The banality of this particular evil glazes over the continued emaciation of public education. Several authors have addressed this process (see Giroux’s Neoliberalism’s War on Higher Education), as well as discussed models for attempting to stem this trend. While CUNY continues to struggle for funding, both for its students and its large number of precariously contracted educators, the learning experience becomes increasingly denigrated – classroom sizes balloon, facilities erode, teachers exhaust. Commoditizing education (prioritizing its exchange-value over its use-value) inevitably impoverishes public institutions, no matter how skilled CUNY’s Chancellor (with his $500k salary) is at branding. A for-profit space reduces its occupants to their potential output, rendering experience marginal or impossible. By this, I mean to convey the mutual exclusivity of the concepts output and experience. Experience is something that only occurs in the present (one can remember a past experience, but the experience occurred in a present). Output, on the other hand, is something that cannot have a present (if I say ‘I have an output’, it denotes either something that is done or something that will be done).

While Marx, Bachelard, Thompson, Lefebvre, Harvey and others have variously mapped out the contours of privatized space and time, I want to zoom in on a relatively new type of space that might amuse such venerable thinkers. The last ten years have seen the rise of commercial spaces specifically designed to facilitate the illumination, ideas, creativity, and productivity of their occupiers known as co-work spaces. Sometimes referred to as shared-work spaces, these are increasingly popular urban alternatives to traditional offices, with their abrasive lighting and tepid aromas. Co-work spaces tend to be marketed to free-lancers – some of the occupations that members boast of holding include social entrepreneur, innovation consultant, content maker, talent buyer, experience designer, and creative (yes, used as a noun).

These spaces are meant to be an antidote to the supposed creativity-stifling office environment, while at the same time foster a level of focus that cannot be achieved at a busy coffee shop. These commercial creativity spaces, much like commercial exercising spaces, are subscription-based, and depending on the amenities provided (some of them have “chill zones” and rooftop gardens) can cost from $800/month to $130/month, with most offering a daily rate of $30. Their websites are dripping with perfunctory marketing language, from the slightly cultish: “Where you work can change the way you work. The way you work can change how you live. Work better, Live better…” to DIY rustication: “We built this place with our hands, using reclaimed lumber and materials and taking the time to do it right. There is a wall made out of windows to make the workspace quiet, while keeping the studio open and airy. There is a wood-fired stove to cozy up to in the winter…There’s an oven for nachos, Delonghi coffeemaker for your rocket fuel… Right now, we’re engineering a solar-powered battery recharge station, just for the hell of it.” And one Brooklyn co-work space proudly asserts that it would like “to change the world for the better.”

Such market-based solutions to cultivating creative ideas may be better at generating output in comparison to publicly-held thinking spaces such as libraries or parks, but can an experience of creativity actually be designed?

While most of the vocations that seem to be attracted to co-work spaces sound like fabricated portable lifestyles, which is perfectly fine, I recently learned that Experience Designer is a quite real and rather handsomely compensated vocation.* An experience designer is charged with ensuring that your experience of a company’s website or app is as optimal and pleasant as possible. Or in their own words, experience design is “focused on creating positive human outcomes.”

While this new vocation might reduce the time we spend on the phone with cable or internet companies, it’s hard to imagine that the DMV or Post Office have ever consulted an experience designer. Such public institutions often generate palpable experiences of misery, precisely because the human experience is not planned. The idea of designing an experience seems, indeed, rather counterintuitive. Are planned experiences genuinely experiences, or just the output of a plan? As the above self-descriptions suggest, co-work spaces are meticulously designed. They are designed to inspire creativity. While there are certainly some spaces that are more conducive to concentration than others, the idea that such spaces can be commoditized inspires more panic than creativity.

To my knowledge, public schools do not regularly employ experience designers. However, the increasing neoliberalization of education and the ideology that DeVos has thus far espoused suggest that this day may not be far off. While it can be more functionally pleasant to interact with FedEx than the USPS, the increasing privatization of space normalizes the idea that every experience should be for-profit, should be designed to grow wealth, and perhaps this is a sentiment we should not entwine with education.

The idea that knowledge production has ever been ‘pure’ and ideology-free is a bit of mythology. The Enlightenment was financed by those seeking more efficient means of growing wealth (see some of Mary Poovey’s work), and its educational traditions bear this mark. Public elementary education developed with the onset of the Industrial Revolution to both instill time-discipline and discourage the idleness of children whose parents spent twelve hours of the day in a factory, and elementary education still bears these marks. But, I would rather have a miserable experience at the DMV than pay for the pleasure of having my creativity designed.

*Disclosure: The building I used to live in was bought by an Experience Designer for Google, after which I no longer generated enough wealth to continue living there. So, it’s conceivable that I’m bitter.

Further Reading:

Aggarwal, Ujju, Edwin Mayorga, and Donna Nevel. 2012. Slow violence and neoliberal education reform: Reflections on a school closure. Peace and Conflict 18 (2): 156-64.

Giroux, Henry A. 2014. Neoliberalism’s war on higher education. Chicago: Haymarket Books.

