Giovanni Marmont
Design for
Collective Study, Counterlogistics, Experimental Sociality, Prefiguration
Year
2020-20212021-2022
Giovanni works at the intersection of design studies, political theory, and philosophy of technology. Having received a PhD from the University of Brighton (2019) and an MA from Central Saint Martins (2013), since 2016 he has taught and tutored at the University of Edinburgh, London College of Communication (UAL), and the University of Brighton. Giovanni’s research tends to combine conceptual, material, and participatory explorations, and is primarily concerned with the social, cultural, and political dimension of practices of use. His work has been exhibited at venues such as the Saatchi Gallery, London’s Southbank Centre, and Dutch Design Week, and his publications include a chapter for the Edward Elgar handbook Sociology of Globalization (with Craig Martin, 2022), one for the Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Design (with Jonathan Chapman, 2017), and a monograph titled A Studious Use (forthcoming, Minor Compositions).
Insight
Who are you inspired by?
I am inspired by all those who, whether explicitly or implicitly, experiment with practices of collectivity that reject and undermine the figure of the individual, in its various configurations, as the primary unit for social life. Examples abound: Erin Manning’s SenseLab/3ecologies Institute, the Center For Convivial Research And Autonomy, and Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective are but three of them.
One book or reading recommendation?
The undercommons: fugitive planning and black study by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten (2013). Bonus recommendation: the novel The Dispossessed: An ambiguous utopia by Ursula K. Le Guin (1974).
What do you think is the role of design for change?
For better or worse, design plays a pervasive role in shaping and orienting all scales of social life, by both creating and preventing specific conditions of possibility for action. Consequently, design can be a sensitive site for the concrete alteration of all kinds of socio-cultural and political arrangements, but also for the defence and preservation of domains onto which change gets despotically imposed.
