Happy New Year!
Now that 2023 has arrived, we are likely approaching our coldest days. It’s winter in the northern hemisphere—where most of us are located. And despite the innumerable variations of winter weather—from torrential rain to depth of snow—what we share is proximity.
We are all closest to the sun during the months of December and January. If you imagine the elliptical path of Earth, the distance to the sun changes based on our location. And because the path is not perfectly centered around the sun, we are closest to it at only one point in the year. Despite the predominant cold and what we perceive as a greater distance from heat, the sun is actually quite close.
Earth’s axis is also tilted. In winter, the effect of leaning away from sun produces the cold, snow, rain, and clouds that define each of our regional winters. A litany of the coldest weather events, tiny or large, are produced from proximity to other things.
What are you close to and what is on approach? Are you hot or cold? Did you taste the wind? Describe a whether pattern. Proximity isn’t always what it may seem.
Winter Poem
by Nikki Giovanni
once a snowflake fell
on my brow and i loved
it so much and i kissed
it and it was happy and called its cousins
and brothers and a web
of snow engulfed me then
i reached to love them all
and i squeezed them and they became
a spring rain and i stood perfectly
still and was a flower
around / work
Summer 2023 | Vinalhaven, ME 18-24 June
work / around
Fall 2023 | UK 17-24 Sept (TBC)
A workaround is a creative improvisation to get to a desired result, usually when there’s something in the way. The obstacle could be a technical fault, a policy or an interface designed to exclude you (deliberately or not).
around / work explores the work we would prefer to do, and all that circles, envelops, and circumscribes work. If you weren’t working, what work would you be doing? What lingers, layers over, and orbits what we do, and how does it matter?
If the workaround is a clever maneuver skirting obstacles, around / work raises questions around why and how we work, and what we prefer to do and not to do.
How might a communal and collaborative reimagining around work or a workaround move demands and imperatives to potential ruptures and pleasures? Join us in Vinalhaven, ME for around / work this summer or the UK for work / around in the fall. More info coming soon via newsletter.
Fellows 2023
Our DI Fellow program brought a new cohort of fellows this summer to Austin, Texas. Sarah Alfarhan (Gothenburg, Sweden), Jordan Carey (Portland, Maine), Taylor Miles Hopkins (Seattle, Washington), and Jordan Steyer (Austin, Texas) gathered for 3 scorching hot days to inquire with Andy Campbell, Jimmy Luu, Tricia Treacy, and Steve Bowden. Their practices intersect somewhere in the seams of collaboration, community, language, self-publishing, social issues, and story-telling. A DI style meal was shared with Austin-based designers from the DI universe: Alice Lee, Tuan Phan, M. Wright and Edith Valle. A visit to the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection at the University of Texas was a highlight.
Stay tuned for a collaborative outcome from the cohort this summer!
Unknown, Unplanned, Unfinished: peripheral vision as an act of inquiry
At the National AIGA conference in Seattle last fall, DesignInquirer and cofounder Margo Halverson shared how the generosity of collective improvisation can become a personal invitation to trust the unknown, unplanned, and unfinished. Here’s a 10’ clip.
Bewilder (June 12-18, 2022)
Bewilder was an in-person, six-day, in-and-out-of-doors, 2-part inquiry in Mill Run, PA including three days sleeping indoors at the High Meadow Residence at Fallingwater and three days sleeping outdoors at Bear Run Nature Preserve.
What resulted was a highpoint of our year. An unexpected merging of strangers removed from the real world converging in a place conceived and created in the moment. A squall of ideas, form, sweat and tears (of laughter) and many miles traversed together. Stay tuned for an upcoming publication of the results accompanied by a traveling +/-30lb exhibition springing from a backpack in venues and universities near you.
Re/Rewrite
Re/Rewrite is a monthly-ish writing group. Each month a prompt is distributed and we meet to read, discuss, and laugh the outcomes. We aim to alter the design of writing and discover new ways of how to write. Here’s a taste:
“It was all outlined in the regulations pursuant to the breeding contract and pedigree papers. We ached for unconditional love and companionship and got three crazy-ass puppies with the combined energy of a 300hp cigarette boat. It was only right to build a rumpus room out of plexiglass and fill it with clean water. Daisy Mae, Bellarose and Charlotta INSIST that the water is CLEAN.”
~SM
“This room was the gateway. The starting point. The moment when material reality and household chores collided in a new way. The decision to upholster the entire thing in Corinthian Leather was partly practical : waterproofing. But it was also the only way to get that specific colour and light quality. Every inch of the laundry room was covered in Corinthian Leather, the appliances of course, the lint trap, the pipes, the sink, the doors and doorknobs, the cabinets and their insides, the hangers.”
~EL
“It was stolen from a flea market… reams and reams of black fabric – Jesus and Elvis permeated the landscape. How many images of Jesus does it take to line a bedroom? The dreams the walls provoke recounted while asking Siri. Elvis lines the bathroom – hips thrust as copper wires intertwine. Inwall heating… will the velvet melt or morph?”
~SG
“I could hear my husband calling my name, and I held my breath and licked my lips. I licked them again. Clay? The taste was beguiling, too! I tasted a bit more, plucking a clump from the wall. It wasn’t gritty but smooth, and dank. I felt my belly growl. I pushed the stump to the center of the closet and began slowly crushing the wood completely.”
~HW
To join us, visit https://rewritedi.substack.com and sign up to receive writing prompts.