Aestheticising Change: Simulations of Progress

If, following Rancière, politics revolves around who has power to articulate ‘the sensible’, then designers, as aesthetic practitioners, must be caught up in questions of politics. This is particularly so when design practice becomes part of the way public sector actors negotiate, envision and catalyse change in relation to public ‘problems’. However, this is also typically a form of design practice that eschews any talk of aesthetics — presenting as de-skilled, democratic and ‘de-aestheticised’, in a sense. By analysing and re-describing such design practice in aesthetic terms here — illustrated with an example from practice — we provide an alternative characterisation to the more instrumental account of design as a reliable route to innovation for public sector managers. This opens up a different perspective on what such practices function to achieve, and what is at stake: an effacing of the political nature of design decisions, and an obscuring of the real work of change by the seductive techniques of simulation.

doi: 10.21606/dma.2017.291