Res Mobilis

Editorial Preface: : Contemporary Histories of Design and Transience

Bahar Emgin — 2023-07-29

Preface

What to make out of loss: exploring the missing textile collection of the National Museum of Cambodia

Magali An Berthon — 2023-07-29

In 1975, when the Khmer Rouge seized power, the National Museum of Cambodia, under the care of director Ly Vou Ong, was closed with its collections abandoned. Upon the museum’s reopening in 1979 in the aftermath of the dictatorship, only seventy-three silk textiles and a costume collection of about thirty pieces were recovered. Three-quarters of this collection had disappeared due to environmental issues and looting. Most of the pre-1975 staff had died, resulting in a significant loss of knowledge about the museum’s history and objects.

Due to the lack of comprehensive photographic records for each piece and the unstable inherent qualities of textiles (portable, fragile, easy to hide and copy), it appears nearly impossible to track the looted objects in other museums or private collections. However, catalogues, inventories and sets of datasheets pre-dating 1970 provide substantial evidence of these pieces and their acquisition. This paper argues that in addition to studying and preserving what was salvaged, examining missing artefacts through archival and photographic evidence sheds a more comprehensive light on the value and specificity of the museum’s textile heritage formed through successive curatorial teams from the 1920s to the late 1960s. This research especially explores the importance of paper records as invaluable data to bring new meanings about the history of the collection, as well as physical objects. Through their tactile, textual quality, they act as placeholders in which are inscribed the curator’s choices and the textiles’ material memory. Focusing on the transience of this textile collection opens theoretical and methodological ways to materialise the rich diversity of textile craftsmanship pre-1970 (motifs, styles, techniques) and critically examine further the destructive nature of the Khmer Rouge regime and civil war.

Aviso importante dirigido a la comunidad de lectores de Res Mobilis

Dirección de Res Mobilis — 2023-09-25

Uno de los artículos que había sido previamente publicados en el último número especial de la revista ha tenido que ser retirado a causa de una vulneración grave de nuestras políticas de derechos de autor y buenas prácticas académicas.

Nos gustaría aprovechar esta situación para recordarles que todos y cada uno de los artículos que sean enviados a nuestra plataforma para su revisión de cara a ser publicados deben ser completamente originales. El plagio es un asunto que nos tomamos muy en serio, y ningún contenido que haya sido copiado o que esté inspirado por el trabajo de otros sin que se expliciten los respectivos créditos será compartido por nuestra publicación.

Ante cualquier duda que pueda surgir como autor respecto a este tema, o si en el futuro detectas similitudes entre tu trabajo y alguno de los artículos que se publiquen en la revista, no dudes en ponerte en contacto con nuestro equipo de editores.

Transience and the modern Turkish interior

Deniz Hasirci — 2023-07-29

Despite the expansion of research in modern interiors around the world and a more inclusive dialogue with regards to geography, ultimately, the field is still lacking theory and methods derived from its own specific needs rather than being adapted from architectural research, and a focus on its transient nature that is likely to lead to more impactful research and preservation results. Modern Turkish interiors research have also expanded greatly with individual, as well as projects or research groups like docomomo_tr interiors and DATUMM (Documenting and Archiving Modern Turkish Furniture) that create awareness through various forms of scholarly (documentaries, archival work) and popular (public exhibitions, popular books and magazines, newspaper pieces, and films) output. Although transience and thus a race with time is at the core of modern interiors research and several struggles are common worldwide, socio-cultural and economic reasons result in a faster pace in Turkey, creating an urgency to implement innovative methods and approaches fitting contemporary prerequisites of the field.

Transient yet Settled: The Rooms for Tuberculosis Patients in Turkish Sanatoria

Cansu Degirmencioglu — 2023-07-29

Sanatoria designed for tuberculosis treatment aimed to allow patients to convalesce by two main approaches: by encouraging patients to become part of social/public life while learning to live with TB, and by softening the ‘hospital’ feeling by providing individualised rooms as spaces of convalescence. Despite their sterile appearances and clinical atmospheres, sanatoria were also emotionally charged spaces that aimed to convey a sense of belonging for the patients. For this reason, the patients were encouraged to personalise their main living environment, i.e., their rooms, which became their temporary homes, and a permanent sense of belonging was thus created in spaces of transience. However, this belonging was only temporary, and later the rooms were cleaned to spotless perfection: as soon as the patients checked out, their rooms were instantly and deeply sanitised, and any traces of the patients were erased. The aim is to discuss the role of design in this contrast between the physical transience of the medical body and the spiritual longevity of the homelike space in a medical environment: Turkish sanatoria in providing convalescence to TB patients offered the feeling of ‘home’ in their spaces of transience.

