Matters of Identity

Possession - Craftsmanship - Consumption

One of the reasons why autopoesis is important, apart from the fact that it is an integral part of the evolution of history, is because it is linked to the idea of identity. Autopoesis is a practice that originates in autonomy and in the same time establishes it. This is why it is connected to the notions of the subject and the identity. It is crucial to attempt to talk about craftsmanship as a process while the building of a materiality builds in parallel an identity.

Actions and practices charge the reality and especially when we talk about personal actions, practices, productions of any kinds and even our concepts do something more than charging, they create the conditions for the projection of an identity and the reflection of ourselves for understanding and defining ourselves. "I made it with my own hands" or "I've written it myself" is something that charges with meaning the things and by reflection our existence because there is a history where we participated and we can recognize it in the things and recall it. In such memories - histories of creation we are able to recognize ourselves and the relations we have established with exteriorities that could refer to the materiality or ideas. This is how we create an image for ourselves, through relations that are recognizable and memorable, identity is relational (not essential). The more complex and multiple these relations are the more likely it is that we will create an individual identity, therefore the participation in a production of any kind as creators of the product, and not as mere executors of a systematized pattern of movements or actions that lead to it almost automatically, is vital for building an identity.

Things have certainly changed a lot in time and with the loss of craftsmanship, the way how things come into possession has changed and with this also the way how we perceive possession has changed. In the past the owner and his property had a relation of creator - creation, something was ones possession the very moment it was coming into being, while today this relation has transformed to that of buyer - commodity. While in the past something was one's property because he had made it or built it with his very own labor, today it is his property because he has accumulated money by working and has bought it, or to be more precise he bought the labor that has produced it. Obviously, it is really difficult to understand the difference today but the concept of buying brought something that previously didn't exist, the quantification of qualitative characteristics, the quantification of value, the price and the salary. In that way, together with the loss of craftsmanship and because people buying the labor of others or even the labor of machines, came the detachment from the process of production and things became simulacra, images detached from their own origin and history, valued only by their transactional price. Therefore, identity became a matter of consumption instead of production, and it is impossible to avoid recalling the graphic artwork (illustrations) of Barbara Kruger that says "I shop therefore I am" illustrating in the best way the how identity is being established today.

This is how formalities are being established and considering that architecture is also becoming a commodity, or a simulacrum, this is how it produces or attempts to produce, consciously or not, identities and social roles. Fashion, lifestyle and the established images and symbols of the consumerism are not leaving architecture untouched, the contrary. Architecture is in the very center of all these and itself becomes a symbol of an identity and also a formative device. It almost doesn't matter any more the experience of architecture as built space, as a carrier of its own process of design and production, but it becomes itself a simulacrum where the contribution of labor to the production and also production itself is totally absent from the final product and not only it is not signified but often all its traces are being erased. Finally architecture becomes a promising illustration without background, scenery for everything and everyone, people and practices, that it could ever contain but never really contains them. To contain means to be in dialogue, to share and negotiate borders but here what prevails is either a passive one-way forming of the containment or a detachment between the container and the containment that never really reaches the point of interaction or actual forming.

In all cases what becomes dominant is absence of the subject and absence of autonomy in all levels. In the level of the production the builder (not need to mention about the user) is a mere executor whose work is never being signified in the final output. In the level of the experience of the built space, the user and his practices are perceived as either a passive formable containment, a soft "mass", or a detached moving object that doesn't interact with the building as a subject. In the level of the architectural design there is the compliance with an abstract idea of a fashion or style, ideology or position for what design is. Eventually all these three levels are detached and they are all heteronomous, actually they are all connected through a heteronomy, this of the commodity. The architect creates a space that complies with the general needs of the market because it has to be consumed, the builder executes a production and the user buys it in a process that is usually linear, one way, fragmented and highly heteronomous since the autonomies that participate in it do not have any creative access to the process itself but they rather execute.

