Hot Rod Biology

I know I contradict myself a lot, and I'm always saying I don't care about 'the industry'... but looking at this image (and the previous post about Bruce Mau) I realise that there is a lot about professional practice in here. The feeling that one is monstrous as a result of some dislocation/disruption between professional and personal practice?

hi luke

i am thinking about the various parts - Luke, the industry, practice, research, creating...

and i am wondering whether you are a monster within an industry context - or at least you might think or like to think you are?

the fact that much of your work is outside of the confines of Design (big D design the serious stuff) and that perhaps you position yourself on the periphery in order to critique and separate yourself from industry.

perhaps you are a monster to the industry, or perhaps you like to think that you are a monster. by being a monster you don't have to be a conformist designer. you can flirt with design, play with it, push it around, even do things that aren't design - yet all your acts are designerly. are you the monster, or is the industry the monster. or are you afraid of ending up a slave to the monster - a design zombie perhaps?

laurene

Last year I took this paper at uni Medieval culture and courtly love. Anyway it was bassed on french medieval literature. Alot of the stories involve a knight saving and winning the "distressed damsel" however alot also portrayed how the damsel was often manipulative or greedy etc and causing some form of harm to the damsel. One story (I'm no longer sure of the name) involved a worthy knight and his damsel. Anyway the damsel was getting a bit shittly because once a month (during the full moon) the knight would disappear for a few days. This was because he was a werewolf and would transform at fullmoon everymonth but did not want to hurt or scare the community so he would go bush for the duration of this transformation. However he could only transform back into human form at a particular place where he kept his clothes (I can't remember the exact details). Anyway she pleads him to tell her where he goes he tells her he can't as he will lose his love. When the day comes and he goes she follows him watchs him transform and steals his clothes so that he can't change back. He is stuck out in the woods as a beast. The story continues and concludes with the werewolf becoming a champion for the King and the village, killing the damsel and transforming back into human form. Just found the name BISCLAVRET

Laurene,

yeah I've thought about that a lot... I avoid saying it plainly because it feels a bit 'pathetic', but maybe that's part of it. The answer is 'yes' I kinda do feel monstrous in the sense that I never really fitted into professional practice that well, I was terrible with clients... so then I tried making my own work but that felt kind of strange too because I didn't really identify with the idea of being an 'artist' either. I realise I'm not 'special' in this sense, I think it's a common affliction in graphic designers, but I guess I'd call us 'monstrous' in the sense that we inhabit the periphery, the boundary between what are traditionally considered to be 'art' and 'design'. Of course saying that makes me sound either sorry-for-myself or arrogant... or perhaps both!?

What I want to try and articulate at some point soon is that the last 3 years for me have been spent in limbo... sort of... not wanting to return to a studio, not wanting to make work to be shown in art galleries, not wanting to teach... not knowing what I want to do... and a bit of anxiety as a result! Perhaps the monster is a manifestation of that anxiety?

Talking about this actually makes me realise how important The National Grid project has been... it's really helped me 'engage' with design again. I really do think it needs to be seen/discussed as a really important outcome of this research... even though it never was viewed as being a part of it. It was peripheral.

Hey Max, thanks for the reference. Sounds like a great paper! Why did she steal his clothes? Did she want him to be found out? This is really useful to me actually because I'm interested in monster stories where you end up feeling sorry for the monster... like King Kong... ultimately we learn something about ourselves through the way the 'humans' treat the 'thing'. The monster in this respect is a reflective tool/strategy...

I thought about that a lot when I was trying to 'make' monstrous work... but now I'm trying to apply the monster to 'practice' more broadly I'm a little lost!

Actually sat down today and tried to write a manifesto for 'The Monstrous Practitioner'... might post it here, but I wasn't really happy with it?

Just watched 'Wolfen', a 1981 werewolf film set in New York... although they're not werewolves really. They turn out to be ancient kind of wolf-spirits that inhabit the undergrounds and the slums, and who assasinate a property developer who's destroying their South Bronx 'habitat'. Of course you find this out from Indians descended from those that were originally driven out of the area... wanted to mention it here because I was thinking about shamanism, magic, and 'believing' in things rather than 'knowing' things. I guess this can/does sound anti-progress but I certainly don't mean it to... the opposite actually. I'm interested in the idea that as a way of thinking it's fundamental to imagination... and to innovation, and invention. I was thinking about what Lisa says (via Dilnot) about design being future-oriented and how that puts a lot of weight on your ability to imagine... that 'science' tries to describe how the world is, and 'design' tries to imagine how it could be. Science is the property developer and Design is the Indian/Shaman character who no one really believes in because their results are not 'verifiable', 'credible', or 'quantifiable'. It's a ridiculous analogy but it works.

Interesting you (Max?) mentioned medieval French culture. Werewolf (loup garou) were part of life in the French 16th century (at least folk thought so). My mom (anthropologist)says it was to cover up a lot of canibalism story. The werewolf always seemed to come out when there was not enough food to feed everyone...Anyway there is lots of stories in French Folk culture where seeing the monster = breaking the order of things. Another example is Melusine a woman that changed into a half snake/half woman every saturday. She got married and her husband Raymond of Poitou agreed to leave her alone a day a week. But one day he got too curious and spied her while she was in her bath on a saturday. She forgave him but later on he got mad at her and he called her a snake and she changed into a dragon, never to return. (you can see quite a pattern there).
So is it so that seeing the monster/ looking outside the boundary of the authorized world is breaking the order? Is it still relevant today? I thought everything was mapped. Then is all research a perversion of the established order?

Yeah Emilie... you touch on something that I've always worried about, but that maybe I'm beginning to come to terms with... that my research has always been 'about research'. And I think you're partly right about all research aiming to pervert an established order (to certain degrees)... in the sense that 'research' is about the generation of new knowledge/knowing, you almost need to set yourself up 'against' something. I guess for me it's been, almost unconsciously as Laurene points out, my experience in industry/professional practice... (and reciprocally I guess the kind(s) of 'research' the industry values and how that influences the academies... now that's scary!)

Just recently I saw this movie 'the Village' where the monster(s) had been installed to 'keep' the order within the village. It's a new film with Phoenix & Brodie. It appears to be 19th century america. Small villge in a valley where the residents are confined to the village because they will die to the hands of the unmetionables (creature/monsters) in the woods surrounding the village. The people have a truth with the creatures if no one goes into the woods the creatures will not come into the village. Of course youth wants to go beyound the village causing the creatures to re-enter the village. The film is good at making you anxious if not afraid about nothing. Alto of the time nothing is happening at all but yoou are nervous of what 'could' happen. Turns out that there are no monsters. They are just the creation of the villagers elders who put on the costumes when recquired. Also it is modern day and the people are living in a national park. The elders where all once successful city slickers, Lecturers, doctors etc but have all lost a loved on to 'random' crime, so got together and formed this village. The only way for them to keep people in the village and finding the truth was to make the monsters so that people are trapped and to afraid of the unknown. Often the monster is also someone's tool. Also on a more jovial note I was thinking about the childrens story 'Where the Wild things are' where the little boy 'Max' dresses into his new PJs (a wild/monster suit) goes to be and dreams of dancing and partying with the wild things.