VC, Fine Art, and spectacle, again (Instructor post)

Some further questions to possibly consider:

Does Visual Communication, or design more generally, bear responsibility for a particular position within capitalism and the spectacle?

Is 'Fine Art' somehow freed from this responsibility, or is this perceived autonomy simply and finally illusory?

If design is (as many theorists and commentators have suggested) inextricably linked, to a greater degree than the other arts, to capitalism, consumption, and the spectacle, does this mean that design and designers are limited to serving and reproducing these conditions?

Or is there room for critique or change from within the spectacle?

You might also consider the following (highly provocative, to my mind) exchange from an interview with Matt Soar, a Canadian academic and working graphic designer:

Q. (Klik magazine)
You’ve disagreed with the notion that the world would begin to change if ten thousand designers would finally decide to change the way they work. I’ve read that Canadian designers were thinking about going on strike, back in the seventies, because of their dissatisfaction with their status and working conditions. Croatian theoretician Goroslav Keller once wrote: “Can we imagine for all designers in the world to go on strike for indefinite time. How would this result in a world, would there be any damage? Cynics might even say that society at the end might even prosper.” Can you imagine a world without designers?

A. (Matt Soar)
I think there are several questions here. For me, it’s highly unlikely that ten thousand designers would suddenly decide to change the way they work because, barring a real social or political revolution, that kind of thing simply doesn’t happen overnight. It’s an entirely different question to ask whether such a change would have any effect on the world. ‘Changing the way you work’ could mean using a computer instead of a pencil, or it could mean working exclusively for ethically sound organizations and actively working against all the others. To paraphrase a famous German philosopher, ‘we make history but not in conditions of our own choosing.’ This is true for designers in particular, but it’s something they generally don’t understand or don’t want to hear. Designers are middle-men; intermediaries. They generally mediate between their clients and the expectations of their clients’ audiences. In strict terms, they’re not producers or inventors or creators at all.

The rest of the interview is available here.

- Keith