Jacquie Shaw
Hopping the Fence Podcast Transcript - #5, Jacquie Shaw
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RC: Hello, I’m Rebecca Casalino, and this is Hopping the Fence, a podcast dedicated to talk to artists on the fringes on the Canadian art scene. Jacquie Shaw is a strategic futurist, and design anthropologist, with a hybrid practice that combines design, research, education, and consulting. Their work is grounded in and supports critical explorations of design’s role and use in creating the future. Inspired by understanding their own lived experience as a Filipinx-Bermudian settler in what is currently Canada, their work orients towards inclusive, equitable, and liberatory futures informed by decolonial, feminist, respectful design, design justice, anti-oppressive oriented praxis. Jacquie holds a Master of Design in strategic foresight and innovation from OCAD University and a bachelor’s in communication design from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. They are currently based in Tkaronto.
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Our conversation was recorded in Tkaranto, on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Anishinaabe, and Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nations.
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RC: Hey again, just popping in to say that this episode will be longer than usual because I asked Jacquie to lend their design expertise to discuss the motif used in Hopping the Fence's cover art. This discussion, on top of our interview about their practice, led to some interesting topics I couldn't bear to edit out. Hope you enjoy!
This episode of Hopping the Fence contains the “d” slur, discussions of the carceral system and cannabis use.
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RC: Hey Jacquie!
JS: Hey Rebecca!
RC: How's it goin'?
JS: Oh, you know, in the middle of a pandemic. But it’s goin’ well. I’ve got some incense burnin’ and chillin’.
RC: And where are you burning incense right now?
JS: Yeah, so right now I’m in my apartment in Toronto, in Parkdale.
RC: So do you want to talk a bit about what your practice involves for listeners who might not know about your work?
JS: Yeah. So I am a designer/researcher/foresight strategist/I think that's actually it for now. But I do a whole bunch of things. But mostly I come out of a practice of graphic design and communication design.
RC: Mhm.
JS: And then going into master's work, I kind of left that world and went more into like design thinking, which is kind of an alt design, and then foresight stuff. It's the meeting of future studies and speculative stuff and strategic thinking and planning. So how do we envision futures and then how do we get to those futures. So that's kind of my main practice.
RC: Do you want to speak a little bit about your MRP? Specifically I'm thinking about the stickers that you showed me a while back that talk about Black and Brown labour. I'm really curious to hear more about that.
JS: Yeah, my MRP, so my major research project, in finishing my master's at OCAD in and strategic foresight and innovation involved a lot of different work. So I worked under Dr. Dori Tunstall who's the first dean of any design school in the world. So she's the undergrad design dean. And working with her was like super generative in the way that her practice is around decolonizing design and decolonizing the institution. Yeah, I made a lot of zines, I did a lot of stream of consciousness writing that I ended up making into academic writing using graphic design and adding the citations in a thoughtful way. Having a practice that's all over the place and talking to a lot of different people about my practice, I forget bits [both laugh]. I exclude bits that I'm like, "Oh, that's not my practice." But yeah, part of my practice is zine making as well so that came out in my MRP. Like zines and little printed goods. So the stickers that you're talking about, they are tan to black gradient in the background, and they say "Whose Black labour did you benefit from, Whose Brown labour did you benefit from?" And I made those 'cause I was, I think I was in a conversation with someone as I usually am, about labour and especially kind of the invisible labour, the labour you don't think about there being everyday. 'Cause it's so routine, so going to University, always going to the Tim Hortons, it's so often that it's Brown people working at the Tim Hortons who made your morning coffee. Who got up at 4AM to go to work?
RC: Mhm.
JS: So that I got to have my shitty chicken wrap? And I think about that a lot, I think about the Brown and Black labour that goes unseen or goes ignored more so because we just kind of take advantage or take it for granted that it's just there. So I wanted to make those stickers as a way to pose that question. Especially the zine work I do as just getting thoughts out of my head. Yeah, so I have another zine called One in a Minion that is just a collection of photographs of minions that I've taken throughout the last five years I started taking minion pictures.
RC: Minions in balloons, on cakes, like in the wild?
RS: Yeah, like minions that I see. Minions in the wild. And so it's like a compilation of 12 images in that zine, it's just a little short guy. It came out of the absurd ubiquity of minions. There's a figurine I saw in Portugal that was in a tourist shop that's like the mother and child but it's painted like the minion.
