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Sep 15, 201812 min read

What If We Saw Repair as an Honor? My conversation with Joanna van der Zanden

Updated: Mar 26, 2019

This summer, while meeting with former CSW faculty Ted Munter and his Molly School participants, he asked us to write any question we had been thinking about recently on an index card. I wrote:

Is all art about repair?

This is a question I have considered in my own practice for multiple reasons, not least of which I use my art to attempt figure out various injustices, and at times, create attempts to resolve them. Much of the art that I connect with draws attention to some sort of injustice in order to confront it, witness it, or to process it. Sometimes even to make fun of it.

I met a (very tall, taller than me-this is no small part of why I love this country) Dutch art historian at an opening. When I told him about my grant work, he said I should look at the Reinventing Happiness show that had been at the Stedlijk Museum in Den Bosch ('s-Hertongenbosch is the full name of the town), and talk to one of the curators Joanna van der Zanden.

This has been one of the tougher blog posts for me to undertake, primarily because Joanna van der Zanden has so many exciting ideas, ones that I am fascinated with. I am still geeking out about the ideas she brought up, and thinking of ways to bring them into my teaching. I highly recommend her website, throwingsnowballs.nl.

From her website:

“Joanna van der Zanden works as an independent curator with a focus on socially engaged arts and design projects and participatory practices. She has gained a lot of experience in cultural formats where the public at large gets involved in the process of research, questioning and/or making. It is her view that contemporary cultural institutions should – at the best – function as catalysts to stimulate critical and creative thinking and making. Especially in times of paradigm shift, we need to re-educate each other and find new common grounds. Therefore we need open spaces for experimentation and reflection.”

“Joanna is educated in design and fashion and holds a Master Degree in Art History of the University of Utrecht. From 1996 – 2001 she was a member of the pioneering team of KesselsKramer, a well-known communication agency, ... From 2006 until 2010 Joanna was Artistic Director of Platform21, the incubator of a new design museum to be built in Amsterdam.”

Joanna now works primarily as an independent curator, educator, and writer. She is very interested in socially engaged art, also called new genre public art.

SEA (for short) is a form of art where artists work with communities in actions, conversations, or creations. A main tenet of SEA is how you work with the community, and the idea of quality collaborations is important . It is art’s echoing of social design’s valuing of an authentic collaboration with those you are creating for.

To be honest, I was overwhelmed with how interesting I found her work. She works on a diversity of projects, all coming back to the themes of repair, and how we can use art and design to create better social interactions.

One of my first questions for her was “how do you define social design?”

Joanna said that it was a form of design that focuses on solutions and interactions. While I had not previously made the connection, it is easy to see socially engaged art as the flipside to social design. Both value the human interaction above the product. She went on to say “If (social design is) not for humans, what is it for?” This harkens back to Aldo Van Eyck’s sentiment "If society today is not able or willing to build cities for citizens (children), on what ground do we deem it a society?" The idea of how human’s interact is key, and directly relates to the idea of collaboration.

It seems so reasonable to assume design is for people, but I think that is an assumption worth examining: is it for people as consumers, or for people as individuals in a greater society?

I could rant on about the difference between American individualism and Dutch valuing of the social sphere. While there are historical reasons for both, I do think the traditional approach to design (still a dominant focus in US design education) is more about designing for individuals as sources of revenue, as opposed to designing for individuals to improve our society. One system takes from the individual, the other gives (in my humble ranting musing view).

But this is changing even here. (see link to Cooper Hewitt shows below)

Is Design for Consumers or Citizens?

Joanna’s view about the consumer is that design can be used to show the consumer is creative as well, and that the idea that the consumer was “unthinking” and passive is inaccurate (this relates to Renny Ramaker’s ideas about the consumer as design participant in the previous Droog post). Inherent to her curating and teaching is the idea that the curator, artist, and designer can create situations to enable creativity. The Spring House is a prime example of this (read Spring House blog entry for more details), where the creation of a multi-faceted environment that is an incubator for creativity and community.

I jotted down the following quote from Joanna, and while I can’t quite remember the context, I think is applies both to the Spring House, and her curatorial and educational work.

“ongoing flourishing in which we collaboratively search for ways to stay creative”

I continue to think (and fantasize) about how this could apply to spaces within CSW.

Next I asked her to tell me more about her Repair Manifesto, and the course in repair she taught at Reitveld Academy (a premier art school in the Netherlands).

Recently repair events have been popping up at my local Jamaica Plain library. It is likely this event has its roots in Joanna’s work in creating Repair Societies. I was interested to hear about repair in the context of art and design education.

