Dedicated to clever and innovative trends of art and design in activism.

Peter Fuss reclaims billboards to examine and evaluate present, socially taboo subjects. He’s been a fugitive, a critic, and many other things. Chiefly a painter these days, his work comments on politics, the relationships between religion and authority, flashy religiosity, social problems, and art.

Peter was generous enough to lend us a few minutes for an interview, after putting in some hard work on his latest project - a re-imagination of the Catholic Stations of the Cross, which forces one to think twice about perceptions of criminality.

Groundswell Collective: For our readers who aren’t as familiar with your background, can you give us a brief rundown of your life up until today?

Peter Fuss: I did many different things, many of them not even worth mentioning. Now I mainly paint. I am most known for works in acrylic paint on paper which I then illegally place in urban landscape. To do that, I use billboards which are plentiful on the streets.

GC: When painting or designing an installation, do you start by thinking about the social issue first, or do you put design first?

PF: Both design and content are important in art works. To make a piece interesting, both of these must maintain equilibrium and fit well with each other. When one of them starts dominating, the piece becomes boring. I favor work of artists who are able to balance both form and content. To me, it is not only important how an artist speaks, but most of all what he/she is actually saying. I am not excited by abstract works or excessively vivid graffiti with no message. Therefore, the starting point for my work is definitely a message, idea.

GC: You work illegally and commercially. Where do you feel most at home?

PF: I set my work in the streets because this helps me show my work to people I would never be able to reach through an art gallery. Besides, street art gives me unlimited freedom. I work when I feel like and do what I want. I don’t have to agree anything with any art gallery manager. I don’t have to keep deadlines, get my ideas assessed or consult my projects. These are the main advantages of working in urban environment. Of course, I also exhibit in galleries if I am invited. The precondition though is that no one will interfere with my vision.

My exhibition of January 2007 was shut down by the police on the second day after the opening and they seized all paintings, which haven’t been returned to me to this day.

I don’t know if that is a problem in the U.S., but in recent years Poland saw many cases of interfering with works of art on display, we’ve had interventions from the police and local authorities or
pieces being withdrawn from display by scared curators. My exhibition of January 2007 was shut down by the police on the second day after the opening and they seized all paintings, which haven’t been returned to me to this day. I was prosecuted by the police for 6 months because of the contents of the billboard I illegally posted on a fence in front of the church and the public prosecutor spoke to the press of the sanctions I could face. Then they discontinued the case as they were unable to find me.

GC: Over the past few years, you’ve worked outside of Poland, both in the scope of your work, and literally, attending more events in other countries. For the Laugh of God debuted in London, for example. What brought about the shift for you, and has it changed the way you work?

PF: Freedom to travel and taking part in events in various countries is nothing extraordinary in today’s world. I’ve lived in different places and all experiences I had surely influenced me, to a varied degree of course. But it is not a question of place where I live or interacting with different people and cultures that is decisive of the subject matter of my work – it is rather the times we live in that determines my perception of this world. The fact that Americans elected Bush has a direct impact on the life of people outside the U.S. Polish soldiers die on a war started by Bush in Iraq. Thanks to the media and the Internet, photographs of Hillary Clinton crying during the primaries are seen immediately in Poland and in Texas. The fact that Hirst exhibited his diamond skull in White Cube in London was known on the same day in Los Angeles, Kiev and Sydney.

GC: Many of the installations of yours that I’ve seen are serial. Do you set out to create a series of installations, or do you let the setting determine how far you take a concept?

PF: I don’t create series just because I feel like it. The subject matter determines it. So sometimes it takes a series and sometimes one piece is sufficient.

GC: A good deal of your work deals with the Pope. Why the fixation?

PF: It is not the fixation, it is a reaction to the reality around me. I live in Poland, Pope John Paul II was a Pole and even when he was alive the scale of his worship was really grotesque, and after his death it only intensified. Right now there are about 500 monuments of the Pope in this country. You can see the Pope’s images on mugs, ballpoints, or lighters. The cult of the Pope is a very particular mixture of hillbilly, superficial faith with a large dose of kitsch and bad taste.

