Can design be an act of political dissidence? asks Ines Weizman
Though manifest for millennia, recent years have seen a rash of urban protest, and an interest in the architectural platforms of social upheaval. Civil unrest has become a cultural phenomenon. But how much political agency can designers really have? Architect and educator Ines Weizman ponders the idea of dissidence – the critical act of standing ‘apart’.
Georges Perec famously stated that he knew he had to give up smoking, but hated to be told to do so. He died, in 1982, at the age of 46, of lung cancer. Seemingly, this rebel who combined theory, politics, sexuality, pleasure, experimentation and humour, to demystify the grand narratives of humanist mythology could not be advised by a sensible request.
During the student revolt in Paris in 1968, Perec, pseudo-scientifically contemplated objects and gestures of the everyday, which he believed masked the true power structures of society. His short essays, reports and charming statistics have long haunted the pockets and drawers of architects and students. How many have followed Perec's call: 'What we need to question, is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us.'
The call for dissidence or disobedience begins with a discontent subject: one who is willing to face corrupt hegemonies, to speak truth to power, to fight for justice, to refuse to obey. Such well-meaning ambitions must be channelled and mediated through the very techniques and methods of a profession. In architecture, a whole spectrum of dissident practices is available: from the subtle, almost unnoticeable gestures in drawing, to manoeuvring through the planning realities of public or state practice, through to fully articulated, outspoken confrontations with the limits of the profession, potentially pushing it to illegal extremes. It is through cracks in the representational walls of the mainstream that we can notice the discourse of dissidence emerging. One example is a small exhibition in the V&A titled Disobedient Objects that has stealthily insinuated itself in amongst imperial collections and other objects with high insurance value. The other is a TV series aired recently by Al Jazeera titled Rebel Architecture that has been able to bring a different kind of architectural practice -- political, critical and radical -- into the homes of many viewers.
Dissidence is commonly associated with the political practice of Soviet-bloc individuals, who acted covertly or overtly against the authoritarian regimes of their states. It has since become a prominent model for a mode of political engagements in the world, one which does not seek to overthrow and replace governments, nor to take over power to govern, but one determined to radically contest the way in which subjects are governed. It is a fundamental questioning of professional, cultural and political conventions.
A genealogy of dissidence and activism is seemingly difficult to represent, as they are entrapped in the linearity or oppositional reading of conventional historiographies. How to tell the story of gestures of courage acted in the everyday? How to explain ideas that are quickly spoken, or shouted, that have become memory and inspiration for others? It remains a challenge to disclose the 'truth' about dictators, villains, collaborators and confederates, as much as it is to speak about courageous agents, rebels and dissidents, who themselves, paradoxically -- in order to act, and certainly in order to build, in the case of architects -- have to accept systemic complicities. It is both a historiographical challenge (past) and an actual challenge to mobilise change (future).
But the subject of critique addressed by such actions often remains unclear. As the histories of public uprisings show, political change can happen at obscure unexpected moments. For example, the 'storming' of the Berlin Wall, already 25 years ago, was in fact triggered by a slightly mistaken answer to a press conference question which inadvertently inflated popular expectations: this made crowds of East-Berliners run to the Wall. But who would have been actually watching the broadcasted conference, if not the most privileged among the citizens of Berlin? Of course, the long and painful protest movements, both in the East and the West, that critiqued the Communist regime were part of the event, but years of struggle could hardly be quantified and proven as effectively as that televised and provocative slip. History is full of events that have been instigated by incalculable ruptures.
In his contemplation of objects and gestures of the everyday, Perec warns us of being moved along by news, tragedies, scandals: 'As if what speaks, what is significant, is always abnormal: natural cataclysms or historical upheavals, social unrest, political scandals.' We should not be so distracted by these events as to oversee the 'truly intolerable, the truly inadmissible'. As much as we try to twist and specify our terms, the sense of awareness of constant traps in the corrupt social systems, within architectural practice, academia and the art world, remains a matter of urgency.
