e-flux Conversations has been closed to new contributions and will remain online as an archive. Check out our new platform for short-form writing, e-flux Notes.

e-flux conversations

Self-Design, or Productive Narcissism

The field of design has radically expanded. As a practice, design is no longer limited to the world of material objects, but rather extends from carefully crafted individual looks and online identities, to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes. Our new publication, entitled Superhumanity, aims to probe the idea that we are and always have been continuously reshaped by the artifacts we shape, to which we ask: who designed the lives we live today? What are the forms of life we inhabit, and what new forms are currently being designed? Where are the sites, and what are the techniques, to design others?

During the next several months over fifty writers, scientists, artists, architects, designers, philosophers, historians, archeologists and anthropologists will bring new insight to these and related questions. Contributions will be published several times per week, both on the e-flux website and dispatched as emails. We are very pleased to begin today with a text by Boris Groys.

—Beatriz Colomina, Nikolaus Hirsch, Anton Vidokle, Mark Wigley and Nick Axel
e-flux Architecture at the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial

Boris Groys

Read the full article here.