The problem in the first place is that we have already been socially formed according to the above, in any kind of production, not only in architecture, there is a dominant idea for what is formal, and no matter that we also are often the carriers of our own informality and its dynamics, within the systems of production and consumption formality has a privileged status. On the other hand it is rather obvious that mass production is necessary for covering the needs of people and going against it is in a total and absolute way without having anything else to substitute it, is similar to denying civilization. Therefore, concerning in particular matters of identity, I would say that the problem of the mass production is a problem of excessive formalization that suppresses informality and excludes any kind of "personalization" prior to the consumption, during the production. More or less is again a problem of a privileged heteronomy over multiple autonomies. Since personalization is absent and because of the fact that people nowadays seek an identity through consumption, life becomes a race of "who has more", instead of "who has what". Identity itself becomes equivalent to the accumulation of prefabricated goods that function as symbols to be shown instead of being a matter of personal creations, or even possessions, that are to be used according to our individual needs.

The question is how we can change it in order to encompass and satisfy the need for the cultivation of a mosaic of multiple identities and multiple forms and establish individuality. I would dare to say that in the world of consumerism informality seems to be the answer to the matter of identity, is about making a commodity to be more than a property by becoming a possession (κτήση) and through this possession to gain a self consciousness that cultivates a uniqueness and autonomy. This could take place by denying the traditional way that imposes ends to things and let the users impose their own ends during the production and not after it.


Mass customization - prosumers

The problem of autonomy and heteronomy within the formal practices obviously creates the need for personalization, and contemporary processes of production are attempting to solve this by means of mass customization. No matter that this is a step forward that shows that there is a certain consciousness of the problem, mass customization still remains largely heteronomous since it is based merely on the offering of more options to the people but not so much in the actual implementation of them in the decision making beyond that. It is not by accident that the new term for consumers in the era of the mass customization is "prosumers", as combination of the words producer and consumer, or according to others of the words professional and consumer. In both cases the word consumer still remains dominant because the person never becomes a real "conducer" in the process of production no matter that the word conducer is also the result of the combination of the words consumer and producer. The participation of the subject still comes exclusively in the moment of the consumption, not before this. No matter how many options, parameters or variety of choices we offer to the user the degree of freedom is still rather mechanical since most of the times the final output depends on combinations of basic elements (like the lego), we allow choices with an "either - or" logic but we don't really offer the chance to the users to chose for themselves and question the fundamental logic of these systems, for example the notion of habitation itself.

On the other hand even if an absolute freedom of customization prevails there is the danger that this freedom that mass customization offers could turn against creativity, as Tim Clarke poses, since the role of the designer (creator) as a specialist is being at shake. Taking as an example the freedom that software has offered, people can compose their own music, create their own pictures etc but in what extend does this create original and unique results? Does it really promote innovation? Isn't it possible that together with a wave of mass customization will follow a massive wave of reproduction of already known aesthetical and functional archetypes that people will repeat because this is what they have already learned? Certainly no one can predict, everything is possible and if something like this happens it might lead to a static situation. But reaching at this static point would presuppose that there will be no diversity, no formal and informal any more as distinct categories but they would both collapse in one thing where everything are the same, have the same value, the same importance, the same origin etc. In order to avoid this flatness where nothing emerges as distinct and unique, formality and informality should exist and be in dialogue in a way that none of them is being excluded but both of them are connected in a smooth continuum where informal productions could inform the formal and vice versa.

This connection of the formal and the informal where both of them remain distinct in a continuous relation seems to be critical today for another reason. Technology has managed to perfect our media, and brings closer than ever the design process to this of the actual production with the use of CNC machines etc. the greatest danger is the absence of bias, the absence of traces that could signify an origin or the trials and errors of a process that could create an identity. We have to go back to the consciousness and the signification of the trial and the error, the inscription of the process on the product. We need to find ways to keep active the trails of erasure, change, alteration, and leave our productions open to these or else they will fail in the long term becoming simulacra without origin. There is also the danger of the loss of the "accidental", there is the danger of the over-formalization, where the objectivity prevails over the subjectivity, the form over the matter, the heteronomy over autonomy. Together with all these we will lose the chance for the "otherness", the unexpected and the unpredictable that stimulates evolution. This is where informality comes to offer what formality tends to deprive, multiplicity therefore identity. There is no reason for fear or hope, just the consciousness that we need to look for new approaches.