The Pope is worshipped and loved by masses. But to them, he is more of an idol, a superstar than a spiritual leader, as paradoxically they know very little of his teachings or Papal encyclicals.

The cult of the Pope is a very particular mixture of hillbilly, superficial faith with a large dose of kitsch and bad taste.

People prefer to have pictures showing the Pope than Jesus Christ. They are also much more sensitive over the Pope than Christ. In Poland, it would be more acceptable to caricature or make a joke on Christ rather than the Pope. The police intervened several times during my exhibition on the Pope after they were called by people that felt offended by it.

GC: What were some of your early influences?

PF: As a young boy I lived in a country that was not independent. You couldn’t travel abroad, I even remember the period when it was not possible to travel freely between cities – to do that, you needed a special permit, which was checked by the military and the police. The state-controlled television had only two channels, the press was censored and before playing a concert, every band had to have their lyrics approved by institutions which made sure that no dissent was voiced. It was not a free country. You could go to jail for criticizing those in power. You would see “graffiti” saying people wanted freedom, that those in power cheated, that TV lied. The form was unimportant – it was the message that mattered. Those people expressed their need of freedom, they fought the system by writing politically involved slogans. It was their way to manifest their views and express their dissent against the regime. And they really risked prison.

You would see “graffiti” saying people wanted freedom, that those in power cheated, that TV lied. The form was unimportant – it was the message that mattered.

Those were my first contacts with graffiti activism. It taught me to be uncompromising and believe in the sense of manifesting myself, my beliefs and ideas. It taught me that it’s important to be true to one’s beliefs and express one’s individuality and independence, even if that might cause serious repercussions to me. Therefore, when Harring painted in the subway and Basquiat fulfilled his creativity on Brooklyn walls, I had contact with completely different type of graffiti activism

GC: Can you tell us about your most recent project?

PF: My latest project is a series of 14 billboards showing the Stations of the Cross. In the Catholic tradition (more than 90% of Polish population declare being Catholics) there is this tradition of acting out the Stations of the Cross before Easter. I posted my billboards on the Good Friday at the city train stations so people going to work would see different Stations of the Cross posted on successive train stops. But it wasn’t my goal to make people more spiritual or to promote Christianity among people.

Christ was portrayed in the same way as criminals and suspects are shown in media coverage: surname abbreviated (”Jesus Ch.”) and face shown in a way so as to make it impossible to identify the person. On one hand this reflected how the media trivialize stories of individuals, but most of all I wanted to point to the fact which many people seem to forget – that Christ was a revolutionary who challenged the existing law and order.

Nowadays, people who break the rules and challenge the law and order imposed by the system are being sentenced and imprisoned, notwithstanding the fact that Christ, who also broke the rules, is worshipped.

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NOTE: This week I will be posting a series of follow-ups to Designing the Revolution, my initial response to Alix Rule’s The Revolution Will Not be Designed. Here is the essay in its entirety.

In the time that has passed since originally publishing Designing the Revolution, I decided to write a more reasoned, methodological plan for how we as activist designers should be pursuing social justice. It is an editorial that I hope causes some controversy, and stirs our thoughts a bit. As with Part I, the founding premise is that:

Our role as designers demands of us social change solutions.

There is a growing trend toward social responsibility in design circles, and much of what we write here lauds that change. However, not all of us are on board. As Rick Poynor put it to listeners at the 2001 AIGA conference in New York:

“The problem for design is that it almost dares not open its eyes to what is really going on, to its own complicity, and to its manifest failure to face up to its own responsibilities and argue convincingly that design might be anything other than a servant of commercial interests.”

“For anyone with the stomach to be a critic, there is certainly no shortage of targets, causes, issues or places to start.”

To be sure, these words foreshadowed the current success of socially responsible design: harnessing a formerly money and goods driven industry and turning its focus towards social justice. While this is a positive change, and one that took significant effort to orchestrate, I have previously argued that we need to be be more holistic in our approach to social responsibility. By “holistic,” I meant to suggest that our solutions should get at the root of social issues, rather than address symptoms. We are uniquely poised outside the politics that are faced by activists. We don’t suffer from being too academic - what I jokingly refer to as Ivory Tower vertigo. We are trained to be innovative, and trusted by others to fulfill that role. We should move past social engagement and enact social change.

