Do-It-Yourself and the “critical making” aspects of contemporary design have opened my eyes to these questions. I believe that a design history with a critical approach to norms and habits in desig n practice answers to crucial questions such as: What works as incentive to do design? What makes a person think that she or he can be a designer? Or make a difference? In the long run perhaps the practitioners in their making the objects of their trade can also challenge the limitations of both genre and genre.

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