A decade ago, I made a decision to really examine my political convictions. I thought that a vote compass1 would offer me some clarity. This was right before an election, during which all major newspapers and Norway’s public service offered different digital vote compasses. Filling in the compass’s questions almost felt like taking a personality assessment. I carefully ticked boxes and responded honestly and candidly. My result emerged as a diagram with two axes, along which Norway’s major political parties were positioned. Seeing my own position in relation to these parties, however, I faced a dilemma: my stance appeared to fall outside the spectrum of available parties. My response hovered somewhere on the diagram, far from rigid ideologies and mainstream parties with meticulously crafted platforms. My political identity turned out to be a blend of different ideologies, with elements of both the right and left, conservative, liberal, and progressive. This revelation undoubtedly spoke volumes about myself at that time: I was politically homeless. But it also underscored the challenge of navigating one's political compass. How can citizens truly engage with political issues? Traditional avenues like news media and debates are one approach. Some find solace in discussing politics with friends or colleagues, others find it daunting to do so. Scrutinising party programmes directly is another approach. And then there are our families and cultural influences, both of which shape our perceptions of society and politics. All of these sources—news media, social circles, our family, party platforms—help us understand politics and political parties. But amid this plethora of external influences, the question remains: how can we understand our true political convictions without filtering our ideas through news, family, friends, and party programmes?
‘Things That Might Be True’ is an artistic research project that challenges the prevailing ideas on how we (should) engage with our personal thoughts on politics. Visual communication and graphic design have traditionally been closely intertwined with politics, through logos, colours, identities, posters, leaflets, and propaganda. But design is more than just form. It is more than colour, more than what the eye can see, even when we talk about visual communication. The theme I worked with is broad. Visual communication is broad, as are the terms ‘politics’, ‘democracy’, and ‘participation’. My practice is broad as well, but despite all this breadth, I want to broaden the concept of visual communication even further—to explore the expanded field of visual communication. Traditionally, visual communication has been two-dimensional. It includes graphic design and illustration, but also animation, digital design, and interaction design. In my practice, I chose to also include a third dimension—space—and the people who can inhabit these spaces. Objects too were important in my practice; the shapes we touch, sit on, interact with, and look at.
This project was set in a Norwegian context, which is why the construction of my study demanded a certain closeness to citizens. To stimulate conversation between the actors in my project and to give those conversations the attention and understanding they deserved, a common horizon of understanding of the Norwegian political system was crucial.
Even though my study looked closely at democratic processes (the political as well as politics – (Mouffe 2000, 101), it operated neither within the field of democratic design nor that of design for democracy, but rather in the realm of agonistic pluralism. Whereas democratic design focuses primarily on improving mechanisms of participation and consensus in politics and political systems, agonistic pluralism is concerned with revealing and challenging hegemony (Disalvo 2010). Where democratic design seeks answers, agonistic pluralism embraces ambiguity, the plurality in answers and the multitude of voices.
There are seemingly obvious connections between visual communication and politics, as exemplified by propaganda. One of the most notorious examples is the branding of Hitler’s Nazi movement in the 1930s and 1940s. I did not explore propaganda in my project, however: the topic is so broad that it is a field of its own, which I had neither the time nor space to study.
To eliminate any concerns and to clarify this study’s contents, I want to be transparent about my own political biases and beliefs. I personally believe in open societies that allow for free thought and free speech. In my opinion, the job of a healthy democracy is to facilitate conversation, debate, and exchanges of opinion. My belief is primarily based on the idea that the opposite would be dangerous and devastating: not being allowed to express what one believes in, especially if one goes against mainstream opinion. I am not an activist, however, at least not in the -conventional sense of the word. I do not participate in demonstrations, but I do believe that the right to do so is of the utmost importance. In their book Därför demokrati2, Åsa and Morten Wikforss write:
If we are to protect democracy, it is crucial that we understand both what we risk losing and what danger that would pose. Part of the issue is that it matters what we do. Democracy is the only form of government that wisely places its destiny in the hands of its citizens (2021, 15, translated by Rundberg).3
Throughout this study, the idea of the inner political landscape emerged. So what does my own inner political landscape look like? What biotope do I belong to myself? I would say that my inner political landscape is quite jungle-like: tall trees that have grown strong since I was a child, planted by my parents, cast shadows. These shadows are both good and bad: they are comforting, but sometimes make for a rather dark place. Some trees I have had to cut down to liberate myself, others I leave in peace. There are also newly planted areas, with delicate grass growing along newly laid-out paths. Lecturers, friends, and colleagues that I met only recently have dug and sown seeds there. There is a lake, or perhaps a whole sea, filled with questions. Storms often rage, it is rarely calm. Several people live in my inner political landscape. Margaret Thatcher rummages through the undergrowth, jumping out and startling me with her retorts. She likes to tell people they need to shape up! That everyone should work hard and fulfil their duty. Thatcher has a neighbour: a troublesome Christian conservative who reacts strongly and unexpectedly. This figure suddenly decided it was important to baptise my newborn daughter. This came as a surprise, both to me and those around me. And then there’s a third person, a sensitive soul who’s concerned about the world, who is unable to watch news reports of war and misery without crying.
