Escaping the Hamster Wheel: Design, Profession, and Memory in the Search for New Possibles

Abstract

If design is defined as the art of projecting worlds, its purpose of expressing conscious intentionality can only be political. This idea places him professionally in his questions and answers within the field of modernity and political economy as a guiding expression of existing power relations. Projecting can be perceived collectively as both a liberating and coercive act, in which an autonomous and decolonial design represents conceptual recovery to bring it closer to local life. We postulate that questioning what we have created as material culture and how we can help create a social and environmental “possible other” through design is an ethical and political task that renews our perspective on know-how. This reflection is presented by recognizing some historical traces and underlining the need to create conditions conducive to installing a new mobilizing eroticism, a utopia whose interface allows us to think holistically with the world. In this way, it builds virtuous scenarios and a professional community coupled with social and environmental development, aware of the processes of historical accumulation of its discipline that allow the updating and validity of the field.