A Computational Interface Design to Reenact the Transitory Moments of the Izmir International Fair

Daniele Savasta — 2023-07-29

Grouper is a computational interface design, i.e. a web-based platform supporting researchers working with (visual) digital collections. The significance of this platform is about the positioning of researchers and offering them the possibility to create, manage and visualise a collection within their research process. Digital collections are central to the work with an early visualisation facility that allows for iterations in a way where visualisation becomes researching rather than a showcase at the end of research. Focusing on the Izmir International (Trade) Fair and ephemera collections that define an important period in Izmir's history, this study and Grouper ask: ‘How can digital tools help to trace, piece together and make sense of the design heritage of the Izmir International Fair, which includes a wide range of design practices and objects spread across nine decades?’ Working with the ephemera of the Izmir International Fair propels new conceptual and practical additions to Grouper, emphasizing the concepts of ‘assemblage (collection of collections)’ and ‘collaboration’. Thanks to the Grouper computational interface, the object-Fair can be observed through a new lens offered by the multiplicity of visual ephemera included in the assemblage and collaboration as a result of collection(s) from multiple sources and people. This lens of Grouper allows the creation of a content and narrative that was not previously available and enables to reenact the transitory moments of Izmir International Fair. Throughout this work, notions of transience and permanence accompany us in piecing ephemera together, in digitising collections, in Grouper's loose, flexible, modular structured research process, and in the persistence of transient objects and memories in new narratives.

An attempt to read the change in aesthetics through Deleuze: IAA and SANART aesthetic congresses

Saadet Kök — 2023-07-29

Hız ve aciliyet temelinde değerlendiren sosyal-politik ve çevresel krizler, küreselleşme ve yenilikçi teknolojik gelişmeler gibi süreçlerin sonucunda sonuç odaklı, indirgemeci, etikten ve estetikten yoksun bir dünya ile karşı karşıyayız. Bu çalışma, estetik ile değişen dünya arasındaki ilişkiyi gözler önüne seriyor. Bu çerçevede, Uluslararası Estetik Derneği (IAA) ve Estetik ve Görsel Kültür Derneği (SANART) kongrelerinin temalarına odaklanan bu çalışma, estetiğin değişen dünyamızla ilişkisini Gilles Deleuze'ün 'farklılık felsefesi' üzerinden okuyor. .

Bu çerçevede çalışma, temalar ve kongre bildiri çağrısının Deleuze'ün terimleriyle olan ilişkisini kronolojik olarak analiz etmektedir. Çalışma, Deleuze'ün 'sistem' kavramına karşılık gelen SANART ve IAA derneklerinin kongrelerinin kavramsal çerçevesini değerlendirmektedir. Her derneğin belirli aralıklarla düzenlediği etkinlikler, sistemleri oluşturan 'dizi'lerdir. Bu bağlamda çalışma, kavramları hem ait oldukları dizi içinde hem de diğer dizilerdeki sözel kimlikleri içinde okur. Diğer bir deyişle, kongre temaları ve çağrı metinlerindeki kavramların dinamik ve statik tekrarlarını analiz eden çalışma, dışsal ve kavramsal farklılık alanlarını sorgulamaktadır. Bu çalışmada elde edilen veriler kendi içinde seriler, yatay seriler ve dikey seriler olarak kategorize edilmiş ve yorumlanmıştır.

Transience as a design challenge: Italian radical narratives about the role of design processes in/for the incorporeal transformations of cities (1969-1974)

Elena Maria Formia — 2023-07-29

The capacity of design culture to interpret changes and mediate different fields of research and action by integrating material, immaterial values and experiences, is becoming increasingly relevant, considering the deep transformations generated by the contemporary crisis, wars and migrations. The concept of transience therefore appears to be the only condition and dimension we can design, influence, shape, test, experiment and consume, but also use to narrate the not-linear relationship between design ‒ as a culture of doing, producing, mediating, building relations, anticipating – and the transformations in cities and societies.

This paper therefore intends to propose a transverse and inclusive interpretation of transience mediated by design, examining narratives of design-centred approaches in Italy, considering performative and temporary expressions as designed artefacts, with an influence on the development of urban spaces, and where spontaneous initiatives have been expression of latent processes of creativity and culture. The period under examination primarily covers the decades of 1960s and 1970s, a period in which the search for overlapping between disciplinary boundaries, the aggression of the overall vision of the project ‒ which proposes a circularity between scales ‒ and the climate of protest with movements and activism, brought with them the need for change. Moreover, the relationship between design, crisis and sustainability was a transversal theme that led design cultures to weave collaboration with different forms of knowledge and to explore transverse processes and methods.

The design discourse around sustainability continues to be fueled by new instances of triple transition pervading the European landscape, in a process of continuous refinement of methods and practices that introduces new tools, with an eye to digital and new technologies, cross-fertilised by a variety of disciplines, because the forces conditioning change in contemporary and future societies are many and sometimes unexpected.

