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“Worldmakers: Design & Fiction,” in Mariana Pestana (ed.) Fiction Practice,

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23 ALEXANDRA MIDAL
Historically, designers have appropriated fiction, studies. Nevertheless, they are instrumental to the
along with its modes of diffusion, so as to express debate on the redefinition and reconfiguration of
political and social criticism dimly disguised. From design—in its post-disciplinary formulations: perfor-
designer William Morris’s seminal book News from mance, installation, film, etc, and its recent denomi-
Nowhere (1890)1, which set the standard for fiction nations: design fiction, design-medium, speculative
as a means to model a disturbing reality, to the dys- design, post-design, expanded design, adversarial
topic fictions of the florentine radical architectures design, etc., which I will keep under the same term
of the late 1960s and early 1970s. With the publi- of critical design (Antonelli, 2011; Russell, 2017).
cation in magazines, of The Twelve Cautionary However, this could well fall under the scope of the
Tales for Christmas (1971), architect-ethnologist contemporary debates focusing on interdiscipli-
Gian Piero Frassinelli, a member of the Superstudio narity, antidisciplinarity (Oxman, 2015), and undisci-
group, sparked protest and generated strategies of plinarity of alterplinarity (Rodgers, Bremner, 2017).
parasitism which allowed adjustments, while creat- Such overlaps overtake the question of media and
ing a necessary distance from reality. serve both the theory and the practice of design.
Fiction and design rarely call upon each other.
However, on closer inspection, relations between THE MAKING IS A REMAKING
them bring about new interconnections and per-
spectives. The most striking question in their con- If the work of fiction has otherwise occupied a spe-
nection arises from the fact that, beyond their cific place within the field of design, after so many
affinity, neither ceases to reinvent the modes of years, that is because one of its prerequisites is to
their creation and broadcasting, as well as the con- make allowances for implicit speculation on the
tents of their respective histories or the mythology what-if scenario. Fictions, like design as a subject,
underlying their respective narratives. Such parallel are the result of a construction which sets out to
speculations enable them not only to reinvent them- engage in dialogue with a fictitious world. And
selves, but also to generate a series of effervescent sometimes, in return, it creates a new world (Dunne
mishaps and incompatibilities. & Raby, Foragers, 2010). And there is nothing to
The coalescence of design and fiction has worry about, if, as with all fictional worlds, they
been somehow neglected within transdisciplinary seem incomplete. Speculating about a given world
1 William Morris’ News From Nowhere (1890) falls under always implies an abstract construction, even if it is
the tradition of utopian fiction. He stated his admiration for from scratch. This position is akin to that of world-
Thomas More’s Utopia and, conversely, his dislike of utopia making, to use the title of a book by art historian
as described by Edward Bellamy in his renowned Looking
Backward, 2000–1887, published in 1888, and which Nelson Goodman, in which he stated that there is no
Morris had to review. such thing as a given world, but only worlds which
24 25
are built, including those which we take to be reality. They also rely on the richness of those universes
“Worldmaking as we know it”, he writes, “always whose sole source is fiction. More to the point,
starts from worlds already on hand; the making is a examining fiction by means of films resonates with
remaking”. Following the claim by sci-fi writer Philip an international production that is exponential. And
K. Dick, who stated, during one of his last speeches, I wonder whether a change in paradigm may not
given in Metz (France) in 1977: “I am not joking; this have been in progress for some years now. This
is very serious; a matter of importance. I am sure displacement emphasized that the boundaries of
that at the very least you will agree that for me even design have long ceased to match the definitions
to claim this is in itself amazing. Often people claim laid down by pioneer historians of the Modern
to remember past lives; I claim to remember a differ- movement (N. Pevsner, 1936; S. Giedion, 1948),
ent, very different, present life”, designers who work who conceived their narrative of design history at
with fiction go about making and remaking worlds the service of white male functionalism alone. It is a
much more so than they wonder if our universe is well-known fact that designers are not only in rela-
or will be a simulation. Assuming the opaque clear- tion to a function or materiality. Neither should the
ness of reality in “permanent fiction”, design gives design discipline be limited to a tension between
shape to constructions, to parallel, possible or plau- artisanal and industrial production, individuality and
sible universes. Diegetic, the marriage of design and standardisation, experimentation and market, etc.
fiction induces stages, a temporary continuum, and Or, for that matter, any other simplistic partition. In
a motion which makes it possible to seize a possibil- the same way, on numerous opportunities, design
ity unwilling to limit design to a sole destiny. Once the has proven itself capable of acting tactically from
opaque clearness of reality is assumed, design and within, to move into the strongholds of function-
speculation are interwoven in “permanent fiction”, alism, liberalism, industry or consumerism, even if
and materialise, on the condition that they willingly only on occasion. Be that as it may, never has fiction
agree to believe in it, and to yield to the “Suspension been so openly acknowledged by designers as it
of Disbelief” (Coleridge) of the narrative pact. is nowadays, when the avant-garde tenants of this
discipline question the validity of previous rhetoric,
DESIGNER FILM to part with it and formulate their own proposals
and alternatives.
