Arts of Survival: The Elephant in the Room

‘One resident [of Kliptown], frustrated with the response from the West, said, “We need real care, not awareness. When one sees one’s friends and families suffering each day, one is aware of the problem. We don’t need pop stars giving concerts, we need doctors giving treatment.”

This quote is taken from the introduction of the book Design Like You Give A Damn, written by Cameron Sinclair. During his honeymoon in South Africa, he was confronted with the problems faced by the people of that country. He and his wife discovered that the biggest concern of the residents was in fact not water and housing, but health care and the AIDS pandemic. In my previous blog post I tried to point out the general apathy that now surrounds the issues of ethics and sustainability, a desensitisation to the struggles of others. By attending Live Aid, buying Fairtrade bananas, conscience’s are eased, but the core issues are left unresolved and pushed aside until someone else decides to pedal out the next series of appeals. By this, I am not trying to say that awareness is a bad thing, indeed, any action must be a good thing, the fact that people are now aware of the issues faced by people in developing countries can only be a good thing. But what makes it an even better thing, is if people start acting on this awareness, start getting actively involved Perhaps the problem is too huge to comprehend, and pushing it to the side, for another day is easier, whatever it is, designers play a massive part in bringing these issues to the forefront of the publics attention as well as providing practical solutions.

Projects that seek to help, such as One Laptop Per Child, while initiated with the greatest of intentions are not always successful, and often accused of being patronising or an attempt at imposing Western society and culture on others. So, what then is the solution? Is a patronising project better than doing nothing? Or are we simply attempting to do the wrong things, entering at the wrong levels? To deal with this, we would have to look at successful projects and ideas that really work such as Shigeru Ban’s Paper Log House, Nader Khalili’s ‘Super Abode’ and the ‘Q Drum’ which deals with problems of transportation. It seems as though a main point to pull from this is not to assume anything about the cultures being aided. Going in to areas the products are intended for, interacting and experiencing allows for a richer picture of the areas where design solutions are needed the most; an intersection of socio-cultural anthropology and design. As Cameron Sinclair found in South Africa, the biggest problems are often not the ones we in the West expect them to be.

References

1. Architecture for Huamnity. ed., 2006. Design Like You Give A Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises. Thames and Hudson

2. Design for the Other 90%

3. One Laptop Per Child

4. Image Reference - Banksy 'The Elephant in the Room'