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results.

The above words can be found in the GNU Manifesto. Author Richard Stallman’s statement also undergirds the kind of perspective that we as activist designers ought to take. While we are fortunate enough to innovate and problem solve outside the usual activist confines, we frequently miss the point when we limit ourselves to design thinking. While the pragmatism that Alix Rule recently critiqued is enabling us to redress problems that are too marginalized for public discourse, we’re sometimes too focused, and lose the big picture of how those small problems are the result of an overarching, systemic problem.

The problem is a lack of direct democracy.

Nate Burgos outlined the potential for design thinking in his manifesto “Innovation: More than a New Year’s Resolution.” In the context of natural disaster (especially Hurricane Katrina) he aptly outlined the problem of systemic failure. Burgos asked: How do we begin to build more just, and more stable systems, especially after such catastrophe? The answer is through participatory approaches and community problem solving.

Designers aren’t politicians, this much is true, but that’s to our benefit. We can be a conduit, and best create solutions that skirt the system if we serve not only as community advocates (social engagement) but as community organizers (social change.) Here are three steps to achieving this:

1. Ditch the traditional clientèle.
2. Work with social change agents and organizations, especially within your community.
3. Ensure that the community served has direct input in each new venture.

I will elaborate on these three points, in order, in posts later this week.

The Revolution Will Not Be Commercialized

Recently, Alix Rule aptly critiqued the sharing of beds between designer activists and corporations. Their alliance leaves ample room for greenwashing and other such aliments. Working on behalf of General Electric, or, worse, co-opting and mocking important issues through design for the likes of Diesel (see Osocio’s Diesel Advertising Global Warming Ready) severely hinders social change. We could instead find guidance in Norman Douglas’s famed quote, “Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.” Further, our approach should be a lived protest, and we should more literally apply the old anarchist adage that we must “build the new world in the shell of the old.”

Leonie ten Duis, et al., set forth a brave argument with An ideal design is not yet that furthers this point. I agree with the authors on their assessment of communications while admitting that a) it was written nearly a decade ago, and b) that their proscription doesn’t sit absolutely comfortably with me, so it serves only as illustration here:

Designers must once again realize that their ultimate task is neither to order information nor simply to decorate it.

The designer can inject his own attitude into this ‘navigation’ between pieces of information.

Every design, in essence, is a criticism of the context for which it has been produced.

A good design ‘activates’ those contexts by offering an understanding of, a comment on, or an alternative to them.

A [good] design [is one] which questions the one-dimensionality of things that are taken for granted – however politically correct they may be .

Given the above comments, how we can do as Richard Poynor challenges, and force design to “face up to its own responsibilities and argue convincingly that design might be anything other than a servant of commercial interests,” without challenging the setting into which we broadcast our own message? Even ten Duis and the other authors admit that:

Attitudes have also changed towards that ‘voice of capital’, advertising: today even political dissidents see advertising as a powerful channel of communication along which it is also possible to disseminate ‘good’ messages.

“A good design,” then, “‘activates’ those contexts by offering an understanding of, a comment on, or an alternative to them.” If we ditch the traditional clientèle, and continuously challenge ourselves to be self-critical about the medium that carries our message, we can succeed in seeing that the “revolution” is not commercialized.

It’s about the role of design in the community and how you participate in constructing society.

The quote above was offered by Lebanese designer Zeina Maasri in GOOD Magazine, when discussing her work as a designer in a post-conflict society. Her words challenge designers to assume proactive roles within their community - lead roles that enable democracy. In order to actualize Zeina’s words, and broaden our focus to enact systemic change, we will need to recognize overlapping injustices and address many at once. Different people are affected by injustice in different (sometimes many) ways. The notion of overlapping injustices serves as a critique (or a condemnation, depending) of an unjust system. It’s a recognition that social and power dynamics are asymmetrical, and that social justice is a thornier problem than it may appear on the surface. This truth drives the need for direct democracy in what we do.

