Only accountable to ourselves, Who told you so?! - The collective story vs. the individual narrative challenges states of social ambivalence within various levels of cohesion: government, organization, scene and family. Abstractly informing our collective subjectivity and practically nurturing our personal, existential momentum, here we may inform our experiences along the lines of the poetical and critical postures presented. The postures included here inform on our whereabouts. Having the opportunity to feed our individual narrations, we may enable ourselves to challenge the collective stories written to us. Come and play upon ambivalence in cohesion’s truths and face up to what we might consider ambiguous! The various concentrated gestures and scenarios in this project offer surprising and revealing perspectives of the conditionality of individual freedom within the social configurations in which we find cohesion. Fascinating, relevant and intriguing, now that collective freedom is at odds with individual liberties and individual liberties are at odds with the collective associations by which they should be represented. Belonging to any group makes you an accessory and if you don’t belong, you are not allowed to assume that responsibility. Whatever happens if you belong to a group without wanting to, we usually do not know... We live in times of great social ambiguity. Trying to find new challenges and widening perspectives, often double-tongued as well as hiding a secret agenda, this project looks for deeper relations. Forty artists, ten writers and four poets use their astute authors’ skills to offer a thought-provoking ambiguity. This bundle will offer conformists an insight into the restrictions of freedom they are responsible for, will inspire freethinkers who feel they lack something and try to find a position, and it will provide recognition to those who feel oppressed.

Who Told You So?!: The Collective Story vs. the Individual Narrative

Arts & Photography

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Onomatopee Projects

How French designers dach&zephir engage the overlooked ingenuity of Creole culturesThis fourth edition of Field Essays explores the decolonial approach of Parisian design duo dach&zephir. Dimitri Zephir and Florian Dach have extensively researched the French Caribbean and have transformed neglected cultural forms.

Éloj Kréyol: Meanderings in the Field of Decolonial Design: Field Essays

History & Criticism

A hybrid inquiry into Australia's experimental, radical, artist-run initiatives Excavating a shared history of independent practice stretching back to the 1980s, Permanent Recession situates new research into artist-run initiatives within a rich continuum of debate about the Australian artmaking context. Hybrid in form, the book is part research, part advocacy document and part literary review.

Permanent Recession: A Handbook on Art, Labour and Circumstance (Onomatopee)

An alternative artistic guidebook to the Georgian capitalComposed of artistic accounts that critically reflect on recent urban and social changes in Georgia's capital Tbilisi, this book unveils multifaceted perspectives on a city trying to negotiate its complex heritage, its contentious present and potential for the future. It also serves as an alternative guidebook.

Tbilisi: It's Complicated (Onomatopee)

Architecture

Exploring how design educators deploy the idea of the "radical" This book argues that, over the past 15 years, there has been a consistent deterioration of democracy in tandem with the establishment of the marketization and monetization of design education. Navigating difficult external political contexts in the middle of internal power struggles, college design courses seem to be incapable of challenging political, social, cultural and environmental phenomena with the urgency that all of these demand. Swallowed by an ever-rolling snowball of neoliberal educational models, small gestures do not produce the kind of radical change that design education and our catastrophic climate crisis needs for our survival. The fourth issue of Onomatopee's annual design criticism journal investigates the use of the word "radical" in design discourse and practice, exploring the challenges design universities face in responding with urgency to political, social, cultural and environmental struggles.This issue features essays by Danah Abdulla, Anne-Marie Willis, Tanveer Ahmed, Kenneth Fitzgerald, Anja Groten, Hannah Ellis and the research-led platform Depatriarchise Design.

