“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
Our present condition is perilous but also maybe hopeful. Let's investigate it together.
Join us for a new year of inquiry
DI is proposing a name for what we’re all wading through and is inviting curious and flexible thinkers and makers to come together to investigate our state of prepostness:
We find ourselves in a pause between how things used to be and the unknown days ahead. The world is captive to a strange isolation while at the same time building unprecedented histories. The ordinary gulf between quarantine and community collapses. We are all alone, together.
Everyone wants to know how soon, how fast, for who, to whom, how many, how much. In the midst of massive revisions—for justice, for health, for reform—DesignInquiry wonders where gentle, considered, slow, and small moves can be found.
Prepostness embraces this moment of distortion, collision and pause for working together and apart, so we can give shape and meaning to our collective existential dread.
“You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”
—Samuel Beckett
Apply for our In-person Summer Gathering
DesignInquiry is cautiously and bravely proceeding with plans to host a gathering on Vinalhaven, Maine this summer to continue our inquiry of prepostness.
Let’s embrace the uncertainty of it all! (And adjust the plans accordingly.) If you are flexible, request an application questionnaire for participation at info@designinquiry.net.
Dates: June 20–26, 2021 Location: Poor Farm, Vinalhaven, MaineLimited to 12 participantsCost: $750 USD contribution toward onsite residency costs, groceries for shared meals, and some drinks. Limited scholarships available.
Introducing the Prepostness Reader
Making up new words is tricky business, and when you put together a word like prepostness, it’s necessary to give that word some edges. DesignInquiry is drawn to the reader as a potent format for this task.
Have you seen Ramon Tejada’s Decolonizing Design Reader? Or run across Mindy Seu’s Cyberfeminism Index? More than the thick blocks of photocopied paper that you might have picked up for a course in college, these contemporary readers exist in both digital and printed forms, are open-source, and work as ever-changing knowledgebases.
Energized by explorations like these, DI’s Prepostness Reader will be taking shape over the course of this year in multiple formats. DesignInquiry invites you to participate from afar in giving more exact meaning to prepostness: Join us on our Discord server to contribute to the reader (ideas, critique, resources, articles, images, video, writing, etc.) and add your address to DI’s snail mail database to receive a printed edition (shipping sometime in February!).
(If you are new to Discord, here’s a beginner’s guide).
DesignInquiry is a non-profit educational organization devoted to researching design issues in intensive team-based gatherings. An alternative to the design conference, it brings together practitioners from disparate fields to generate new work and ideas around a single topic.
Ongoing outcomes from recent programs: DesignInquiry Index (2020) Currency (2019), ReWrite (2018).
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