When addressing this question, in reference to
designer film, a production that is less conspicuous OUT OF FICTION
than those which regroup didactic or explanatory
productions, or documentaries on design, design- There have been a number of filmic experimenta-
ers draw largely on strategies that stem from fiction. tions directed by designers ever since the 1920s.
26 27
These visual essays act as ideological instruments more recently Foster (2008), etc.). This original sin,
to form the future of society (Moholy-Nagy 1934), or common to both cinema and design, is amplified
as a lifeline to escape from the normativity arising by conjuring and “tricks” that are claimed (Méliès,
from marketing imperatives imposed by the indus- 1907), as it were, by the “trickery of nature” in design
try of design, as well as from the imperative of (Flusser, 2002).
consumption (Charles Eames, 1953; Schuldenfrei, If one returns to the original intentions of
2015). Nevertheless, it is rare that most of these pro- pioneer designer William Morris, the project of
ductions should take hold of the language of fiction. reforming and redesigning art and everyday life
They have preferred forms of abstraction closer to through the decorative arts meant a refusal of the
experimental cinema, yearning likewise to dodge reification of the workers and the manipulation of
the risk of narrative and discourse, as if resorting to “greedy gamblers on the Stock Exchange” (1877).
a fictionalization of reality were to amount to betray- This in turn laid the foundations of a political design
ing it. Contrarily, fiction films directed by designers (Midal, 2012). No doubt, that background explains
are a more recent act; they associate storytelling to how, in the early 1950s, films began to play an
objects or products, and cinema, all of them within important role for designers. The Eameses use the
a practice of design that is rethought. camera as an instrument for thinking, to establish
their disappointment about modern design pro-
THE LIES OF FICTION duction, whose “dream was incomplete” (Charles
Eames, 1953).
Oddly enough, design and cinema have been More recently, claims made about design
facing the same type of criticisms since their incep- fiction, by Julian Bleecker (2009) and Alex Coles
tion: both were supposed to be an emanation of the (2012), have renewed the analysis of strategies to
“devil”. Early cinema underwent the opprobrium of a speculative design which is ambivalent towards
censors dubbing it an ill-famed pleasure, popular, what is concrete and what is fictional. Furthermore,
democratic, and subject to the laws of profit alone value-fiction has allowed the possibility of announc-
(Epstein, 1947). Design is “diabolic”2 and “crim- ing social and cultural values which are ambiguous,
inal” because it is subordinated to materialism, and which associate fiction and technology (Dunne
associated to liberalism, and enslaved to capital- & Raby, 2013). Nowadays, countless designers are
ism (see Marinetti’s devastating criticisms (1909), directing fictional films, but doubtless, alongside
Parent’s (1971), Archizoom Associati (1967–73), or Onkar Kular, Nicholas Mortimer and the students
of MA Space & Com of the HEAD—Genève, Noam
2 “Diabolic because it is democratic, democratic because
it is diabolic”, in Jean Epstein, Le cinéma du diable (Paris: Toran takes centre stage.
Jacques Mélot, 1947): 30. In 2001, young designer Toran directed Object
28 29
for Lonely Men, his first short film, which encap- dimension of Toran’s films; the same sociopolitical
sulates everything that is at stake in fiction, and that context to which Lukács alluded when studying the
which is more specific in his future work. Toran’s historical novel. For Haq, Object for Lonely Men
film, shot in black and white, pays homage to the (2001) and Desire Management (2006) in particu-
renowned À bout de souffle (Breathless, 1960) lar allow “the physical as well as the psychological
by Jean-Luc Godard. In it, an alter ego re-enacts room for reflection on an individual’s position in
the scenes recognizable to all viewers of Godard’s society at large. Perhaps even the last remaining
film. Object for Lonely Men associates design, one.” 3 This inventiveness establishes individuality
cinema and the evocative power of fiction. In this at the service of a so-called domestic deviance in
same vein, Toran directed Desire Management a relation to the norm, where everyone turns out to be
few years later (2006): five short films whose pro- the handyman of a social disorder. This draws things
tagonists are five “hypothetical objects”. By means nearer to a novel of formation, or to a certain social
of short sketches, both intriguing and droll, the and historical context, in which the hero-designer
objects take place as if being used. relinquishes in order to better initiate his learning.
