The world today faces overwhelming ecological and social problems and the concern for material existence on earth is more pressing than ever. Making Matters spells out various roles that visual artists and designers play facing these issues. Collective action is necessary and inevitable.

Collective action often changes the artist’s identity and working habits: from individuality and autonomy to collectivity and collaboration, both locally and globally. These developments have given rise to new kinds of collective art and design practices: artists work together with non-artists, make products for their local environment and take on multiple identities, such as researcher, community activist, computer hacker or business consultant. 

Making Matters looks at art practices across all continents that do not conform to a Western concept of art nor to traditional distinctions between art, design, research and activism—where the boundaries between art, design, research and activism become blurred or are dissolved.

The entries in this vocabulary experiment with concepts and keywords of current art practices that may no longer be recognizable as art.

Editorial committee: Florian Cramer, Anja Groten, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Pia Louwerens, Marie-José Sondeijker, Janneke Wesseling

Contributors:  Aliens in Green, a.pass / Lilia Mestre, Florian Cramer, Display Distribute / Elaine W. Ho, Feral Atlas / Lili Carr & Feifei Zhou Anja Groten, Thalia Hoffman, Jatiwangi art Factory / Bunga Siagian & Ismal Muntaha, Eleni Kamma, Frans-Willem Korsten, Klaas Kuitenbrouwer, Pia Louwerens, Dani Ploeger, Kate Rich, Femke Snelting, Olu Taiwo, Janneke Wesseling, West / Baruch Gottlieb, West / Akiem Helmling, Z. Blace

Graphic Design Is (…) Not Innocent questions ingrained approaches, values and assumptions of graphic design in globalized societies. The publication aims to initiate a dialogue between designers, scholars, critics and commissioners, who investigate responsibilities, potentials, politics, limits and risks of designing visual communication. How innocent is graphic design? Whom is it addressing, whom is it in/excluding? What does it bring about? When defining the role and impact of visual communication, what future questions lie ahead?

Contributors: Karo Akpokiere, Christian Bauer, David Bennewith, Friedrich von Borries, Clémentine Deliss, Sandra Doeller, Daniel Martin Feige, Feminist Internet, Annette Geiger, Matthias Görlich, Anna Lena von Helldorff, Martin Ludwig Hofmann, Jianping He, Kay Jun, Anoushka Khandwala, Francisco Laranjo, Degeng Li, Eva Linhart, Madoka Nishi, Ingo Offermanns, Offshore, Sophia Prinz, Konrad Renner (Knoth  & Renner), Conor Rigby (Feminist Internet), Isabel Seiffert (Offshore), In-ah Shin (Feminist Designer Social Club), Pierre Smolarski, Markus Weisbeck

In een competitief bestaan verbergen we onze zwakke plekken. Evaluatiedrift en de voortdurende dwang tot innoveren duwen mensen steeds verder weg in een bolster. Hoe danook gaan we allen als knoeiers door het leven, vindt Marlies De Munck. Ze roept daarom op tot openheid en mededogen. Want dat bolsteren hindert je om te raken. En om geraakt te worden. Pascal Gielen houdt een warm pleidooi voor een esthetische kunde: het vermogen via al onze zintuigen een rammelende en fragiele werkelijkheid toch als een samenhangend geheel te ervaren. Dat is de potentie van kunst en cultuur: om ons te verzoenen met een chaotisch en kwetsbaar leven.

Marlies De Munck is cultuurfilosofe. Ze is als docent verbonden aan het Departement Wijsbegeerte van de Universiteit Antwerpen en aan het KASK & Conservatorium in Gent. Als lid van het Culture Commons Quest Office (CCQO) aan het Antwerp Research Institute For the Arts (ARIA) doet ze onderzoek naar de gezondheid van cultuur.

