Inside/Outside: Working Our Way Out of a Damaged Now (Design as Dialectics)

Inside/Outside: (Design as dialectics) is a discourse manifested as an exhibition of experimental design work which was held at the San Francisco State University Design Gallery in the Spring of 2017. The project is a collection of artefacts, statements, and conversations whose intention is to blur various boundaries. It is an experiment intended to bring together theory and practice, discourse and artefact. It is a philosophical exegesis of design and its potentialities. The project defined a philosophical position for design, namely that while design can be seen as a way to instrumentalize reality and thus reaffirm existing categories, it also has the capability to operate within the inner, and often unseen, “dialectics” (Adorno 2005) – a process of spontaneous criticism that unfolds from within reality. Design also has the ability to question existing categories, reveal meanings and values that commonly remain invisible due to their oversimplification.