Images of Repair Cafes (images from Domus, link below)

Joanna starts the course by discussing the etymology of the word “disposable”.

Disposable (adj.)

1640s, “that may be done without;” see dispose + -able. Meaning designed to be discarded after one use” is from 1943, originally of diapers, soon of everything; replaced throw-away (1928) in this sense.

(https://www.etymonline.com/word/disposable)

It shakes the assumptions that words always mean what we know them to mean at this point in time, that meanings are fixed as opposed to results of our culture.

It is a word younger, in its contemporary meaning, than my parents.

It is a concept that came from the idea that it is better to dispose of something, than to repair it.

It (in my opinion yet again) dishonors the work that was put into the making of an object, or encourages making subpar designs.

Joanna recounted an assignment where students were told to ask their grandparents (or someone a few generations back) what repair means to them.

One student came back altered after spending a day sewing with her grandmother, building skills, their relationship, and the student’s understanding that repair can be an exchange, and not just a burden. It connects us to other people, our histories, our hands, and ultimately ourselves.

STOP RECYCLING START REPAIRING

I thought about the stereotype of depression era people saving everything, never throwing something out (we found an envelope full of rubber bands at my grandmother’s house when she passed away, rubber bands that were well beyond their usability). I remember growing up with the idea that to repair something was a burden. It meant you couldn’t afford a new one, a replacement. After the story of Joanna’s student, I realized this assumption was from a consumer (or retailer) point of view, and not a creative one. I wonder what we miss seeing this as a burden, and not an opportunity or valuing of the labor that went into an object.

“A decline in tool use would seem to betoken a shift in our relationship to our own stuff: more passive and more dependent. And indeed, there are fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take things in hand for ourselves, whether to fix them or to make them. What ordinary people once made, they buy; and what they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair, whose expert fix often involves replacing an entire system because some minute component has failed.” ― Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work

A sideways observation of mine:

WHEN ARE MISFITS BETTER PROJECTS? (WDCD)

Earlier in the summer, at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute show, one student (whose name I did not catch) used holes in clothes as sites to construct from. There were not just patches and stitch patterns, but large growths emitting from the holes. They were fantastic. They were the mistakes in all their glory, the "misfits".

At CSW we teach students mistakes are great to learn from, but to use it as a necessary point to depart from...this intrigues me.

There is so much more to this, that Joanna speaks to more eloquently than I, and I would encourage you to read this part of her website:

http://www.throwingsnowballs.nl/index.php/2018/02/04/repair-society/

Back to Joanna's answer to my questions.

What skills do students need?

Joanna spoke to needing an awareness, an ability to investigate ourselves and our assumptions, and to know arduinos –but not just for their technological potential. She said students should look at arduinos as part of a larger system, an element in a greater whole.

She sees an importance in learning to notice things, to look at layers and to notice “invisible worlds”.

Grayson Perry is a British artist working in a diverse palette of materials, often with narrative and subversive elements. He recounts the story of young people being asked what artists do. After the initial answer of “they drink coffee at Starbucks” and then an art making activity, one boy piped up, “they notice things”.

One example Joanna gave of the importance of noticing was a project for Reinventing Happiness. An artist duo, Sjaak Langenberg and Rosé de Beer, organized a project called Social Sport School/The Social Gym (see images above, artist website link at end of this blog post).

From the artists’ website:

“ The Social Gym combines a serious work-out with a social component – people doing sports take a very elderly wheelchair-user with them to boot camp. Wheelchairs being used as fitness apparatus… The exercises are a challenge for the sportspeople, and they are encouraged and supported by the elderly people who are simultaneously doing their own, lighter, exercises.”

Part of how this connection was made, was the proximity of the sport school to the senior housing. They were right next to each other. They had existed next to each other for some time, but Langenberg and de Beer noticed.

Relooking at the familiar, and seeing the potential with a new eye, is noticing invisible worlds.

Next I asked Joanna what are some potential problems with social design? (the bolded text are Joanna’s answers, underneath are my thoughts as to how this might apply to CSW and pedagogy in general.

JvdZ: It is hard to manage a result

I don’t think Joanna was implying the desire to manage an outcome, but more that it can’t be a priority. If a design problem is open, you don’t have the comfort of a pre-established outcome. With socially engaged art (or design), a managed result precludes the possibility of authentic collaboration, or of allowing for divergent thinking.

