It is a cliché of design thinking that failure can be an important part of the design process. In this elective studio we will try to push this cliché to its limit, and imagine failure, not as a springboard to eventual success, but as a zany, comedic end in itself. Or some other kind of end. Whether it’s comedy or painfully unfunny, maybe failure is the correct objective in a system that appears to be always stacked against us.
Beginning with readings from The Queer Art of Failure (Jack Halberstam), we will explore modalities of failure as a strategic or impulsive response to basic design problems. In the course of the semester we will explore distraction, half-measures, misinterpretation, unprofessionalism, prevarication, malicious compliance, short-circuiting, sabotage, undoing, slow down, refusal, strike, uncivil obedience, gaming the system, shape-shifting, sublimation, disability, and code-switching as legitimate answers to the impossible demand to solve a problem through design.
We will additionally practice, on the other side of the designer/client equation, the formulation of impossible design problems — impossible, at least, in the current configuration of the world.
We might produce a book or website. In the words of design theorist Samuel Beckett, “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
FAIL WORSE.