Designed Realities Studio

One way of thinking about possible objects is as objects that reinforce the existing status quo, whereas impossible objects exist beyond the constantly shifting border between the real and the unreal. Not unreal in the sense they defy the laws of physics, but because they don’t fit our current worldview, our ‘real’, which is just one amongst many (im)possibilities.

You point out that in much of contemporary design discourse, there is a tension between usefulness and fiction — that fiction is seen as something negative or wasteful. Why is it important that design understands fiction and speculation as means to resist or inflect dominant social mores or intractable economic models?

To take the problem of perpetuity and legitimacy to its extreme, I engaged in a thought experiment: What if a nation was founded, and a constitution was written, to phase out human life?