School for Designing a Society

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The School for Designing a Society, established in 1991, is a project of teachers, performers, artists, and activists. It is an ongoing experiment in making temporary living environments where the question "What would I consider a desirable society?" is given serious playful thought, and taken as an input to creative projects.

Why a desirable society?

We want to address people: our neighbors and our distant neighbors who, living in the current social system, find that this system maintains itself at the expense of its members so that misery, poverty, hopelessness, violence, and human degradation are daily occurrences. Our social system tells us that human beings are the problem, and that it, the current system, is the solution. We have taken long looks at this system, and we do not want it. As any social system is humanly created, not natural, and is maintained daily by human action, we wish to create new social systems, and to change our daily patterns of action.

Why design?

Criticisms of the problems of the present society are often met with justifications. Once these justifications fail, many a conversation of hopeful intention is stopped with the (final) statement: "The present organization of society is the best we have", or the question: "Do you have a better idea?"

This is a moment of possibility and not one to be left speechless. Indeed, many a time, the respondent finds herself sputtering, filled with a spirit of rebellion which unfortunately gets watered down to the mere language of complaint.

Having had the time and opportunity to create--in conjunction with others of diverse experiences--detailed maps, dreams, plans, scripts, scores, videos, and blueprints of her desirable society, we imagine the situation could go differently.

Imagine an atmosphere of audacity: She's asked the question: "Do you have a better idea?" Everyone taking a coffeebreak looks at her or their shoes. She looks the interlocutor in the eye and reaches into her purse? knapsack? briefcase? kitchen drawer? for a booklet of proposals, slaps it on the table scattering cigarette butts, and answers: "Here, read this--this will give you an idea of what I want."

Why a school?

A school can provide the necessary initial chaos to encourage the generation of new thoughts.

Anyone can learn anywhere at anytime, and does; in a school, one is more likely to find someone who will teach.

Teaching is one of the few professions to which the sharing of power is indispensable.

In a school people can meet with the shared purpose of questioning premises, questioning givens.

A school provides a temporary enclave against profit driven work.

What Distinguishes this School from other Schools?

There are no more than a handful of schools, in any country, based on the desire for social change; this school proposes in addition, that social change be based on desires. In no other school are the desires of its students given such a high priority.

This school is organized by people who make a point of knowing how to accept an invitation.

There are no administrators.

Unusual stress is placed on performance; but, performance understood in a particular way. Not athletic performance, bottom-line year-to-date economic or competitive scholastic achievement award winning performance. Performance, rather, in the sense of having an intent and choosing, from alternatives, a preferred way of presenting that intent. Thus, this school emphasizes performance not only in the sense of practicing music, movement, speech, the "Performing Arts", but also in the sense of daily performance, the performance of social roles, the performance of our identities. And further, the interest in performance is not academic, reporting the way things are, but active: performances, including the daily seemingly natural ones, are treated as changeable and choosable. There will be many opportunities in this school to have fun with, to play with, to experiment with ways of presenting intent.

"We want to address language: how we speak and how language speaks us. Inherited linguistic patterns form one of the strong arms of a social system, often hiding and justifying oppressive structures while ruling out the creation of alternatives to these. This strong arm is frequently left unexamined or considered to be of minor importance. In this school, while studying a subject, discussing an event, making a decision, we will squint nervously at the language used, prodding each other into moments of created eloquence."
-- Susan Parenti

This school invites looking for links between composition and designing society, where composition is taken to mean broadly the putting together things that have never before been put together in such a way that together they do something they wouldn't do apart.

According to this view of composing one might learn from writing a piece of music a new way of organizing a kitchen, or see analogies between new ways of painting a canvas and new ways of thinking about friendship.

Structure influences content. This school tries out new learning formats and watches how these new formats affect what is discussed.

This school is not an academic institution; is not anti-intellectual; is not interested in doing what once worked and does not now work; is not interested in doing what was then now yet is now then; is not interested in basing arguments on what comes naturally.

Composition:

"I use the word 'composition' whenever I wish to speak of the composer's activity and the traces left by it. The composer is motivated by a wish of bringing about that which without that composer and human intent would not happen."
-- Herbert Brun

"We want to compose ourselves, and, in so doing bring forth a world. Our interrelationships bring forth ourselves and one another; we want to romance and theorize and carefully alter our interrelations. We want the world and the people in it to live and thrive collectively. We want to wear lively, funny hats made out of deadly serious newspapers. We are interested in the creation of new problems. We are interested in the significance of experiment for the realization of social change."
-- William Gillespie

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