McClennen, Sophia A. 2009. Neoliberalism and the crisis of intellectual engagement. Works and Days 27 : 459-70.

Poovey, Mary. 2010. Financing enlightenment, part one. In This is enlightenment., eds. Clifford Siskin, William Warner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

KAT JUNGNICKEL. ethnographer. maker.

ANTHROPOLOGY + DESIGN.

I’ve always made a bit of a mess. I’ve splashed around darkrooms, attempted to stitch interdisciplinary collaborations, and knit a research blog. I’ve hosted exhibitions, printed ‘zines and folded origami-inspired data boxes. I regularly collaborate with colleagues to build and perform dubiously welded “Enquiry Machines,” and I’m currently sewing a range of new Victorian women’s cycle wear as a means of thinking about public space, mobility, and gender.

I am by training a social scientist and my key methodological approach is ethnographic; for the last decade this visual, material, and messy approach has been central to my work. I’m increasingly drawn to a hands-on, object-oriented and embodied practice for the potential it holds for unlocking new expressions and transmissions of the social. It is a practice that is sometimes compared with a designer-ly approach, yet for me it comes from a background in Communications, Visual Culture, and Sociology.

I see ethnography and design intersecting on many levels, from topics and contexts of study to the rich material methods we employ to develop thick description of the world around us. I’m particularly interested in how the ubiquity of digital technologies has transformed not only the subject matter for many researchers but greatly expanded the possibilities of communicating and circulating findings. In addition to a palette of new skills and tools, there is an open mindedness to experiment with design practices, a desire to look beyond conventional “knowledge exchange” to alternate forms of transmission and entanglements with bodies, technologies, materials and places.

Ethnography + design become particularly productive for me in relation to making. Making is a fascinating lens for thinking about how things come into being, how they are made, where and from what, and who can and cannot participate. The fact that making remains suspended in a dynamic state of practice means it can always be something more or different. Much of my work involves the study of grassroots or fringe communities who customise and adapt existing technologies, re-inscribing them with new meanings and re-imagining possibilities of use. I also, as noted above, consider making central to my own practice.

I make things to make sense of things.

WHAT I DO.

I’ve worked on ethnographic research projects in industry and academic contexts for over a decade. Topics have been diverse but they generally coalesce around new digital technologies, cultural practices, mobilities and gender relations.

For instance, my study of the digital cultures and practices of the largest community WiFi networking group in Australia describes the collective work of individuals committed to designing and building their own version of the internet, or what they called “Ournet, not the internet”. Recently published, DiY WiFi: Reimagining Connectivity (Palgrave Pivot 2013) tells ethnographic stories about a handmade, deeply local communications network forged around barbeques, located in backyards and on sheds, and made from found, adapted, and off-the-shelf materials, with trees, insects, makers’ skills, and the fierce summer weather all contributing to its distinct shape and character. It’s all about people, materials, contexts and things that work as well as things that don’t always go to plan. While these makers clearly imbue a Do-it-Yourself (DiY) ethos they do not do it alone–they Do-it-Together (DiT).

The relevance of rich descriptions of how people design things from the ground up lies in how they render visible large socio-technological systems and infrastructures, drawing attention to other shapes and possibilities of use. They ask new questions about things we take for granted. Here, WiFi makers shift the register–not by asking what we can do on the internet, but what we can do with it. Their design practice signals ways of connecting with each other that circumvents familiar and dominant telecomunication relationships. Fundamentally, what their messy, make-do methods and tales of resourceful ingenuity permit is another way of seeing how technologies come into being–and how things might be different.

METHODOLOGY.

Methodologically, there is a growing movement in the social sciences to embrace mess (Law 2004), liveness (Back & Puwar 2012), and inventive methods (Lury & Wakeford 2012) as generative of new ways of knowing and understanding social worlds. Inspired by this and the open source ethics of many of my research participants, I’m interested not only in how we as researchers do our research but also how we translate and transmit our processes and findings to different audiences.

How might our methods of making knowledge be different? What happens when we use the same design tools/methods as those we study? How can we resist tidying, fixing or flattening our ideas in order to represent them? What can and cannot be transmitted in certain forms?

These questions invite new ways of imagining how we might re-inhabit our research and the social worlds in which they are situated. It is approach, as Jackie Orr has written, “that insists on its own undoing.”

I’ve written about sticky tape methods, particularly in the context of DiY technology practices and maker communities . Here, sticky tape is an everyday tool and an evocative way of working. It is not irrevocably binding but rather temporarily holds stuff in place, enabling things to be re-stuck in alternate configurations. It is about being responsive to changing conditions, interpretations, and opportunities.

Sticky tape reminds us that design innovations do not have to be new or revolutionary to have novelty and impact. Inventiveness emerges in re-combinations of existing materials and problems. Because it evokes a particular method of binding, sticky tape epitomises an experimental hands-on approach, an openness to ideas and resourceful adaptability. It’s a tactic that fits with what Lury and Wakeford (2012) call “inventive methods,” which are methods that cannot be separated from the research problem at hand. They arise in the process of doing the research,transformed by the subject under study and vice versa. I apply this pedagogy to my teaching. I have organised enquiry machine workshops, 16mm filmmaking training days, and an open source electronics prototyping session to see if, how, and in what ways these practices might interrupt and intervene in students’ modes of ethnographic storytelling.

