Breaking free

(It is spring in New Zealand and the beautiful yellow kowhai flowers have bloomed and fallen.)

I recently watched the documentary 'Man On Wire' about the tight-rope walker, Philippe Petite, balancing between the twin towers in New York. The film and the stunt are truly amazing and inspiring. I had the same emotional reaction as I get when watching surfers ride giant waves, or extreme mountain skiers dodging avalanches, seeing a tiny, insignificant but indomitable figure braving to go so far with such spirit, and taking just a little bit of us with him. It is not just sport, it is a powerful theatrical performance and we are the richer for it. I think we need these visions of the seemingly impossible being realised to uplift us, to give us hope, something to aspire to, not necessarily to do what they do, but to take us out of the limitations of our daily lives and to stretch our notion of the possible.

To string the wire between the twin towers they first used a bow and arrow to shoot a very thin fishing line across. To find the line in the dark he stripped naked to be able to feel it on his body. Then they used the line to pull back a heavier string, and then an increasingly heavy rope until they were able to haul across the wire. What a wonderful metaphor: to shoot an arrow, a simple low-tech, prehistoric device, up into the dark night sky trailing a gossamer thin thread, to link two buildings! That thread then pulls behind it increasingly strong lines that will build a walkway for the brave to follow.

We need examples and role models of people who dare to venture to extremes to spur us on to similar achievements in our own fields. The same vision is apparent in iconic architecture such as Gehry's Guggenheim and Shigeru Ban's new Centre Pompidou in Metz. Their idea was a pioneering arrow stretching the limits of what was possible. To conceive this requires more than a little craziness!

The most contemporary and ancient art

This is one of Dorothy Napangardi's 'Salt on Mina Mina' paintings from the central Australian desert. It is so amazing and inspiring in every way, that if I were ever to produce a work like this I would feel that my mission on earth had been accomplished and there was nothing more to do. Dorothy, like most of the recent wave of Aboriginal women painters, only started painting late in life with little or no previous art experience. How does this miracle happen? How does a race of people, living a simple life in some of Earth's harshest environments, come up with artworks that are so utterly contemporary that they strike a chord in every sensitive person's heart anywhere in the world?

As well as being one of the most marginalised, the Aboriginal culture is also one of the oldest with an unbroken history of 40,000 years. They have survived in the desert simply because they are so perfectly attuned to it. Anything less would have vanished. These artists are able to tap into a wellspring of knowledge and experience that we can only guess at. Their work expresses their sensitivity for, and integration with, the land like no other. In their existence lies our redemption. They claim that their paintings are a cry of help for the land to the West.

How can we hear and implement their message? In our cities we have lost a vital contact with, and respect for, the land which we need so much to support us with fresh water, fresh air, food and waste disposal. If we as designers can imbue our work with just a little of the qualities of these paintings, can we begin to rectify this impoverishment? Can we learn from, and apply, just some of the processes and sensitivity of artists like Dorothy? In her work I sense a total immersion and rhythmic articulation that blots out the twittering rational mind, allowing her to connect to her surroundings and heritage. Therein lies my goal.

The future role of design

The Kyoto Design Declaration was signed in Kyoto on 28 March 2008 by the Executive Board of Cumulus. The declaration states:

“A paradigm shift from technology driven development to human centred development is under way. The focus is shifting from materialistic and visible values to those, which are mental, intellectual and, possibly, less material. An era of ‘cultural productivity’ has commenced, where the importance attributed to modes of life, values and symbols may be greater than that attributed to physical products. Design thinking stands steadfastly at the centre of this continuum. Simultaneously, this development highlights the importance of cultural traditions and the need to extend and revitalize them.”

A few years ago the frog design agency made a similar statement: "in order to create a radical position around sustainability, we need to change our concept of design."

This echoes what I have been saying in my lectures for some time: that the future of design has to lie, not in designing more things, but in the way we do things. Don't design a better car, design a better transport system, or ideally a better lifestyle that does not need transport. It is also exciting to see another message from my lectures, that design has to encompass greater cultural nourishment beyond the more limited, functional, problem fixing role it currently plays. This is design taking on some of the wider responsibilities of art. How many designers know of this declaration? And how can we incorporate it into mainstream design practice?

The importance of Art

One of the most powerful arguments for the importance of art was given by the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his Nobel prize acceptance speech. When I was a student I read his book Cancer Ward (several times). Somehow he manages to imbue this awful setting with the deepest expression of warmth and humanity. This is a humanity he acquired as a survivor of Stalin's Siberian death camps. In his speech he says that it is easy for us to empathise with the suffering of a neighbour, but much harder to do so with the suffering of so many more people much further away. Art Bridges this gap: it enables us to empathise person-to-person anywhere on the earth. Politicians and speech makers can throw us back and forth with powerful reasoning, and we lose our moral compass. Art cannot lie; it touches our hearts, it reaches our humanity, it dispels complacency, it is the friction that causes the spark of life.

When I talk about art I am not referring to the superficial, commercial, crass work of artists such as Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst. These artists only encourage the worst of our throwaway and exploitative culture. I am thinking more of artists such as Anselm Kiefer, Olafur Eliasson and Emily Kngwarreye who are deeply caring and thoughtful role models. And of course writers like Solzhenitsyn. You can read his full speech here and I strongly recommend it. I can still remember parts of it 39 years after I read it.

A Freely Roaming Imagination

How often do your children (or did you) play adventurously in the wild? In a new book -- 'Last Child in the Woods' -- the author Richard Louv argues that today's children suffer from "nature deficit disorder" because they are cosseted and no longer spend time outdoors exploring. If they did do this he believes that they would be more confident, more competent physically and mentally, and less sedentary and therefore less obese (as described in the review by Margaret Stead in the Guardian Weekly). She goes on to say, "perhaps a sense of solitude -- of being alone with the 'self' -- is the key to the development of a creative imagination."

I am very thankful that I did have this experience as a child, and I have absolutely no doubt that it taught me how to enter that place where dreams happen, and to find a quietness there. At the same time it generated in me a love and respect for the natural environment. Such experiences in childhood remain with you forever. If everyone could have some sort of similar experience as a child would we see less abuse of that environment that we need to give us life?

Art making is fundamentally human

What is the one defining attribute that archeologists ascribe to the very first few humans, to differentiate them from their Neanderthal predecessors? It is art! They wore jewellery and painted on cave walls. As Solzhenitsyn also pointed out in his Nobel speech (see my previous blog) there has never been a time in the history of the human race when we did not make art. What is this fundamental need? What is this elusive concept that has survived so doggedly, while being relevant to every stage of our development, in every part of the world? Why is it such a crucial part of our existence?

And it begs the question: is it still as valued in contemporary Western society as it has been throughout history? I think not. And if it is not, could this be one of the reasons why our culture has gone adrift, why we abuse the earth and each other? Unlike earlier societies, we now find our identity and reassurance in feeding our individual pride with mass consumption, rather than nurturing our humility. We are insecure and undernourished which only leads to greater craving and consumption, resulting in more environmental destruction and human exploitation. How can we turn this around?