Dona Folô’s clothing: a non-free Creole, who carried jewelry and fine fabrics

Maria do Carmo Madu — 2023-07-29

This article addresses the discussion presented to the Design, History and Society Annual Conference 2022 with the theme Design and Transience that took place in September 8^th-10^th 2022 at the Izmir Technological Institute, in Turkey. The objective was to present the transience of the social role occupied by Dona Folô in the period of Imperial Brazil, by carrying the Crioula Jewelry and wearing clothes made in fine fabrics – although she, as a slave, did not have possession of her freedom. With this research in progress, we aim to give visibility to the story of Dona Folô, while also wanting to talk about Crioula Jewelry and fabrics imported from Great Britain. As a result, we observed that the subject raised the interest of scholars and researchers who participated in the Conference.

The fluid futures of multi-layered histories: many lives of North Brother Island, New York City

Meriç Erdoğan — 2023-07-29

The transience of populations reflects itself as the life cycle of the buildings. Constantly changing dynamics in the entities of a building also constantly effects the fate of the structure. Even with the proper treatment, the loss of its compatibility in functions with the deterioration of a structure becomes inevitable with the forces of various humanitarian, natural and ecological crises.

The examined case that has experienced several phases of ephemerality in its lifetime is the North Brother Island in NYC that people abandoned more than half a century ago. In its many lives, the island has been a quarantine island, the site of one of the deadliest maritime accidents, a last resort housing solution for WWI veterans, and a forced rehabilitation center for young drug addicts. Today the island is occupied with a few abandoned public buildings, which are remnants of its troublesome past, and innumerable plants that have taken over the land after everyone left. And now it is facing its proclaimed sinking that is going to be happening in 100 years.

This project is for the treatment of a more than human community in the isolated jungle off the coast of the dense cosmopolitan NYC. In an era defined by the environmental and climatic crises, architecture’s long-standing obsession with monumental and immortal buildings has to leave a way for a humbler approach intending to provide habitats for more than one entity in the cycle of life.

The design method to answer this problem is to consciously re-creating places on the island by using de-constructed materials from the former buildings of the island with the addition of biodegradable ones. By their dissolving in nature after the sinking, only the skeletons of the structure will remain as a ruin, but also as a new home for underwater life.

In conclusion, this approach envisions a safe environment for nature and humans through the different stages of the island until the inevitable yet not to be feared sinking of the island, which will further become the starting point of the new urban infrastructure of underwater life.

Designing permanence under duress: precarity and preservation of heritage in Ukraine

Jennifer L. McHugh — 2023-07-29

Abstract

This paper considers ephemerality and permanence within design history, design objects and designers themselves. In situations of conflict and uncertainty, a forced entanglement of loss might ask the question: how does impermanence challenge preservation, collection and documentation? Taking the current situation in Ukraine as a case study to explore intersections with design and transience, this highlights critical questions of immediacy. With the destruction of sites and cultural artefacts as targeted forms of political control, seeking to erase memory of tangible and intangible heritage, design and its circulation are in peril. How might design (historians) respond to the challenges of destruction, absence and impermanence?

Quimantú: When a Political Emergency and Rapid Social Transformation Shape an Editorial Project

Pedro Alvarez Caselli — 2023-07-29

The diverse histories of national and transnational design have included research on institutions, collectives, and entities that developed projects concerned with the practice or teaching of design, with longer or shorter permanence, towards a historiographic construction built on their legacy. In this context, we examine the transience and exceptional nature of Empresa Editora Nacional Quimantú, a state publishing project carried out in Chile between 1971 and 1973 by a socialist and democratically elected government that ended abruptly due to a military coup. From a qualitative and quantitative methodological perspective, as well as archival work, we analyse the intersections between design and the editorial guidelines of its catalogue (books and magazines), in addition to the trajectory of the largest publishing enterprise formed in the country, during a brief operating period of two and half years. This instance opened a space for collaboration and experimentation between directors, designers, and workers within management structures. The presence of a large-scale social publishing model is studied for its unprecedented print runs in the national readership market, where the ‘design’ factor—in terms of form, content, and strategy—had a fundamental role, and the volume of printed books exceeded the country’s total population. Interrogating the archives, collections, and titles designed under Quimantú—a project that has acquired a ‘publishing mythology’ character for its fleetingness and high production levels—opens the possibility of looking into a heritage of editorial products designed with the urgency of taking culture to popular sectors, and the immediacy of a political process of radical changes that appealed for the mass production of images, texts, and discourses. Finally, the problem of production time becomes relevant as content production teams, collections’ designs, and the dissemination and sales spaces introduced some ideas and innovations into the Chilean publishing milieu.