RC: [Laughs].
JS: Which is a favourite of mine. I've like trained my brain to see that, which weirdly links to that Brown labour where it's like, "These are things I've just trained my brain to see and now they're stuck in my brain and I just need other people to see them everywhere.”
RC: It feels like you're translating your view of the world into these visual materials which is such a fun practice for a graphic designer I feel like, [laughs].
JS: Thanks, that's a cool way to put it instead of me just being like, "Yeah, I have these dumb thoughts and I need them out of my head." [Both laugh].
RC: But you're training yourself to see these specific things whereas other people aren't, so you've packaged your lens in this very specific way.
JS: Mmmm. I'm gonna use that. I'm going to take that with me. In a roundabout way, those are those stickers, those are my zines.
RC: Mhm.
JS: Yeah, my MRP is filled with zines. Objects that are easily sharable. I'm trying to reduce my use of the word "disseminate," but I do love the word "disseminate."
RC: It's a good word.
JS: Yeah, having an object that's easily shareable that can be easily copied. So two of those zines started to explore my own positionalities. The first one is just laying out how I got to this MRP project which included me being born, me growing up in a certain culture, me than being moved to a different culture and then all the thoughts that led me to this one project and the positionality of it being so important because my work looking at intersectionality and equity in design in my research practice. So Dori kept being like, "Okay, tell me about yourself. Tell me about yourself." I feel like I'm telling you about myself. And she's like, "Sit down and make me a zine about yourself," one day in her office. And I just cried the whole time. Finding your positionality and making that public, especially when you're a person of various marginalized identities is heart-wrenching and really hard to look at sometimes.
RC: Yeah. And applying labels to yourself sometimes can feel, like at least for me, a bit violent.
JS: Mhm. There's this, I want to say notion, but it's an action, of outing yourself in this process as well. So even though I'm out as so many different identities to people: mentally ill, nonbinary, queer, gay, lesbian, dyke, what else? Mixed race, all these things that you can't tell just looking at me. It's like, "ugh." And then because we're so used to having those identities used to invalidate the work we do, it's also scary to put that in your scholarly work because then you're like, "Well, is anyone going to take this work seriously because it's made by me?" Which is part of the problem. And then the second zine in the MRP series is called Unpacking My Discomfort. And it was also kind of a stream of consciousness piece, but this zine takes the form of a cootie catcher -
RC: Oh yes, I love those!
JS: But it's not used like a cootie catcher, but I used that folding method to make it into that. As you're learning about my unpacking of discomfort, you're literally unpacking and unfolding this piece. And you have to move it around, sometimes it gets confusing, which direction to read it in.
RC: Yeah, yeah.
JS: And then the third zine in the series is kind of the final output zine. So it outlines the framework that I propose for intentional intersectional practice in design. It's your classic like, "make a zine out of one piece of paper," 8-page little booklet.
RC: Gotcha.
JS: So that it could be easily photocopied and then shared amongst people.
RC: Mhm.
JS: And then people get to have fun learning how to make the little book. And I always love seeing people struggle with the 8-page zine folding. But that's also a fun hands-on moment for people as well. While you're learning about this thing, you're also like having to physically handle the ephemera that is teaching you these things.
RC: Yeah. And that's so interesting, especially beside your cootie catcher one because you have to hold your discomfort in your hands.
JS: Yeah. Those were really fun to work through. It felt like such a great opportunity to do something really thoughtful and intentional in the way that I'm conveying a message.
RC: Yeah. And it gives a conceptual backing to it to.
JS: Mhm. Yeah. And especially coming out of a program like the strategic foresight and innovation program at OCAD, it's very art school in the way that no one knows what's going on ever. [Both laugh]. Just the way that art schools exist in that way, but very in like business school in that you're being taught a lot of business concepts. And not just like how to run a business but corporate strategy concepts and a lot of stuff that comes out of the corporate world by a lot of corporate or academic older white men.
RC: Yeah.
JS: So it felt good to get back to my "art school roots" and get to make something where every moment of it is thoughtful, not just the content that's [inaudible].
RC: Yeah.
JS: To go back to my zines -
RC: Oh yeah.
