another bad activist

I make a point of publicly defining myself as a radical optimist, more often than not as a method of accountability for my own worries. Slowing the pace down throughout 2020’s pandemic however, brought a heightened sense of awareness to the immediate problems we’ve arrived at; not least the danger of (climate) delay.

The final project for my Design degree was routed in this, and has given me a wider basis of environmental understanding to build my future pieces up from.

(another) Bad Activist is a confessional collection, rooted in 20+ interviews with activists, informants, research specialists and environmentalists.

As this project was research based - both in terms of context and my own expansion of material and method confidence - the presentation was always likely to be multi-faceted. Photography and videography played a large part of this, but throughout the process I was able to define other methods of documentation to record elements that aren’t as obvious to collect.
A personal system of notation and illustration was the main face here, which allowed me to keep track of the less concrete details; emotional responses, exhaustion and reframing stress. These - and others - were all significant parts of climate research, but are far more intricate to accurately detail, especially in a way that is recognisable and transferable. Creating in a language that is universally readable is key for me.
I don’t believe a research project, let alone a climate-routed collection, could ever be ‘finished’, but a presentation was of course needed for my graduation exhibition.
To visualise part of this collection then, I produced a series of steel connectors which can be built up into different frames and screens. Between each piece, beams of up to 25mm can be inserted to form repeatable and transportable structures.
I compiled four two minute shorts for this first presentation, highlighting key points from our local waste situation and the interviews surrounding this. The piece was projection mapped and incorporated handwritten process comments to be viewed from 360°.
My vision for this piece is to reuse the connectors as different structural forms for presentations of documentation, of stories and for narratives - especially the kind that I could never accurately share on my own. The nature of projection mapping makes it easy and immediate to engage with, but is a technical skill which limits those able to make use of it.
To redistribute this, the build invites collective citizen journalism and can be adapted and structured for up to six simultaneous visual elements (films, photography, articles, texts). I have only touched on one possible use of this lightly, but this is an exhibition space that will be seen regularly again in coming projects.
This is the first little step into a continuous research project, not just on our global impacts and the viable solutions, but also looking at our use of (emotional) energy and how best we can find positivity throughout the coming changes in our climate.