Current Projects

 

Designing Writing, upcoming Spring 2010 elective offered through Parsons, The New School for Design

 

Designing Writing explores knowledge production as historic document and generative act through analysis of its forms and propositions for new spaces.

 

 

 

 

Global Issues in Design and Visuality in the 21st Century: Culture, on-going Parsons and Cooper-Hewitt graduate seminar

 

Impermanence may be the only permanent characteristic of the 21st century. People rarely live in just one place anymore. New urban landscapes are rapidly evolving in response to the tides of migration; at the same time, new geographies are mapped everyday on the internet. We have grown accustomed to buying products made in one place, manufactured in another, and sold everywhere. Goods, services, and images have become their own culture, transforming designers and artists into culture authors. How can we talk about these new cultures? Lectures [for Global Issues] by anthropologists, historians, and critics will establish a critical framework for case studies drawn from design and visual media.

– Susan Yelavich

 This seminar offers a writing-intensive investigation of globalization as may be evidenced in the streets of New York City. Exploring contemporary design through cultural theory, the course culminates in student proposals for a public design intervention. Visit the current student weblog, here.

 

 

Letters from Nowhere, on-going studio  

 

We could hardly go but fair and softly all the way, as there were a great many people abroad in that cool hour.

– William Morris, News from Nowhere, or, An Epoch of Rest, 1890

Letters… is an on-going series of automatic writings on 11×17″ graph paper. October 1, 2010, the total number of unedited pages will be copied and bound as limited edition artist’s books. This project commemorates  the completion of previous projects: Public Reverie Collection (2003-2009) and Automatic Books (2008-2009).

Selected pages may be available through Fluorescent Friends.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Contact: textbutler[at]gmail.com