JS: So I was tabling at a zine fair, my first zine fair.
RC: Cute.
JS: And I have this one zine that's just like an essay that I published. And the references, I made the font super tiny because it's just like a shitty little zine and, you know, who wants to check the references? And I had this older woman come by, and she pointed out to me, she was like, "Oh, this type is so tiny." I purposely made that tiny because I was like, "Oh, no one wants to read my references." So I literally made that decision for literally anyone who bought my zine, right? I said, "Oh, people aren't gonna wanna read this." And then someone wanted to read it, even if it was just to flip through it at my table, and they couldn't. And that was a year ago and it still stuck with me, right?
RC: Do you want to talk about your art school roots and how that clashes or helps in your design practice?
JS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I did my undergrad in Vancouver, so on the unceded Coastal Salish territory of the Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam and Squamish people, back when it was on Granville Island, not in the fancy new campus. I did my undergrad in communication design so I've been doing design and have been pursuing a career in design since I was around 16-17? Like in high school, I was also that kid who hung out in the art room and played on the computers making little graphic design posters and stuff for my DeviantArt. [Both laugh]. So I've been on this path for a long time. Emily Carr was great. I don't know if OCAD undergrad does it, but Emily Carr has a foundation year, which is just you do whatever. You are streamed into your preferred major, those classes a little bit, but you can kind of take any kind of art. So I was taking photo, I was taking design, I was taking critical studies. And also my undergrad was where my real political awakening happened.
RC: Mmm.
JS: 'Cause I grew up in just a regular home, like my mom's an accountant, my dad graduated high school but was like mostly a trades worker or a boat pilot until we moved to Canada. So just blue-collar work. Going to Emily Carr I was introduced to critical thought. [Both laugh]. Critical theory.
RC: Being critical.
JS: Yeah, being critical. That things have meaning, right? That very basic, "Hey, visual culture actually is a language and visual language can be used in these ways." Yeah. I had never known 'cause art and design to me was really aesthetic based.
RC: How was the work that you made in your undergrad different from your practice now?
JS: So the design I made in my undergrad, it was kind of the same and different. My work never really looks like anything in particular.
RC: Yeah,
JS: Which sometimes bugs me. I have friends who are designers, people go to them for their style. But my work has never looked like that. My work is really the process of it, and this is the process I was taught in my undergrad. The traditional like, form follows function, you think about what you're saying, what the needs "of the client," but also just like the needs of the project or the needs of the message require and then like how do you express that?
RC: Mhm.
JS: And yeah, that really fed into my MRP and that really feeds into my practice.
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RC: This episode’s podcast recommendation is from One Dish, One Mic. In the heart of the One Dish, One Spoon Treaty territory, Niagarans Sean Vanderklis and Karl Dockstader dish on any and all issues. Listen to the episode We’re Smarter to learn about what has school meant to Indigenous people? What did Jennifer Dockstader do? What the heck happened at Brock U? Hosts Sean and Karl answer these questions and more on the most education Indigenous podcast in all of Niagara.
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JS: In my current practice as it exists, writing foresight scenarios which are like stories essentially like writing speculative fiction. Or writing strategy plans or giving talks and presentations. Like those kinds of things so easily get ignored, like the method of delivery.
RC: Mhm.
JS: But I was also a big Marshal McLuhan fan in my undergrad, around the medium is the message. And then in my undergrad, my undergrad thesis project really started me on this route of looking at design, not just as something for businesses or something for clients, but as a [inaudible] that can imagine and speculate changes. So my undergrad thesis was looking at what would cannabis culture look like if we removed the current visual culture and the current stigma around it? So I did that in 2013-2014, so before -
RC: Legalization.
JS: - yeah, before legalization. I proposed this project to my profs and they were like, "Yeah, just run it by the assistant dean," or something. But someone higher up. They were like, "We just want to make sure that you don't do this project and because it's about marijuana it gets nixed halfway through." Now that I talk about it, I can talk about it with this language of "Oh yeah, it was actually a speculative design project and it was actually looking at all these things." when I proposed it then it was like rebranding marijuana. As the conversation around pot changes, how do we allow the visual culture to change with it?
RC: Yeah.
JS: That was my undergrad thesis, and that's what led me into this, "Oh, design can be used in these ways that look at culture as a whole and then translates it out and feeds it back into the culture."
