The Music is the Making of the Music

In the context of my research project I organized a workshop, in which I wanted elaborate on the following questions:

How can one as a graphic designer, shift and relearn understandings of visual knowledge towards the social political context each of us is living in? And can this eventually lead to a more inclusive, co-existing, community-based and social-political reflective praxis?

My research is interested in a shift of conversations about design, away from form, to more process oriented, and more sustainable ones. Ones that take the political and social responsibility we carry as graphic designers seriously.

In the workshop my aim was to build together a practice of care and knowledge-sharing that helps each other understand how we can partake in a meaningful change, by challenging the dominant western idea of design. Creating a space for pleasure in co-existence. I strongly believe that this is especially important in the trembling times we're witnessing today.The workshop was accompanied by Artist & Designer Engy Mohsen (Cairo/Zurich, K-oh-llective, co-curator at Les Complices*).

The workshop was structured as following
12.30 Introduction / Check-in
13.00 Screening Film “The Music is the Making of the Music”
14.00 Q&A

14.30 Break
14.45 The Identity Score

16.15 Break
16.30 Talk Engy Mohsen
17.15 Check-out / Closing words

The amount of 8 participants were great to create a safe and playful environment, everyone was given enough space to feel comfortable and be able to express themselves.

After the check-in and a short introduction-round by each person, we watched my research-film and visual essay “The Music is the Making of the Music”. This work is the current output of my ongoing research and got awarded by the Swiss Design Awards 2023. More about the film can be found here.

The film laid the ground for the workshop, in which i wanted to plunge further in to the conversational knowledge that elaborates on the questions mentioned above.

After Q&A around the film and a short break we prepared ourselves for the game “The Identity Score”.

The Identity Score was led by me and Engy Mohsen, a game originally created by Ishmael Houston-Jones (the game is eventually also called “Who's in the room”). In this game, the idea is to create relational scores between the participants that reflect the different thoughts of each individual, on specific contexts. The game goes somewhat like this:

• All participants form a circle in the room.
• Person One goes in to the middle of the circle and makes a statement: “I didn't sleep well last night”.
• All the other participants now move towards/away from Person One.
• Depending on how strong they can relate to the statement, they come closer, or create more distance to person one. So if for example someone slept great, this person might move away from the center. If someone didn't sleep well neither, this person would place themselves really close to person One.
• After everyone has settled their position, there is a moment of freeze, a shape is created. This shape gives a visual info about how each of us relate to person ones statement.
• After everyone could see the score, we move back to our original position.
• The next person who likes to put out a statement walks into the center.

The statements ranged from rather pragmatical observations (“I don't like snow”) to much deeper topics (The war on Palestine, anxieties around social media, or other personal struggles). This Score learns us, how we relate to each other in that particular moment as individuals, sharing the same space as a group.

After another break, Engy provided insights into her practice as a designer and cultural worker. She presented a stack of books in which she was involved (as a designer, curator, or editor).

We also took a look at the "K-oh-llective" initiative with her, a platform that is used for resource-sharing among artists, writers and curators in Egypt and the Arab world who are in need of this content and critical discourse. She runs and founded the platform together with 4 other cultural workers (Nada Elkalaawy, Mohamed Al Bakeri, Soukaina Joual, Rania Atef).

We ended the Workshop with a check-out and closing words from me, before I treaded everyone with beer and wine (or other). The discussions continued at the bar. I deliberately planned and offered various breaks during the workshop. As I expected, these were just as important as the actual active parts of the workshop itself, as people were able to exchange ideas and have informal conversations about the project and the workshop.

The Workshop was held on the 1.12.2023 at the Hochschule der Künste Bern.