Workshops Critical and Clinical

If social forms — ranging from customs, to institutions, to infrastructures — imply forms of life, they must be evaluated not only critically but also clinically. This is to say, in other words, that social forms are to be evaluated not only according to whether or not they make sense but also according to the liveliness or vitality of the sense that they make.

The interdisciplinary and international collective Prototyping Social Forms (PSF) endeavors to develop discursive and material practices for critically and clinically evaluating social forms in situ and in tandem. Fusing artistic, scientific, conceptual and experiential modes of research and creation, PSF prototypes events (play, meal, learning), places (home, street, city), and infrastructures (energy, finance, governance) to the degree of articulation needed to get a sense of what it would be like to live with those forms.

As both a critical and a clinical practice, the prototyping of a social form is not a trial that proceeds according to a pre-established method but, rather, it is a trial that proceeds in and through a search for a method. This is to say, in other words, that the prototyping of a social form is a trial that precedes and exceeds any and all methods and that succeeds even when there are no methods to be found.

We invite communities to bring social forms that concern them to our prototyping workshops, where they may collectively search for methods to vary and evaluate their social forms in situ and in tandem with us.

To ask PSF to convene a workshop for your community contact muindi@solutionsforpostmodernliving.com.

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