HOW I SHARE.

In addition to journal articles, book chapters, talks and lectures I make websites, exhibitions, machines, performances, and, most recently, frocks to think about, make, and share my research.

• Performance: Enquiry Machines (EM) are a series of performed artefacts that explore ideas or methods. EM #1, for example, focuses on the interview: a classic social science research method. Made of a constellation of bicycle parts, rubbish, and duct tape, itrequires two operators to co-pedal, collaboratively setting in motion a series of chains, chainrings, and cogs to power a dynamo light. Julien McHardy and I interview each other about interviewing as a method, bringing to light the sensual, social, physical, environmental, and technological skills required to elicit and make sense of data. The point is less about materializing answers or prototyping ideas and more about rendering visible the labour of making knowledge, formulating new critical approaches and literally seeing and touching methods in new ways. EMs are not meant to be finished or polished objects that speak for themselves. In fact, most fail in some way. They remind us that mistakes and tangents are just as important to our insights as the things that “work.” EMs are performed at academic conferences, in public streets, at design salons, and in workshops.

[vimeo 16281282 w=500 h=375]

Enquiry Machine #1 – Hackney from Kat Jungnickel on Vimeo.

• Objects: Bikes & Bloomers. Freedom of Movement: The Bike, Bloomer, and Female Cyclist in Late Nineteenth Century Britain. This project explores public space, new technology (clothes, bikes, new media, etc.), and gendered forms of mobile citizenship through the lens of cycle wear patents lodged by middle- and upper-class women between 1890-1900. The novelty of the research lies in interweaving archival data with the making of new Victorian cycle wear in collaboration with contemporary craftspeople–tailor, weaver, artist, and filmmaker. Sewing and wearing these historical garments literally enables me to get into my research. I’ve also been running DiY Bicycle Bloomer Making Workshops, which involve talking, making, and performing as a way of inviting others to do the same.

• Exhibitions: Bike Portraits.The challenge of spatially configuring sociological arguments in three-dimensional form ensures exhibitions take a regular and dynamic role in my practice. Planning an exhibition involves choreographing not only a select series of objects but also dealing with site specificities and complex relationships between actors. I am drawn to what happens, both planned and unplanned, when I take my research back into social contexts from which they originate. For the Cycling Cultures research, I exhibited a series of Bike Portraits—large, jagged, edged photographic collages made in collaboration with respondents, their bikes, and favourite places. Part of me—a shoe, shadow, or arm—is visible in each portrait as a symbol of the messy collaborative work. Portraits were distributed in five popular bikes shops/cafes across central London with viewers encouraged to cycle between sites to piece together the exhibition.

ME.

Kat Jungnickel is a lecturer in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London. She uses ethnographic and visual methods to study hands-on DiY and DiT (Do-It-Together) technology cultures and practices, and the creative use (and mis-use) of ordinary, everyday materials. She experiments with knowledge translation and transmission in the way she makes, curates, and circulates her research findings. Past projects have explored WiFi networks, maker communities and mobility cultures. Her recent book, DiY WiFi: Re-imagining Connectivity (Palgrave Pivot 2013) examines ethnographically the innovative socio-technology practices of Australian grassroots wireless networks. She is currently working on an ESRC (Economic Social Research Council) funded project that brings together her three of favourite things—sociology, cycling, and sewing.

www.katjungnickel.com

www.bikesandbloomers.com

www.transmissionsandentanglements.com

RESOURCES.

Back, L and N, Puwar, eds. 2012. Live Methods. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.18-39.

Hine, C. 2007 Multi-sited Ethnography as a Middle Range Methodology for Contemporary STS. Science, Technology & Human Values 32(6):652-671.

Jungnickel, K. 2014. Jumps, Stutters, Blurs and Other Failed Images: Using Time-Lapse Video in Cycling Research In Video Methods, by C. Bates, ed.  Routledge’s Advances in Research Methods Series.

Jungnickel, K and L. Hjorth. 2014. Methodological Entanglements in the Field: Methods, Transitions & Transmissions.Visual Studies, Special issue: Transformations in Art and Ethnography 29(2): 138-147.

Jungnickel, K. 2013. DiY WiFi: Re-imagining Connectivity. Palgrave Macmillian Pivot.

Jungnickel, K. 2013. Getting There… and Back: How Ethnographic Commuting (by Bicycle) Shaped a Study of Australian Backyard Technologists. Qualitative Research. 

Jungnickel, K. 2010. Research as a Form of Making. Making & Opening: Entangling Design & Social Science Conference. Goldsmiths, University of London.

Jungnickel, K. 2010. Exhibiting Ethnographic Knowledge: Making Sociology about Makers of Technology. Street Signs; Centre for Urban and Community Research. Goldsmiths, University of London.

Law, J. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge.

Lury, C. and N. Wakeford, eds. 2012. Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social, London: Routledge.