Modes of Criticism 4: Radical Pedagogy: Investigating the Use of the Word 'Radical' in Design Discourse and Practice

Decorative Arts & Design

Vistas of hope for the future of fashion, textiles and technology, from international designers, scientists and theorists
Despite technological advances―new kinds of fabric, design processes, 3D-printing, miniaturized electronics and design software―changes in the fashion industry and everyday apparel have not been as significant as we might expect. If the fashion industry were embrace any of these innovations more fully, its character could change completely within only one or two seasons. Unfolding Fashion Tech shows what the future of fashion could look like, according to designers, scientists, industry professionals and theorists in the fashion tech field. It unites their different perspectives on the challenges and explores alternatives to the plentitude of discarded garments buried in land masses everywhere. The book is edited by Dutch designer Marina Toeters, who, through her business by-wire.net, stimulates collaboration between the fashion industry and scientists. Designers include: Angella Mackey, Aniela Hoitink, NEFFA,Anja Hertenberger, Barbara Pais and Danielle Roberts, Anke Jongejan, Anouk Wipprecht, Bambi Medical and Sibrecht Bouwstra, Beam Contre Choc, Bianca Gorini, Brigitte Kock, Bart Pruijmboom and Niek van Sleeuwen,Bruna Goveia Da Rocha, by-wire.net, Marina Toeters, JSSSJS, Jesse Asjes, Martijn ten Bhömer,Eef Lubbers and Malou Beemer, European Space Agency (ESA),Fabienne van der Weiden and Jessica Joose,Gail Kenning,Hellen van Rees, Holst Centre, StudioBonvie, Ilja Visser, Jasna Rok, Karin Vlug, Bas Froon and Laura Duncker, Kristi Kuusk, Laura Luchtman and Ilfa Siebenhaar, Laurentius Lab, Loe Feijs, Philips Research, Leonie Tenthof van Noorden and Eunbi Kim, Lithe Lab, Daisy van Loenhout, Studio Roosegaarde for Lacoste and others.

Unfolding Fashion Tech: Pioneers of Bright Futures (Onomatopee)

Graphic Design

Exploring the radical potential of fiction as a tool for social change through design, afro-surrealism, and alternative pedagogies This book chronicles the workshops for the first edition of the Porto Design Biennale, called the Young Curators Lab. The project explored fiction as a curatorial tool for social change through speculative design, afro-surrealism and alternative pedagogies.

Fiction Practice: Prototyping the Otherworldly (Onomatopee, 174)

Pestana, Mariana

Mocking self-entrepreneurship and exploring the miseries of precarity, this biting new book identifies the aesthetics of productive anxiety In this pocket-sized paperback volume, Italian writer and conceptual artist Silvio Lorusso guides us through this era of the "entreprecariat," or the relationship between entrepreneurship and precarity. The precariat class consists of those whose working lives are comprised of disjointed bits, lacking financial or professional stability. In our entreprecarious society, everyone is an entrepreneur and nobody is stable. Through analyses of memes, photographs and advertisements, Lorusso explores tensions surrounding labor, productivity, autonomy and failure while dissecting the media objects that encourage a precarious lifestyle. Precarious economic conditions demand an entrepreneurial attitude, while entrepreneurialism breeds instability and change; thus, entreprecarity is characterized by a cognitive dissonance. Lorusso weaponizes irony and sarcasm in order to shift our collective understanding of work ethic, labor, leisure, production and competition.

Entreprecariat: Everyone Is an Entrepreneur. Nobody Is Safe. (Onomatopee)

Lorusso, Silvio

Conservativism in design: on the relationship between making things and making things great again Sporting two front covers (i.e. one on the back, one on the front) for its two thematic sections--Graphic Design in Conservative Times and Fashion Design in Conservative Times--this pocket-sized volume deconstructs and analyzes various forms of design against the backdrop of an increasingly conservative world. From the perspectives of feminism, race, queerness, engagement, ecology, production and preservation, Design in Conservative Times seeks to unravel the intricacies of design within conservative culture. Makers and thinkers from the fields of fashion design and graphic design contribute to the book, reflecting on conservative currents in the design landscape and exploring topics such as: What is the role of a progressive designer today? What constitutes a progressive design? We are stuck between outrageous production and excessive preservation--how do we disrupt this relationship?

Design in Conservative Times

Theoretical reflections on the symbolic and economic value of art and its institutions This compilation of theoretical texts, essays and artistic contributions explores the symbolic and economic value that a work of art holds as a product of its maker's labor. This volume provides insight into current notions of value systems and considers the role of language in arts institutions.

The Trouble with Value: Arts and Its Modes of Valuation

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the Onomatopee Projects publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Onomatopee Projects