Re-orient

In her musings on how design designs us, Leyla Acaroglu calls design “…a silent social scripter that softly shifts and curates the values, opinions, cultures, and experiences of humans all over the world.” In this zine challenge, I wanted to explore the promises and power of technologies/companies/designers to bring us the world and remove us from the world we move in [and why]. There are many conversations about policy and systems that are vital for this moment. But I wanted to recall a simple and immediate tool of resistance present in our back pockets: the power to choose for ourselves how we will engage, re-orient, and navigate this. In her reflections on how to do nothing, Jenny Odell reminds us of the value of recharging. She shares a quote from David Abram that resonated strongly with me: “Only in regular contact with the tangible ground and sky can we learn how to orient and to navigate in the multiple dimensions that now claim us.” I concur.

For further reading:

https://medium.com/disruptive-design/how-design-designs-us-part-1-6583a9b61b57

https://medium.com/@the_jennitaur/how-to-do-nothing-57e100f59bbb

David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World