This project is based on a Western (and relatively conventional) image and understanding of politics. In the society I grew up and reside in, political governance is linked to a traditional right-left scale, to parliamentarism, and to national and municipal elections every four years. As my project revolved around design, participation, and the multifaceted potential of design, my overarching design intention was to:
Challenge the prevailing ideas in society on how citizens
(should) connect to their inner political life.
RESEARCH QUESTION
How can an expanded visual communication practice be used to provoke political introspection?
AIMS
– Contribute to the understanding of how publics and communities are constructed and gathered to engage in reflection on and dialogue about the political self
– Contribute to the discussion on how to examine and explore the practical use of the concept of adversarial design in artistic research
OBJECTIVES
(1) To identify gaps in our understanding of the theoretical models of political design and adversarial design practice.
(2) To explore potential ways for individuals to uncover their political beliefs and values.
(3) To suggest and test possible settings and tools to for political introspection.
This is a qualitative study in artistic research, realised through design (Frayling 1993/94, 12–15)—specifically through the field of visual communication design. I will start by describing my study’s framework by its hermeneutic principles and then specify the project’s core methodology, that is: its participatory and discursive design approaches.
As a designer, a crucial part of my work is fully engaging with the materials I gather, to better understand the design context I am immersed in. During my project, I designed several practical explorations, met with participants and experts, read literature, organised workshops and discussions, collected and organised tactile objects, developed and finetuned ideas, and did hands-on design work, like drawing, printing, sewing, doing graphic design, and so on. Artistic research lets one use a wide range of methods; I would consider all of the above ‘my materials’ and the design situation of this project. A typical progression in artistic research projects is for the project to begin with an area of interest rather than a specific question (Murphy 2014, 181). In this project, the initial focus was to explore the question of why we vote as we do in political elections, using artistic research. Over time, the perspective has gradually shifted and become more specific, centring on how design empowers individuals to engage in political introspection, discussion, and conversation.
Hermeneutics is the theoretical science of interpretation. While hermeneutics initially only focused on the interpretation of text, it eventually evolved to include all types of situations that include dialogue and interpretation. The connection between herme-neutics and dialogue was mainly developed by Gadamer (Gamlund 2016, 55). Hermeneutists believed that one’s Understanding of something (a text, an object, a relationship, a situation) constantly changes. The concept of the hermeneutical circle or spiral is used to visually illustrate how understanding is created from different perspectives. The interpreter’s position constantly shifts either upward or downward, as shown in figure 1.1. Our interpretation is influenced by the surrounding world, by encounters and conversations with other people, experiences, (new) lines of thought, etc. Therefore, our understanding of something is in constant movement, as we oscillate between focusing on a part or the whole (Snodgrass and Coyne 1996, 73).
To understand the design situation and core of my subject, I invited people to take part in my project. Sometimes, they were participants in a conversation or discussion, answering questions and/or performing action. At other times, the people I invited were experts in a certain field, employed by a -university. Still other people were simply passersby, members of the audience, or simply people who in one way or another were interested in the theme of my study. These kinds of activities are generally referred to as ‘participatory design’. There are many theoretical definitions of participatory design. Here is Simonsen and Robertson’s:
…a process of investigating, understanding, reflecting upon, establishing, developing, and supporting mutual learning between multiple participants in collective ’reflection-in-action’ (2013, 2).
My physical encounters with participants occurred as I conducted workshops or events—the lecture series ‘Things That Might Be True’, Multiplum!, and the Inner Political Landscapes and Political Confession workshops. My creative work moved from my studio to other venues, where it established spaces for introspection, dialogue, and discussion. By interacting with participants, new types of questions and interpretations of situations emerge. The creative practice serves as a tool to challenge individuals to interpret and decipher the actual situation of the event. My practical experiments subsequently led to new insights and new ideas to incorporate into my project.
The ethical issues I considered during this project fall into three main categories: (1) protecting participants’ identities, while at the same time (2) highlighting and crediting them and their valuable contributions to the study, and (3) deciding who is or isn’t allowed to participate in the project.
In Chapter 4, I will discuss a series of ethical issues related to each specific practical experiment. A sub-chapter discusses a specific incident, whereby an unknown person (the Scribbler) tried to join my project by writing on a poster. The event forced me to grapple with the dilemma of who to include or exclude in my project, which led to a discussion on how to conduct my research in a democratic manner.
In terms of participants’ anonymity, I tested two distinct approaches. In the Voices publication, participants’ real names are used; in the Inner Political Landscapes and Political Confession workshops, they remained anonymous.
For each experiment that required it, I also drafted and used consent forms. I asked the experts involved in my project to sign contracts, to make sure they would know exactly how I would be using their content. All consent forms and contracts (plus other physical materials produced by participants) are stored in a safe at the Faculty Administration.