RC: Mhm. I think art functions the same way, like holding a mirror to society, being like, "This is what you're producing and how you're presenting."
JS: Totally, totally. So my undergrad, I feel like a lot of people, especially my program, didn't undergrads that way so different from art school or so different from design school. Where I came from design school and then I came from the design brand strategy world, and then I went into a design strategy program and then was like, " oh, this is absolutely not the design school I'm used to." [Laughs].
RC: How do you think that design around cannabis has changed? Because I am all about the variety of aesthetics with weed because I think that people are so pigeon-holed into this idea being a lazy stoner that's productive and, I don't know, is a white person with dreads, you know? Like that aesthetic. [Both laugh].
JS: Yeah. Oh, I have a lot of thoughts on weed and the aesthetics of it and how the design has worked for it. And this also feeds back to my thinking of that old project is that weed obviously has become incredibly gentrified in it's commercialization. So as we know, people still are in prisons for weed related offenses while, in Toronto especially, there's a shop that's owned by an ex-cop. So an ex-cop literally getting rich off of the crimes that people are in prison for. And then with that comes its aesthetics. So people kind of really move away from the idea of a dirty lazy stoner, going into that clean, hip boutique.
RC: Mhm. Apple store.
JS: Yeah, Apple store, wine shop, coffee store kind of feel. The closest adjacent markets are coffee and alcohol in the way that weed is being sold to us to be used recreationally and as it exists already in Amsterdam or even in BC. These things are set up like coffee shops, so why wouldn't they end up looking exactly like coffee shops?
RC: Yeah.
RC: When I was doing my project, there was an element of education around cannabis culture. You walk into this coffee looking space that is all about cannabis, about cannabis culture, but then there's also this element of this is also a place where people who are interested in cannabis can come and learn different things from what strain it is, how that makes you feel, to the criminalization of cannabis, how does that exist? And I think that should exist in contemporary legalized weed culture, even if it was just these places would work with prisoners' rights to just have their information in the store. Ontario only allowed what, 30 dispensaries to open April 1st, 2019?
RC: Yeah. Well Doug Ford screwed up the last system where they made it like a lottery system we're just a bunch of rich people put in their names who have never had experience in cannabis, so it really screwed everyone up. Alberta did it so smoothly, why can't we do that?
JS: Yeah. BC did it decently as well. Before I left BC was pre-legalization but there was dispensaries everywhere. On some corners, it was like a Starbucks. You were like, "Well, I'm gonna go to the dispensary on the northeast corner this time 'cause they have this thing instead of going to the one down the block or on the other corner."
RC: That's what Dundas is turning into. There's like three weed shops that have opened up. And because I'm in quarantine I'm not walking as much, and every time I walk outside, there's like two new ones.
JS: Parkdale as well and Queen West I guess.
RC: Oh yeah.
JS: 'Cause where I walk to the Tokyo Smoke that has just opened up near the Gladstone-ish.
RC: Oh yeah.
JS: And there's like three dispensaries opening up in Parkdale at some point, I guess corona willing.
RC: I wonder how many... like, I'd love to see the racial data on this because I... How many white people only shops?
JS: There's only one Black-owned dispensary in Toronto.
RC: Bodega, and that's where I go.
JS: Bodega.
RC: On Ossington. 'Cause I am a white lady benefiting off of the violence that's been happening in the cannabis industry for years, so...
JS: Yeah, and then so like, the current realm of cannabis as the shiny, new, white, gentrified look. Cannabis is also so many other things even just aesthetic wise if we want to just be super shallow about it. Where's the hippie weed store, where's the "urban culture" one? So many of these cultures have fed into cannabis culture, and now that cannabis is legal, it all just got filtered back out until like an LCBO.
RC: Really sanitized, really whitewashed, like made to appeal to white soccer mom. But I think that's a good segue into talking about the fence logo and how these ideas of coolness or urban-ness do become whitewashed and co-opted by white people to make money or look cool.
JS Mhm. Yeah, totally. We had this discussion, I guess, I don't know, time's not real. [Both laugh]. We had this discussion in the past, talking about specifically around tattoos and the use of wire fences or barbed wire fences as just an aesthetic, "Oh, that looks so cool, that looks so tough." but these things have histories, especially in tattooing. Barbed wire and wire fences are used to signify incarceration, right? And so the broken fence, or chains being cut, fence being cut, that signifies leaving incarceration. So getting out of the prison system, the hope of staying out of the prison system, which we know can be incredibly hard because the system's setup to keep you there.
