A speech delivered by Creative Director Thomas Widdershoven to students and tutors participating in the #DAENousSommes event – a study on how design students can better react and participate in political debate.
The killing of cartoonists in Paris on January 7th 2015 has had a huge impact because the attack on Charlie Hebdo was an attack on an important symbol of free speech.
The day after the event I was in our studio in Amsterdam. We were trying to come up with a cartoon to share our feelings with the world. We felt unified and we felt attacked so we wanted to react. We wanted to speak out. We felt that our key values had been brutalized. We wanted to show sympathy with the victims of this violence. In the end we never published a cartoon, because on the Internet we saw better ones. We are, afterall, designers and not cartoonists.
I think now, two and a half weeks later, we should move beyond a mere reaction to the attack. We should move beyond a defensive attitude. We should move beyond the question of whether or not provocation and insult are essential to freedom of speech.
Nietzsche declared that God is dead. It ended up being the other way around: Nietzsche is dead and God is alive and kicking.
Alain de Botton wrote a book called "Religion for Atheists”. In it he suggests that we steal and borrow the good bits from existing religions. The religious feasts and rituals that mark the changes in life. He starts his book with the suggestion that we not question the truth of a religion, which can only ever spoil the dialogue between atheists and religious people. Rather, he avoids the question of truth.
And there lies the biggest difference between secular, democratic Europeans and religious fanatics.
In this school we train you to question everything.
What do you want? What do you like? What do you think the world needs? What do you make? And Why?
The essence of design lies in questions.
On the contrary, the essence of religion lies in answers. A religion always offers answers. That is its attraction. That is the need it fulfills. As humans we crave answers.
Isn’t this then the challenge we are faced with? There is a human need for answers. There is a human need for God. So the question we should be asking is: Can we design God?
This question moves beyond the current public debate about provocation and insult. Of course any reasonable person must agree that free speech is a responsibility and cannot come without some built-in boundaries, but is it really our task to be investigating those boundaries? Or are we – as designers – up for a different challenge.
Design is privileged – it has the power to act rather than defend.
Design is not passive, but bold and active.
Can we put our minds to satisfying a common human need?
Can we put our minds to designing God?