Solidarity has re-entered the global zeitgeist with resounding force in the last decades and is especially urgent to consider today. Yet this concept – both a potent ideal and a slippery notion – is one of the least analysed within the arts. Why? It is perhaps because colonialism, Neoliberalism, hyper-individualism and Western-centred concepts of art have eroded visions of a care-based society. Creating a fair and vital social fabric inspired by mutual dependencies between living beings and all entities including fauna, flora, air, land and water, is fundamental for our collective existence.

A critical toolbox with intersectional perspectives is needed to examine this minefield and reveal meaningful and inspiring narratives that can guide our future.

Contributors: Reem Abbas, Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, Noor Abuarafeh, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Ali Hussein Al-Adawy, Salvador Allende, Beth Brant, Wendy Carrig, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Emory Douglas, Ntone Edjabe, Ingrid Fadnes, Eva Maria Fjellheim, Katya García-Antón, Soledad García Saavedra, Gavin Jantjes, Shoili Kanungo, Geeta Kapur, Lara Khaldi, Ixchel León, Audre Lorde, Chelsea Manning, Olivier Marboeuf, Barbara Masekela, Naeem Mohaiemen, Mário Pedrosa, Ram Rahman, Laura Raicovich, farid rakun/ruangrupa, Aban Raza, Devika Singh, Irene Soria Guzmán, Kwanele Sosibo, Eszter Szakács, Dulce Celina Ureña Hernández, Alice Walker.

Mix & Stir, this book’s aim is an endeavour to understand art as being a panhuman phenomenon of all times and cultures; to steer away from the persistent Eurocentric/Western-centric viewpoint towards a transcultural and transnational interconnected model of exchange and processes of interculturalization. Mix & Stir wants to expand this landscape by bringing to the fore new, recalcitrant, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods and concerns that open up ways to approach art from a global perspective.

Analogous to a cookery book filled with recipes and instruction, Mix & Stir explores new outlooks on contemporary art from global perspectives. It intends to encourage studying art beyond national constraints, cultural dominances, and hierarchies: a voyage similar to that of culinary discovery. The book brings a variety of tastes and flavours to the table, and breaks new ground by allowing innovative, contrary, queer, idiosyncratic practices and discourses, theories and topics, methods, and concerns to access art in its global dimensions.

Contributions: Thomas J. Berghuis, Elisabeth de Bièvre, John Clark, Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Parisa Damandan, Wilfried van Damme, Sophie Ernst, Angèle Etoundi Essamba. Paul Faber, Claire Farago, Anne Gerritsen, Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn, Isabel Hoving, Stijn Huijts, Joo Yun Lee, Nancy Jouwe, Remy Jungerman, Sonja van Kerkhoff, Meta Knol, Frans-Willem Korsten, Katja Kwastek, Sybille Lammes, Charl Landvreugd, Gregor Langfeld, Chris Lee, Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes, Virginia MacKenny, Sarat Maharaj, Tirzo Martha, Kyveli Mavrokordopoulou, Larissa Mendoza Straffon, Ni Haifeng, Stéphanie Noach, Anja Novak, John Onians, Rob Perrée, Georges Petitjean, Rosalien van der Poel, Jennifer Pranolo, Lize van Robbroeck, Pippa Skotnes, Henk Slager, Rudi Struik, Eva-Maria Troelenberg, Leonor Veiga, Leon Wainwright, James Webb, Janneke Wesseling, Helen Westgeest, Carine Zaayman, Kitty Zijlmans, Robert Zwijnenberg.

There is a growing interest in the notion and practice of dramaturgy, which is often discussed either as the work of the dramaturge or as the compositional, cohesive, or sense-making aspects of a performance. Drawing on such views, this book addresses the subject as a shared, politicized, and catalytic practice that sets actions into motion in a more speculative way. In its first part, three working principles are discussed that form the heart of this proposition, relating to debates on action, work, and post-Fordist labour. The second part opens up to artistic, social, and political perspectives that may emerge from such an understanding of dramaturgy through contributions by guest authors.