RC: Yeah.
JS: Yeah. And I thought about this for years and years and never really figured out how to articulate it because I come from the middle-class background, my class has jumped around a lot in my life. So, coming from working middle-class to when we moved to Canada hitting true middle-class home. We had property growing up in Bermuda, but it was family owned and multigenerational. So we had one house that is split into apartments. I grew up not in a bad part of town as a kid, but just in an industrial-ish area. And also with Bermuda, there is not a lot of wood structures because it gets wet and humid and things are not really quickly unless it's an on rotting wood like cedar. Yeah, I've always thought that the image of a wire fence, it's the symbolization of working and middle-class homes or affordable fencing. So not only does it have this rich history that comes out of tattooing, comes out of Black and Brown communities, but also it's just like a working-class fence. In Vancouver when I moved there, gentrification was rife, the property switches hands, there's a lot of house flipping, a lot of renovations. And in some of the neighborhoods I lived in or my friends lived in, you'd walk and you'd be like, "Oh yeah, there's "nice" fences." But then you can tell the houses that are really getting used to their full potential, that's a multigenerational Asian family and the grandmother is out back growing bitter melon kind of homes, those always have wire fences involved at some point.
RC: Yeah. I think fences is really dictate a neighbourhood. Being in Little Portugal, Little Italy, there are those chain link fences, but they're covered in that green coating that's plastic, right?
JS: Yeah, yeah.
RC: So that gives it a layer, and I associate that with European homes, versus people who couldn't afford the wooden fences. I grew up in Suburban Oshawa, had the chain link fences, and it came with an idea of institution or a quick fence going up because something's getting demolished and rebuilt. It's very much about gentrification for me. So hearing this tie back to obviously the carceral system makes a lot of sense. And tearing down fences and tearing down these walls around institutions, that is a very powerful image that's kind of been disseminated, [emphasizes "disseminated"], [both laugh], but like proliferated across a lot of white cultures, where I see it as tattoos and I don't identify it as necessarily within the prison system or the institutional system, but I more relate it back to like suburban Oshawa, you know?
JS: Yeah. And I think like it also depends it's on the context. Like no one owns the image of a fence, no one owns that imagery. But I think especially like when we had this conversation originally, it was because a white, queer got... was it a fence? It was some kind of carceral like, maybe it was handcuffs being cut. Those images mean something. Those images, even though, whatever, they're not sacred, they don't belong to someone. If you have not been incarcerated, don't get prison tattoos, right? The symbolism of breaking the chains, breaking the fences as a tattoo come from trying to escape the system.
RC: Mhm.
JS: Yeah, I find that especially a lot of white queers use these images because they're tough, they're cool. Yeah, they seem tough and cool because literal prisoners and ex-prisoners, ex- incarcerated people have them.
RC: Yeah.
JS: As designers, as artists, our livelihoods or our practices, our lives are built around understanding and creating and emulating visual culture so we should know these things. People who are coming you are coming to you because you're an expert in your field, right? You have not only the expertise of, you can stick this needle in my skin and the ink will go there but they have the practice of drawing, they have the practice of making images, they have for the most part, blood safe, so you're not gonna get a bloodborne pathogen.
RC: I think the extra layer also here is the tattoo artist that for us brought this up specifically was also called out for anti-Black behavior, so I think that if you're using these images and you're behaving in anti-Black ways and anti-Indigenous ways, obviously you have something to unpack there.
JS: Yeah. That's a big thing too, right? Are you accountable to these community that you're taking from, or do you just think that looks cool, right? It's the classic appropriation conversation.
RC: Mhm, mhm.
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RC: My next podcast recommendation will be from Canadaland. Specifically, episode number 337, 1492 Land Back Lane. Listen to hear Sean Vanderklis and Karl Dockstader, the hosts of One Dish One Mic, tell reporter and media critic Jesse Brown what they saw at the Six Nations encampment.
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RC: How do you think that designers have been accountable and how do you hold yourself accountable as a designer who also exist in the art world?
