Stratagems for Communality

Robert Newton in Blackbeard Pirate, 1952

Robert Newton in Blackbeard Pirate, 1952

‘All human creatures are divided into two groups. There are pirates, and there are farmers. Farmers build fences and control territory. Pirates tear down fences and cross borders.’ (Hickey, 2013)

Since the Thatcher-Reagan economic era of the late 1970s, continuing with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the 2000s Internet Revolution, major societal shifts encouraged the processes of human individualisation, community dissolving and exclusion of vulnerable individuals.

Contemporary socio-economical factors affect people’s state of wellbeing, sensibility and empathy. According to Berardi (2009) economic competition and technical systems of digital networks are the most burdensome brain stimuli. He argues that the global consciousness witnesses a collapse, with people becoming unable to elaborate in a conscious way, due to the acceleration of information. Human beings become less curious, more stressed, more aggressive; anxiety, fear, autistic behaviour, emotional atrophy become their daily routine.

Social innovations are my objectives. As Anti-Solutioner, I stand up against the ingrained established order. I question the entire logic of a system and develop disruptive frameworks through creative blending and recombination of disparate elements and ideas.

My research bridges two concepts: (1) Catherine Malabou’s Brain Plasticity (2012) and the idea that the human brain possesses a continuous transformative potential, and (2) Alexander Galloway’s Protocol (2004), a management platform responsible for openness, multiplicity of connections, and contingency in Internet’s architecture.

The goal of my research is to explore to what extent these two concepts might help shape an alternative modus operandi in the process of community and collective consciousness forming as a resistive response to the increasing tendency of social fragmentation, isolation and exclusion.

This blog post was initially published on the MA Innovation Management blog at Central Saint Martins as part of MAIM 2015 Degree Show ‘Unveiling’.

*Bauman, Z. (2014) Giving and Taking Online: Serpentine Gallery. < http://www.serpentinegalleries.org/exhibitions-events/park-nights-2014-zygmunt-bauman > [Accessed March 2015].
*Berardi, F. B. (2009) Precarious Rhapsody: Semiocapitalism and the pathologies of the post-alpha generation *Wivenhoe / New York / Port Watson: Autonomedia.
*Galloway, A. R. (2004) Protocol: How Control Existes after Decentralization. Cambridge, Masachusetts: MIT Press.
*Hickey, D. (2013) Pirates and Farmers London: Ridinghouse.
*James, I. (2012) The New French Philosophy In: Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

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What is Social Innovation?

Cloud Brocade by Philip Beesley Arhitect Inc.—http://philipbeesleyarchitect.com/sculptures/1114-1214_Cloud-Brocade/index.php

Cloud Brocade by Philip Beesley Arhitect Inc.—http://philipbeesleyarchitect.com/sculptures/1114-1214_Cloud-Brocade/index.php

This is an excerpt from the ‘Self-Positioning Essay’ written in May-June 2014 for Central Saint Martins, MA Innovation Management course.

According to Nicholls & Murdock (2012 p. 35) there are various definitions for social innovation in the literature review, including Stanford University (Phills Jr., Deiglmeier & Miller, 2008), OECD and NESTA (Bacon et al., January 2008) most of them describing it as a field related to ideas, products, services, for the public good.

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Reinventing the Political Economic System

Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix

Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix

According to Noam Chomsky (1999) Neoliberalism has been the dominant global political economic system starting from the 80s with the Reagan and Thatcher administrations until present times and it has been embraced by both left and right centre parties. Neoliberalism as an economic model is characterized by free market policies that support entrepreneurship and diminish the role of state and governments.

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Togetherness

Murmuration by Alain Delorme—http://www.alaindelorme.com/works-murmurations

Swarm by Alain Delorme—http://www.alaindelorme.com/works-murmurations

‘If you act like there is no possibility of change for the better, you guarantee that there will be no change for the better. The choice is ours, the choice is yours.’ (Chomsky, 1999)

Chomsky, N. (1999) Profit Over People. United Kingdom, Turnaround Publisher Srvices Ltd.

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