Elisa Piazzi
I believe that the purpose of the designer should be to help create a good society, making sense of the new or already present forms of positive change. By working with and for the community, acting as a catalyst rather than a source, the intent of the designer should be to provoke a slow down of reasoning, letting go of concepts such as authorship and the dominance of the mere aesthetics. My practice, starting form observations of real life situations wants to question and reinvent the construction of places and knowledge using hope and acts of togetherness as a powerful tools.
Graduation Project
How can we shed light on the ruins of surplus without having them lose their peculiarity? Can we, in the ruins of surplus, promote different values and behaviours that foster kinship, conviviality, and equality between all beings? How can we do that by revising what we already have produced?
When I came across the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) everything started to come together.
Written in 1948 the UDHR failed to address the definition of “human” and since then the boundary between what is “human” and what is not became a tool to legitimize violence against other non-humans, as well as some non-normative humans.
The Universal Non-Authoritarian Declaration of Human & More-Than-Human Rights (UN-ADH&M-T-HR) IS based on the UDHR, AND AIMS to eradicate the concept of “otherness” by using the re-inscription of meaning, hope and acts of togetherness as powerful tools. The UN-ADH&M-T- HR wants to recognize the inherent dignity and equality of all beings as the foundation of freedom, kinship and peace in the world.
I have invited, and I am still inviting other fragile living beings to be readers/ friends/ and/or critics/ of the UN-ADH&M-T-HR. Together we are establishing Human & More-Than-Human Rights Relations between Common Spaces, Friends, Neglected Seats, Plastic Bags and Anyone and Anything Interested. They are a continuous online and offline collaboration promoting the development of Human and More-Than Human Rights Everywhere. An exchange of information on what constitutes Humans and More-Than-Humans, living and non-living beings. The primary objective is to develop relations between open-equal-different minded living and non-living beings who can expand their knowledge and share their experiences. Re-learning how to treat each other by collectively testing and proposing alternative practices and behaviours leaving no one and no thing behind.
Find out more on: elisapiazzi.nl
INCE WE BECAME LIMINAL IN THE RUINS OF SURPLUS WE LEARNED TO DANCE IN THE IRIDESCENCE OF BALANCE
Thesis
Theoretical research, thoughts and personal reflections on the ruins of surplus - a result of the piling up of discarded objects, neglected spaces and precarious beings. Existing in a different temporality detached from the rigid social structure the ruins of surplus do not follow the rules of everyday life, offering the possibility for creating and testing alternative ways of living and producing together.
With this thesis I want to question our current society and life-style suggesting alternatives of a new prosperity. I want to test if, by using the ruins of surplus as a tool, we can discover a new kind of social space where to learn how to live in the uncertainty and precarity that characterizes the Anthropocene. Since collaboration is necessary for our survival, we need to take a collective action to redefine the value of relationships within our society.