JS: There's not much accountability, especially in the classic corporate branding graphic design commercial world. That world gets away with so much shit constantly. It is lazy and it looks bad and people don't care, and people hide behind clients, but we can hold ourselves accountable right? To segue into my practice of intentional intersectionality, that practice is really around understanding how to hold yourself accountable and how the practice design in a way that looks at the societal impact of it. So looking at the design anthropology lens. And so, design anthropology is a practice of looking at design as it affects society. That could be anything from design outcomes to the ways that designers think and work and process these things.
RC: Yeah.
JS: So my practice in intentional intersectional design took from the framework of design thinking, which is so hot.
RC: So hot.
JS: So hot. That's like if you go to design school from the early 2010s to now, that's what they teach there. I get it. When I learned about design thinking, I was like, "Oh, that is how my brain works." My brain really jives with this process of thinking and doing and collaborating. At its core, design thinking... it's promoted by everyone but it comes out of the Stanford d.school and IDEO U. When you have a projects, you don't just sit down and design it, you explore. So you look at other designs, you get visual inspiration, you get inspiration from other places. You really think about what the needs of the client are, what those wants are. And then the big one that's problematic is that you empathize.
RC: Ah. [Laughs].
JS: So this new realm of human centered design is really about empathizing, coming from co-creating facilitating workshops like actually listening to people. But sometimes that empathize is like, "Oh, I read this thing about this person." Very shallow.
RC: Mhm.
JS: But then this process goes through exploring and iterating your proposed design solution, launching that design solution, and then getting feedback from that, and then it's like this cycle.
RC: Mhm.
JS: Yeah. If you're a designer that wants to explore, if you're a designer that reads the design blogs or anything, those people know what design thinking is by now. So intentional intersectional practice in design took those same steps and reflected the same ideas and exploring or in doing your research. First of all, it was showing up. Showing up that we're going to unpack whatever garbage society is like inundated me with. And that you're here to do good work. I went to a conference last summer and presented this work. It was like a professional development conference, not like an academic one. But another speaker was talking about something similar, being very thoughtful in your process, and use the phrase, "This isn't going to make your work easier, it's not going to make your work quicker, it's going to make it work better."
RC: Mmm.
JS: I feel like so much of the things we learn in design and especially when you go to these professional development conferences is like, how to make your work more efficient, or like, how to fix your workflow. So to be presented with something that might actually slow you down and might make your work take longer is always a bit of a challenge. So letting people know that like when you show up to do this work, it requires literally more work. But it'll hopefully pay off because we're creating better things for society and for more people. So yeah, it's like showing up to do the work, it's educating yourself, listening to people, losing your ego in a way, understanding your own positionality is a big thing. Understanding your own experience and how that feeds into all the work you make.
RC: Is that why Dori pushed you so hard to make that zine about yourself you think?
JS: Yeah. I mean, she definitely pushed me harder because so much of intersectionality is based in the lived personal experience. And again, like I said, I think it's because that experience and my experience of my experience is so invalidated so often in many ways that is hard to express. And it's hard to know why you're doing things when you don't know where you're coming from.
RC: Mhm.
JS: And also that exposes any blind spots you might have to what you don't know or what experiences you have to look to, right? So if you're working on a project for the same old people, let's say, and you yourself are disabled, but because we live in a world where recognizing that you're an able-bodied person isn't like an identity, that's something you might not put into account right? But, I mean most people know about accessible design and like disability so it's kind of an old topic, but it's those little things that you don't think about, right? And that's fine, we all have the little things we don't think about. What is it, Rush Limbaugh? It's a bad quote but it's like... you know, the unknown unknowns, right?
RC: I always think of Corner Gas, you don't know what you don't know.
JS: Yeah, exactly! There's a framework around that called the Johari window that's like four quadrants. The two axes are like "Known to you" and "known to others."
RC: Mmm.
JS: There's the part that you know and other people know, there's the part that you know and other people don't know, there's the part other people know and you don't know, and then there's the part that no one knows. You don't know other people know. And like things exist in all of these quadrants.
RC: Yeah, yeah.
JS: And so when you recognize as a person my experience can only take me so far in understanding and then disseminating [both laugh] that understanding that out through a visual medium or through any kind of medium -
RC: Yeah.