Through working with many and disparate groups, we can recognize these patterns, and share ideas and best practices. For example, Groundswell is currently working pro-bono with two organizations, one that promotes democracy in Africa, and an anti-racism outfit working here in the United States. Our latest commitment was to ourselves, to create at least one campaign per month that would have a public impact. We decided to play this role as activist designers, and to take direct action, rather than only facilitate causes. We believe firmly (and act accordingly) that the designer-cum-activist can have his or her hands in multiple aspects of social justice work.

John Moorehead, a fellow designer and loyal Groundswell reader, offered us this inspiring comment:

I have seen firsthand the impact design can have and I know the effort is not wasted. If there are people who commission us to help communicate notions of any kind through design, we must be “thinking designers” and carry the task in the best way we can.

In order for design to have this kind of impact, I believe we need to approach these problems by thinking systemically.

So far, we’ve seen that we can ditch commercial clients and work for the betterment of livelihoods around the globe, and that if we work on multiple fronts at once, we’ll see that the issues we are concerned with are connected in complex ways. What, then, is the next step for concerned designers?

Always a problem, always a solution

Activist design can change not only the social role that designers play, but if we involve the community in our work, we’ll have a strong and direct impact. Our job is not to repair unjust systems, but to disrupt them and hand out the tools with which to skirt or dismantle them.

Socially conscious design is an phenomenon for activists to consider. Decentralized, organic, and social justice oriented, it has all the markings of a successful grassroots movement. One facet of design thinking that deserves particular attention is the small (but growing) area of participatory design. Particularly in the field of architecture, firms and design/build programs, have been joining hands with community design centers and service-based organizations to directly meet the needs of the communities they serve.

Architects achieve this level of direct input through town-hall style meetings, but other artists demonstrate that the approach doesn’t have to be nearly as pastoral, or even as orchestrated. The alternative reality game WorldWithoutOil.org imagined “the actual events of an oil shortage,” and challenged players to “document them and innovate solutions.” Of The World TV offers indie film and video promoting progressive activism, eco-consciousness, and humanitarianism through a personal and participatory framework. The upcoming and much talked about Pangea Day offers a similar platform.

These examples demonstrate that story telling and problem solving are almost always done best when whole communities are engaged, and this should appeal to the pragmatist designer and the idealist dreamer in all of us.

2 comments

NOTE: This week I will be posting a series of follow-ups to Designing the Revolution, my initial response to Alix Rule’s The Revolution Will Not be Designed. At the end of the week, I’ll publish the essay in its entirety, complete with feedback to any comments made. Below is the third part of the series. You can the first part here, the second here, third here, and yesterday’s here.

So far, we’ve seen that we can ditch commercial clients and work for the betterment of livelihoods around the globe, and that if we work on multiple fronts at once, we’ll see that the issues we are concerned with are connected in complex ways. What, then, is the next step for concerned designers?

Always a problem, always a solution

Activist design can change not only the social role that designers play, but if we involve the community in our work, we’ll have a strong and direct impact. Our job is not to repair unjust systems, but to disrupt them and hand out the tools with which to skirt or dismantle them.

Socially conscious design is an phenomenon for activists to consider. Decentralized, organic, and social justice oriented, it has all the markings of a successful grassroots movement. One facet of design thinking that deserves particular attention is the small (but growing) area of participatory design. Particularly in the field of architecture, firms and design/build programs, have been joining hands with community design centers and service-based organizations to directly meet the needs of the communities they serve.

Architects achieve this level of direct input through town-hall style meetings, but other artists demonstrate that the approach doesn’t have to be nearly as pastoral, or even as orchestrated. The alternative reality game WorldWithoutOil.org imagined “the actual events of an oil shortage,” and challenged players to “document them and innovate solutions.” Of The World TV offers indie film and video promoting progressive activism, eco-consciousness, and humanitarianism through a personal and participatory framework. The upcoming and much talked about Pangea Day offers a similar platform.

These examples demonstrate that story telling and problem solving are almost always done best when whole communities are engaged, and this should appeal to the pragmatist designer and the idealist dreamer in all of us.