240 p, ills bw, 14 x 21 cm, pb, English

For centuries, the garden has been regarded as a mirror of society, a microcosm, in which the broader relationships between nature and culture are played out on  small scale. From this long cultural tradition also raises a call for a new awareness of our relationship with the Earth.

On the Necessity of Gardening tells the story of the garden as a rich source of inspiration. Over the centuries, artists, writers, poets and thinkers have each described, depicted and designed the garden in different ways. In medieval art, the garden was a reflection of paradise, a place of harmony and fertility, shielded from worldly problems.

However, the garden is not just a neutral place and intended solely for personal pastime, it is a place where the world manifests itself and where the relationship between culture and nature is expressed. In the eighteenth century this image shifted: the garden became a symbol of worldly power and politics. The Anthropocene, the era in which man completely dominates nature with disastrous consequences, is forcing us to radically rethink the role we have given nature in recent decades.

There is a renewed interest in the theme of the garden among contemporary makers. It is not a romantic desire that drives them, but rather a call for a new awareness of our relationship with the earth, by connecting different fields of activity in landscape, art and culture. Through many different essays and an extensive abecedarium, On the Necessity of Gardening reflects on the garden as a metaphor for society, through concepts such as botanomania and capitalocene, from guerrilla gardening to queer ecology and zen garden.

Contributors: Maria Barnas, Jonny Bruce, Laurie Cluitmans, Thiëmo Heilbron, Liesbeth M. Helmus, Erik A. de Jong, René de Kam, Alhena Katsof, Jamaica Kincaid, Bart Rutten, Catriona Sandilands, Patricia de Vries.

Design Dedication makes a plea for adaptive mentalities within design pedagogy, with a non-normative approach to design practices. It explores an attitude in and towards design education that is socially engaged, politically aware, generous in approach, lyrical in tone, experimental in form and collaborative in practice. How can we talk about and bring out the political that’s inherent in the work that design students are doing? How to work on specific urgencies that are rooted in experience and narration? What are the underlying values of such a pedagogy? What kind of practices are developed in the context? How can an institute support and safeguard this? 

Design Dedication explores these approaches through statements from within and reaches out to design students, designers, artists, and teachers who are open to questioning their own practices and reformulating values in design dedication for a yet unpredictable, but surely dedicated tomorrow.

Contributors: Hannes Bernard, Michèle Champagne, Rana Ghavami, Anja Groten, Agata Jaworska, Anastasia Kubrak, Sherida Kuffour, Gui Machiavelli, Daniel van der Velden, Annelys de Vet and many others.

Capitalism could not exist without the coins, notes, documents, graphics, interfaces, branding and advertisements; artefacts that have been (partly) created by graphic designers. Even anti-consumerist strategies such as social design and speculative design are being appropriated within capitalist societies to serve economic growth. It seems that design is locked in a system of exploitation and profit, a cycle that fosters inequality and the depletion of natural resources. 

CAPS LOCK uses clear language and striking visual examples to show how graphic design and capitalism are inextricably linked. The book contains many case studies of designed objects related to capitalist societies and cultures, and also examines how the education and professional practice of (graphic) designers supports the market economy and how design practice is caught within that very system.

The content of CAPS LOCK is structured in chapters with titles of professions that designers can occupy (such as Educator; Engineer, Hacker, Futurist, Activist, etc.). These titles respond to the importance of not just how designers make work, but also how they perform daily economic and social roles.

This publication offers a critical assessment of the complicity of design in creating, perpetuating, and reinforcing social, political, and environmental problems, both today and in the past. It proposes going against the grain by problematising Western notions of design to foster situated, decolonial, and queer-feminist modes of disciplinary self-critique, and looks at design through the intersections of gender, culture, ethnicity, and class. Applying robust scholarly insight with engaging and accessible modes of conveyance and storytelling, an urgent and expansive array of voices and views emerge from those engaged in struggles with, against, or around the field of design.