Georg Lukács distinguished three forms of the Other than Toran’s, experimental films directed
novel as a genre, to define three fictional postures by designers alternate between rejecting and
reacting to the complexity of present times. First, claiming fiction. They oscillate between release
“psychological”: when the hero abandons the world, from codes regulating the seduction of narra-
incapable of adapting to the demands of society; tive—focusing on the forms of its deconstruction—
then “formation”, when the hero learns by relin- and the narrative power that allows making and
quishing; and “idealistic” when he becomes aware remaking worlds. This last turn celebrates the way
of the complexity of the world and withdraws from in which a designer can deploy a narrative which
it. When facing the complexity of the world, in order is capable of forging a particular realization, when
to edge away, a designer chooses one of these three fiction stands alongside reality, without opposing it.
paths described by Lukács. Fiction cannot avoid its In this process, they affirm the designerly predispo-
own social and historical context. Therefore, while sition to explore diverse languages.
celebrating the way in which objects are intrinsi- Today, a paradigm shift has taken place in
cally endowed with a narrative force, Toran shows design. Design is producing fictional narratives as
that design brings about a drift, almost in the sense its goal, including, among other means, films. In this
that Debord gave it, engaging in useless and gra- respect, the camera takes on the role of a “thinking
tuitous convolutions, aiming at whatever is uncom- machine” (Epstein, The Intelligence of a Machine,
mon, anomalous, sometimes even fetishistic. In his 3 Nav Haq, “Hétérotopies du laissez-faire” in Noam Toran,
analysis, critic Nav Haq goes back over the political Things Uncommon (Paris: Lieu du design, 2010): 8.

30 31
1946) for designers. Along with this displacement K. Dick, Philip. “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See
from function to fiction, designers appropriate a Some of the Others”, in “The Metz Speech”, September 24th,
1977. Originally published in French “Si vous trouvez ce monde
language which, contrary to the general under- mauvais, vous devriez en voir quelques autres”, in Philip K. Dick
standing, is not totally alien to them. The very ety- Total Recall, Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur, 1991.
mology of the word “fiction” is anchored in the Dunne, Anthony and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything,
Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 2013.
notion of “giving shape”, which associates for- Epstein, Jean. The Intelligence of a Machine, Paris: Jacques
malization and formulation since the origin of the Mélot, 1946.
design discipline. Forms, fictions, hypotheses and Epstein, Jean. Le cinéma du diable, Paris: Jacques Mélot,
1947.
imagination mingle at the service of a project’s Flusser, Vilèm. Petite Philosophie du design, Circé, 2002.
“critical poetics”, which distances itself from fact, Foster, Hal. Design and Crime: And Other Diatribes,
London; New York: Verso, 2003.
scientific input, data and other ways of accounting Giedion, Sigfried. Mecanization Takes Command: A Contri-
for the world. My detour around films, in the context bution to Anonymous History, New York: Oxford University Press,
of Fiction Practice, does not measure the limits and 1948.
Lukács, Georg. The Theory of the Novel (1914–1915),
overlapps of a new area for design. On the contrary, Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1971.
it is an invitation to explore an undecided and exhil- Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. “The Futurist Manifesto,”
arating ambivalence, in which design engages in first published in Milan in January 1909, then in the newspaper
Gazzetta dell'Emilia in Bologna on February 1909, and then in
the creation of fictional worlds as a response to a French as “Manifeste du futurism” (Manifesto of Futurism) in the
general demoralization in the face of the problem- newspaper Le Figaro on February 1909.
atic state of the world. Méliès, Georges. L’annuaire général et international de la
photographie, Paris: Plon, 1907.
Midal, Alexandra. Design, une discipline; Petite introduc-
tion à l’histoire du design, Paris: Press Pocket, 2012.
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Domus, 949 (July, August), 2011. Brothers, 1890.
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Bleecker, Julian. Design Fiction: A Short Essay on Design, Summit on design. Co-organized by Paola Antonelli, Neri Oxman,
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A Universal Sense of Expectation, New York: Routledge, 2015.
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