Azimuts / 56

Azimuts #56 – Se permettre l'écriture chez les designer·euse·s, artistes, chercheur·euse·s

 

The 56th issue of the design research journal, devoted to the question of writing in design practices.

 

"Today, the ☀✬❀ have to write on all sorts of occasions, whether they like it or not. Many don't like this, and many wish they could write more easily. 

Writing is not intimidating in itself, it becomes so.

Learning to write, in France, is deeply linked to schooling, and "writing well" is one of the main keys to academic success.

Children gradually detach themselves from drawing, to say and signify by precise symbols and while obeying a dense system of rules (spelling, syntactic, grammatical, graphic, social, etc.). The gap between spoken language and written language is widening little by little, becoming institutionalised, making writing a means of expression that is unequally accessible and legitimised. 

Claiming a 'writing' can be considered a bourgeois privilege. As ☀✬❀, we are part of a cultural bourgeoisie that allows us to challenge norms, limits and their hegemony (or domination). For ☀✬❀, writing is sometimes a space for experimentation and research. They use this creative space and allow themselves to break with the codes of so-called educated 'writing'. The formats and registers used, the themes and connections, often transdisciplinary and sometimes disconnected from their usual tools of expertise, constitute a set of theoretical outputs or research that escapes university standards and which are often difficult to categorise. 

This issue brings together ☀✬❀ contributors who allow themselves to 'do' through writing.

It will address the learning and deconstruction of writing standards, the free, plural use of forms of writing, and writing as action.

We will thus go through different incarnations of writing: in a printed book, in transcription, in re-writing, on a prompter, in a manifesto, in translation, in struggle, and in opera."

 

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Azimuts is a design research journal founded in 1991 by the student-researchers of the post-graduate program of the École supérieure d'art et design de Saint-Étienne. A unique publication in the design editorial landscape, the journal is a place for reflection, exchange, and criticism on the issues of contemporary design and art, as well as a field for experimentation and graphic and typographic research. 

Azimuts magazine gathers the points of view of personalities from the world of design, culture and research in general. The issues are organized around thematic dossiers on design and, more generally, on material culture or its criticism. The "Varia" section welcomes contributions that are not part of the dossier, and the "Anthology" section allows readers to discover or rediscover texts and documents that are difficult to access (out of print or never translated into French). The "Reviews" section is a space for free criticism of current research and publications on design in the field.