Given whom we are – individuals tightly bound together in a network of norms and power structures that are inseparable from our view of the world – alteration is hard. Trying to break free from our point of view, I am immediately faced with the question of new reference points, directions and goals. This is challenging, partly because anything designed, planned or conceived still will reference where I come from, but also because I, as an any individual but particularly as a person with the qualifications to become a part of the heart of the patriarchal system, am used to the comparative convenience of leaning against habitual structures. I also have an even strengthened set of norms: I do not only carry with me what an individual with my background would normally have; I have also passed through a normative education, In one way making me more less suited for the job I am educated to do than most.
Even if I write this text from my point of view, I find it hard to point out an absolute direction for my practising in order to avoid conformation with the norm. Telling someone what to do, I feel, is just the wrong way of creating the unexpected. Instead I suggest the opposite approach: an anti-checklist for my “alterity”. It is easier to recognise what I need to change, to point out the most obvious traps, instead of precisely defining the exact methods of my practice and thereby excluding what I do not yet know. I see this not as a tool of correction or an absolute template; I think a feminist practice needs to be nuanced and open to discover new relations. Rather it is an indication that a practice with too many checks might need a rethinking.
- Is there no engendered subject, or an imprecise subject with no private body-relation to the space?
- Have I found a solution to a known problem?
- Does my practice or the result of it integrate seamlessly with the spatial, organisational, procedural, juridical and economical context?
- Does my practice retain power relations in my context?
- Do I know the context, or do I assume I knew it?
- Do I copy or paraphrase known ideas?
- Is my practise free of contradiction?
- Did I do what I was expected to do?
- Could I control the whole process, or were all the actors known by me?
- Did I have the intention of equity, such as equal sharing of recourses and space?
- Does my practice have an appealing image to the general public?
- Is my practice large in scale in relation to my context?
- Is my process characterized by rare or one-way communication with the client?
- Do I have a clear picture of the consequences of my practice?
- Do I generally feel comfortable?
- Have I done this before?
- …
This list could be used for any level of design: on a practice, a project or on a single design decision.
The convention is one, the possibilities are infinite.
/Johan
Inspired by ‘Altering Practices’ in Altering Practices: Feminist Politics and Poetics of Space, London: Routledge, 2007, pp 1-7, 10-15
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