JvdZ: There needs to be an awareness of language and cultural differences

Awareness outside of your culture and the various dynamics within it has come up in almost every discussion I’ve had, articles and books I have read, and podcasts I have listened to. There needs to be an awareness of positions of power and privilege. There is also value in diversity; there is strength when multiple points of view inform a design/ problem solution. In the Hidden Brain podcast The Edge Effect, the musician Cristina Pato talks about the edge effect (she learns about from this concept from cellist YoYo Ma); the edge being where two ecosytems overlap and where most new lifeforms occur. Working in-depth with someone of a different background allows differences to emerge, allowing us to see patterns and possibilities we likely would not have seen before.

CSW, like many American schools, has a contemporary valuing of diversity. There are many reasons why this is valued in the US, the reality of living in a diverse culture being one obvious factor. Again and again I have heard the importance of diversity, and like the research hints at in the Hidden Brain podcast, it seems to make for better results. The possibilities emerge. The Hidden Brain suggests that the multicultural US is a natural site for these collaborations to occur (although in-depth international exchange is another way to bring cultures together), citing that 60% of Nobel Prizes come from the US; they attribute it to the diverse cultures of the US, with many Nobel prize winners being recent immigrants.

diversity = more views = creative overlaps =

better result

JvdZ: Authentic collaboration takes time

This is a question for me, how to let the organic path of collaboration take place, in the artificial time structure of academia. It might mean simple, small projects. I also need to address that students worry about who gets which credit. How to get them to not worry about that is an issue, but no doubt solvable.

Joanna’s Curatorial Work

After my blog about the problematic origins of museums as institutions (Are Museums a Product of Racism?), is there any doubt that their role in society should be examined? Can they do good, and be part of the community in which they reside? When Joanna speaks to the “inherent difficulty of museums”, I believe it is this history she is speaking of, the history of the museums establishing value, worth, and curating who gets to represent culture as well as being somewhat separate from the societies it aims to serve.

Joanna’s work with Reinventing Happiness, and with Platform 21 both consider the museum as a participatory institution. Again the consumer is seen as a potential participant. In her work with these projects, citizens are asked to take on the role of arbiters of culture. This changes the paradigm of established powers as the narrator of culture. It is democratic in the least, revolutionary at the most.

What is happiness when it is not for sale?

Reinventing Happiness (Stedelijk DB) (2014)

“What is needed to have the museum practice more engaged in and with society? René Pingen, former director of Stedelijk Museum ‘s-Hertogenbosch wanted to make space for experimentation on several levels of the museum practice. He asked me to be the guest curator and to work with him and his team on a three-year long project that would give a platform to artists and designers with a socially engaged practice and that would allow for different participatory moments happening in and outside the museum space.”

Platform 21

Platform 21, a design platform (I call it that as it was not meant to follow the model of a traditional museum), didn’t show work by professional designers only, but "amateurs” as well. We all design various elements in our own lives, and there is a value in sharing these personalized solutions. Many of the shows were preceded by calls to the public to share work. The museum included participatory studios to practice the mission, emphasizing the non-designer’s place in design.

From Joanna’s website:

"The mission of Platform21, housed in a circular ex-chapel beside the Beatrixpark, was to develop a versatile and distinctive programme of events related to contemporary design. Of central importance was that Platform21 should be an inclusive platform where designers as well as users and professionals as well as amateurs would be challenged to actively take part in the activities."

Some of the shows Platform 21 organized and presented:

Repairing-“we aimed to raise awareness of a mentality, a culture and a practice that not so long ago was completely integrated into life and the way we designed it.”
Hacking Ikea-“Around the world, for a variety of personal motives, professional and nonprofessional designers are making individual alterations to off-the-shelf products”
Folding-“an interactive exhibition that sheds light on the art of folding intricate designs and constructions.”
Cooking and Construction-“Picture the kitchen as a laboratory for building, gluing, stamping and designing. Ever heard of potato plastic? Tomato deodorant? Or…”

work from the Hacking Ikea show at Platform 21

What is role of creativity in design, art, and life?

One of the most powerful answers Joanna gave me (in a morning of powerful answers), was creativity is “a way out”.

I don’t want to analyze this too much, or at all really. I leave it to you to consider.

Some questions I will take with me:

What would a repair lab look like at CSW? What skills could it teach? Not just manual, but about our assumptions about disposability and material culture, about social implications as to how we connect and work together, and about mistakes as a creative exercise?

(I want one)

Joanna had a project that began with the question: ‘What makes you’ and ‘What do you make?’ I would like students to think about art (among other things, among everything really) this way.

How can I work with students to look at museums as participatory? Could we use our small Installation Space gallery this way?

How can I create a classroom where authentic collaboration takes place? In a short learning module? How do I evoke the edge of ecosystems where new life flourishes?