JS: - but then thinking that you've made something that's like perfect. It's also harder to accept critique around it, right?
RC: Mhm. I think that ties in with the myth of the genius, the myth of the creator of all knowing and has some nice roots and Catholicism.
JS: Oh yeah baby.
RC: [Laughs].
JS: Yeah. And so many people promote collaboration. Like obviously, co-design and collaboration, co-design. It's become this very out of the world of like the singular genius and more into the world of...very, almost in a way like saviorism, if you're looking at solving the world's problems, not just like packaging.
RC: Yeah.
JS: But even in packaging, even in like... I look at friends who run branding studios or I look at people in there like, "Oh, we're here to help solve your problems." And "we're here to learn your stories..." I don't know. There's something weird about it. Design thinkers, we have tools to do these things and to coax out how people want to be perceived. Especially in branding or print design, well branding specific, it's all about perception.
RC: Yeah.
JS: So that it's like, yeah, how is that perceived? But not only how is that perceived by your intended audience, but like how is that perceived by you're not intended audience, are people who you think are into your intended audience, right? An example of that is like MEC, Mountain Equipment Co-op, last year or a couple of kept getting called out because all their ads are always white. The people, always white. And people were like, "What does that say two BIPOC people who want to go into the outdoors? What does you not carry a plus-sized fat people who want to go outside?" Because design gets so tunnel-visioned to looking at proposed markets or like, the markets that you're aiming towards or these personas that you're aiming towards, it's so easy to have that tunnel vision and not realize that you exist in a world with a multitude of people.
RC: Yeah.
JS: Who may or may not want to do this thing. What decisions are you making for people as a designer that limits their choice and limits their agency in a detrimental way? 'Cause, you know, you want to limit people's choice if it's going to be harmful, like if you're designing a medical device and you're like, "Oh, actually people shouldn't be able to press this button by accident because it'll, you know, inject two times as much whatever."
RC: Mhm.
JS: Like, that's a choice you can make for people. But being like, "I don't like how this looks," or like, "Oh I just need two extra pages so I'm gonna make the type smaller," then you're like, “Well that was a mean decision,” in a way.
RC: Yeah, yeah. As a designer, how do you feel you fit within “capital F” fine art world?
JS: Personally, I don't know if I do. I feel like, and this is something I've thought about for a long time as well, is like the relationship, especially in schools, between Art and Design.
RC: Mhm.
JS: And how separated they get out. Even in our grad studies where we're all in the same building all the time. How many design graduate students do you come across? Or like for us, how many fine art students or like applied art students do you come across?
RC: Mhm.
JS: Those worlds are kept so separately. And I think part of that reason as well is like, design's securities of being a creative field but also being a very corporate field.
RC: Yeah.
JS: So having to show suits that you're serious and not just like a wacky artist really limits us in those ways. For fine art, I don't fit into the fine art world at all.
RC: But like art world, do you feel like you're a bit more involved?
JS: My art world is kind of like your art world.
RC: Yeah.
JS: I'm a zinester, that's kind of like my main "art form" that I sell as an artist. But also like we're not... In design, especially if you go through the university design system, you're always kind of working for a client. You're always doing something for someone else. Yeah, I feel like I don't understand art practice even though I'm like friends with artists.
RC: Yeah.
JS: And so that was one thing I've been doing this quarantine is just doing things and calling it art [laughs].
RC: Yeah.
JS: There was a moment where I was posting pictures online, I'm not going to go to into detail about it, but part of that posting images online, even those images... The images themselves weren't "art," it was just like the practice of that and the thinking and putting them out there, and not forcing myself but... those things. So yeah, I always feel weird in the art world, but then I meet people who truly are in the art world. Like a lot of people in my program just like have no background in art in design. And I'm like, "Let's go to the AGO, I want to show you some art." And they're like, "I don't know." Like, "What?" They're like, "Whenever I go to art galleries, I feel like I don't understand it." They're, you know, the typical people who don't get art. And I'm like, "Look. You know what I like to do at the AGO?" And this is my secret to enjoying art. Here's what I do at the AGO. I go into the portraits, I go say hi to the one dog in one painting that I really love. That's loving art. And then I like to go to the... there's like all the snuff bottles and carved miniatures from pan-Asia. And I love to go through them and look at all the people having sex on the tiny bottles. And that's appreciating art. And then, I also like to go to modern art and be an asshole and say, "Ugh, my kid can do that. My kid can make that." Once I did that and my friends were like, "Oh my god, stop that, you're embarrassing us." I'm like, "Who cares? This is me enjoying the art. Let me go and enjoy it." I've found through my last 10 years of engaging in art and design, are there people who enjoy art in these ways. As a joke, as a bit, has something funny and not serious, even if it is something serious. You know? I go into the portrait gallery, it's about the vibe. It's about the time, you know?