No comments

NOTE: This week I will be posting a series of follow-ups to Designing the Revolution, my initial response to Alix Rule’s The Revolution Will Not be Designed. At the end of the week, I’ll publish the essay in its entirety, complete with feedback to any comments made. Below is the fourth part of the series. You can the first part here, the second piece here, and yesterday’s here.

It’s about the role of design in the community and how you participate in constructing society.

The quote above was offered by Lebanese designer Zeina Maasri in GOOD Magazine, when discussing her work as a designer in a post-conflict society. Her words challenge designers to assume proactive roles within their community - lead roles that enable democracy. In order to actualize Zeina’s words, and broaden our focus to enact systemic change, we will need to recognize overlapping injustices and address many at once. Different people are affected by injustice in different (sometimes many) ways. The notion of overlapping injustices serves as a critique (or a condemnation, depending) of an unjust system. It’s a recognition that social and power dynamics are asymmetrical, and that social justice is a thornier problem than it may appear on the surface.  This truth drives the need for direct democracy in what we do.

Through working with many and disparate groups, we can recognize these patterns, and share ideas and best practices. For example, Groundswell is currently working pro-bono with two organizations, one that promotes democracy in Africa, and an anti-racism outfit working here in the United States. Our latest commitment was to ourselves, to create at least one campaign per month that would have a public impact. We decided to play this role as activist designers, and to take direct action, rather than only facilitate causes. We believe firmly (and act accordingly) that the designer-cum-activist can have his or her hands in multiple aspects of social justice work.

John Moorehead, a fellow designer and loyal Groundswell reader, offered us this inspiring comment:

I have seen firsthand the impact design can have and I know the effort is not wasted. If there are people who commission us to help communicate notions of any kind through design, we must be “thinking designers” and carry the task in the best way we can.

In order for design to have this kind of impact, I believe we need to approach these problems by thinking systemically.

No comments

NOTE: This week I will be posting a series of follow-ups to Designing the Revolution, my initial response to Alix Rule’s The Revolution Will Not be Designed. At the end of the week, I’ll publish the essay in its entirety, complete with feedback to any comments made. Below is the third part of the series. You can the first part here, and yesterday’s piece here.

The Revolution Will Not Be Commercialized

Recently, Alix Rule aptly critiqued the sharing of beds between designer activists and corporations. Their alliance leaves ample room for greenwashing and other such aliments. Working on behalf of General Electric, or, worse, co-opting and mocking important issues through design for the likes of Diesel (see Osocio’s Diesel Advertising Global Warming Ready) severely hinders social change. We could instead find guidance in Norman Douglas’s famed quote, “Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.” Further, our approach should be a lived protest, and we should more literally apply the old anarchist adage that we must “build the new world in the shell of the old.”

Leonie ten Duis, et al., set forth a brave argument with An ideal design is not yet that furthers this point. I agree with the authors on their assessment of communications while admitting that a) it was written nearly a decade ago, and b) that their proscription doesn’t sit absolutely comfortably with me, so it serves only as illustration here:

Designers must once again realize that their ultimate task is neither to order information nor simply to decorate it.

The designer can inject his own attitude into this ‘navigation’ between pieces of information.

Every design, in essence, is a criticism of the context for which it has been produced.

A good design ‘activates’ those contexts by offering an understanding of, a comment on, or an alternative to them.

A [good] design [is one] which questions the one-dimensionality of things that are taken for granted – however politically correct they may be .

Given the above comments, how we can do as Richard Poynor challenges, and force design to “face up to its own responsibilities and argue convincingly that design might be anything other than a servant of commercial interests,” without challenging the setting into which we broadcast our own message? Even ten Duis and the other authors admit that:

Attitudes have also changed towards that ‘voice of capital’, advertising: today even political dissidents see advertising as a powerful channel of communication along which it is also possible to disseminate ‘good’ messages.

“A good design,” then, “‘activates’ those contexts by offering an understanding of, a comment on, or an alternative to them.” If we ditch the traditional clientèle, and continuously challenge ourselves to be self-critical about the medium that carries our message, we can succeed in seeing that the “revolution” is not commercialized.

No comments