#infrastructure studies

What is it made of?

This is another post about design museums (see the previous one about a photo essay at Designmuseum Danmark).

Imagine a parallel universe, where design museums told about design (versus art) by listing which constrains the objects were made of. Instead of “A chair. Steel, plastic, paint” the label said “A chair. Maximum 2 materials, transportation to assembly site by ship in units of 1500, stackable, available in a range of 5 colours, 600 hours of design time split across 4 people in a span of 1 month, a middle-class focus group for two feedback iteration sessions, PRINCE2 project management framework, branded design language guide, company portfolio of 27 pieces of household furniture, EC material safety standards”. As a sort of infrastructural inversion (Bowker+Star, Star).

My photo essay has some more questions.

[PS from Mairesse, page 34: “The role of museums in the Soviet Union… was, according to the programme influenced by the Marxist-Leninist doctrine, proclaimed as definetely educational: ‘museums should show how artworks are born from the relationship between production and the ideologies of class’” (Mairesse), as Marx explains commodity fetishism]

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