RC: And also what you bring to it. Like, I like the fact that you pay attention to that little dog in the one way more than that painting probably.
JS: Yeah. do you know which dog I'm talking about? If you're walking into the AGO and you just go straight and you're in that Portrait Gallery...
RC: Like the rotting fruit Dutch gallery?
JS: Yeah. There's a woman and she's very fancy and she's holding, he's like a spaniel kind of guy.
RC: Oh is he spotted? Like white with the brown spots?
JS: Yeah!
RC: I know the painting. [Laughs].
JS: Is there any thoughts that you have that you want to close on about design or the art world or institutions?
JS: Oh yeah, institutions. I mean, I've been thinking a lot about, because I've recently applied to teach at OCAD and I continue to want to teach in these schools, really, if I can just get a teaching job at Emily Carr, even if it's just sessional, that would be great. [Both laugh]. And because I really think about my design education at the things that I brought in myself to learn... Everything that's, you know, social justice-y, I essentially brought into my design practice myself through taking courses that were outside of my programs.
RC: Mhm.
JS: So we met and the curatorial course which I took as my one elective. So I was like, "Get me out of business school!"
RC: [Laughs].
JS: "I miss art and artists!" and in my undergrad, the course that did it for me was this sociology and design course by and instructor I really loved. She was a critical theory major. This instructor, she knew nothing about design. She's like, "I am an art person, so I'm here to open the conversation and to guide it but please, let's all learn together."
RC: Mhm.
JS: And it was an elective, and there's literally four designers in it and then the rest were like art people.
RC: Yeah.
JS: Or like critical theory majors. And it was like, why isn't this mandatory? Like why is designers in schools, like why aren't we learning the sociological effects of what we make?
RC: Mhm.
JS: And how things mean things to other people? Why are we only learning that in the language of corporate client relationships? So, with that being said, I would love to teach in an institution even though they're terrible. But I've also been thinking a lot about what does it look like to teach outside of institutions? And what does that practice look like? And how do I do that? I've been following this really interesting Instagram account for a month now called The Black Apple. This teacher, she teaches elementary School K-8. And she's opening an alternative school because of COVID, but also because of the lack of teaching of social emotional justice equity within the school system for people. So like, how do I take the knowledge and the experience I've gained from these really hard to navigate and inaccessible institutions and, to use "disseminate" one last time, and disseminate it amongst communities? So those are my last thoughts on institutions. I think they, you know, have obviously become too powerful and also are just so large and immovable that they, in such an ever-changing world lack the agility to keep up, and so they uphold the status quo because they know if they don't uphold it and they're not agile, they're going to become obsolete.
RC: Yeah. I think that that's why white men are panicking right now.
JS: Yeah. You know? And it's like, you could also just learn to be different, right?
RC: Yeah, or they could just learn.
JS: Yeah. They could just learn, period.
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RC: Thanks for listening to Hopping the Fence, a podcast dedicated to the fringes of the Canadian art scene. If you have an artist that you would like to hear interviewed, would like to correct / fact check a past episode, or would like to chat, feel free to send me a message on Instagram @hoppingthefence, or by email at rebeccaecasalino@gmail.com. If you would like to support the podcast, head to our website and visit the “About” page to check out our Patreon. But first, if you aren’t already paying for the labour of Black and Brown people in your community, visit their Patreons or GoFundMes. Like, right now. Maybe even check out One Dish, One Mic’s Patreon, which will be linked in the show notes.
Thanks to OCAD University for their financial support, my project supervisor Amish Morrell for his advice and guidance, and Claudia Slogar Rick for all of her extra help. Original artwork for Hopping the Fence by Alex Gregory, original music by Jessica Price Eisner. Thank you so much, bye!
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