This reflective text serves multiple purposes. Firstly, it will help readers understand the process of my PhD project, the experiments I conducted and the ideas they were based on. Throughout this study new knowledge generated by through these experiments—a contribution to artistic research in the expanded field of visual communication design. The text was written according to the standard academic structure, with an introduction, summaries for each chapter, footnotes, meta-text, and a bibliography.
Perhaps, however, this reflective text does not fully reflect reality. It accurately represents how I conducted my project, sure. But confusion, uncertainty, hubris, and perhaps some of the more direct and intuitive aspects of my work have been lost as this text has been polished, rewritten, and proofread. I wrote quite a bit of text during my project, mostly on Post-it notes. I wrote down thoughts I didn’t want to forget, ideas, lists, things I saw or heard in a podcast, hastily drawn pie charts with circles and arrows to show how things, ideas, design, and society were connected. My relationship with these notes is stereotypical, but partly truthful parody of a designer. Isn’t the Post-it note the ultimate symbol of ‘a designer’? With their black T-shirts and white sneakers, designers are easy to spot. Words written by hand on notes are still writing—and there are plenty such notes in this project. They represent the repetitive and the quick. The same thoughts are thought again and again, with some ideas sprouting from a single word. Some of these words written on notes stayed with me throughout the project. I tested, discussed, changed, and tested them again, until they eventually materialised as physical and full-scale responses to a question.
In this reflective text, some parts are more personal. On these pages, the reader gets glimpses of inner characters. It is difficult for me to know if these characters are a part of me or a part of the project. What is clear is that it is the project that brought them to life. Some of these characters are welcome, while I wanted others to reside in the shadows.
This text was originally written in Swedish, after which it was translated into English. Eva Corijn then edited and proofread it. The area of design that interest me the most have all been written about exclusively in English. None of the concepts I work with—‘adversarial design’, ‘critical design’, ‘speculative design’, and ‘discursive design’—have been transferred and translated into Swedish or Norwegian so far.
I printed all the visual materials for my project with risograph printers—one A3 (SE 9380-e) and two A2 machines. A risograph printer is a machine that allows you to duplicate anything that is printable on paper: images, text, illustrations, photos, editorial design, etc. Outwardly, risographs resemble photocopiers, but they have a very mechanical interior. Behind the machine’s front door, there is a drum filled with ink, a paper feeder (usually with rolling rubber wheels), and a fan that pushes the paper out through a slot and into a collection basket. Risography is a type of stencil-duplicating technique. A stencil is a printing matrix which, in this case, consists of a very thin, coated paper with perforated holes, through which the drum's ink is squeezed onto the paper. Each layer of colour is printed separately, and each colour has its own drum. To print something in three colours, for example, the paper has to pass through the printer thrice. The ink drum is replaced three times, and each drum requires its own stencil.
The first risograph as we know it today was brought on the market in 1984, by the Japanese company Riso Kagaku Corporation. Several technological breakthroughs preceded that moment. In the mid-1800s, the American company Edison unveiled its Electric Pen and Duplicating Press, followed by the Mimeograph in 1887. Around the same time, David Gestetner in Europe invented the cyclostyle technique. The process that led up to today’s risograph is chronicled in Risomania – The New Spririt of Printing (Komurki 2017, 17-41) and Exploriso: Low-Tech Fine Art (Tillack 2021, 12-15).
Risograph printing has a distinct style, and clear advantages. These include the direct and tactile expression. The risograph's ink also contributes to the material experience. The printing process allows the designer to remain in control of their material throughout the design-to-print process—a very different experience than sending files to a printing house! Of course, the risograph also has disadvantages, including its annoyingly poor ability to achieve perfect registration, ink that never fully dries and thus smudges, and the fact that the machine’s rubber wheels can leave marks on the print if more than one layer needs to be printed (as is often the case). Learning how to manage these disadvantages is crucial if one wants to become proficient in risograph printing. Creating designs that prevent the rubber wheels from hitting the wet ink, for example, or understanding how to treat images and typography to maintain a certain crispness all require practice. As with any other craft, it will take a great deal of trial and error to truly master risograph printing.
Chapter 6 presents some of today’s best risograph printers. These past three decades, Joyce Guley and Jan Dirk de Wilde of Knust Press (Knust) In Nijmegen, the Netherlands have devoted most of their time to risographs, risograph printing, and pre-press for risography. Guley and de Wilde were the ones who performed the colour separations and printed the Voices publication for my project. Both are living legends. Their meticulousness and attention to detail are evident in their work on Voices.
I have a great deal of love for the risograph, or perhaps because of its perpetual faults and flaws. Dear risograph, all is forgiven.
In this chapter, I established the fundamental concepts of my study. I described my personal approach to the project and my overarching definition of ‘politics’, and explained what the expanded field of visual communication entails. I also discussed how the hermeneutic approach influenced my work, a theme I will revisit at several points in the text. Additionally, I outlined my writing and printing practices, both of which are distinct crafts. Finally, I presented my research question, aims, and objectives, to clarify the direction in which this study will head.