The Battle for the Infrastructure of Everyday Life

Written for the inaugural NGV Triennal publication

Ewan McEoin kindly asked me to contribute a piece to the publication accompanying the National Gallery of Victoria’s inaugural Triennal, a show that The Guardian just called “one of the most exciting exhibitions ever mounted in Australia … an unflinching exploration of the modern world.” Huge congratulations to Ewan McEoin, Simon Maidment, Megan Patty, Pip Wallis, Myf Doughty, and the NGV team for the show, and the publication.—London, December 2017

The Battle for the Infrastructure of Everyday Life

The object of design in the twenty-first century is the city itself. In the nineteenth century, it was the nation state, the factory and its engines, and the channels of globalised capitalism that began to emerge around that — clippers, canals, cables and contracts. In the twentieth century, the state and global markets became more complete versions of themselves, meaning politics and possessions were the order of the day. Art and design responded accordingly, often the willing handmaidens of these shifts.

Now, however, those late twentieth-century values, drifting towards individualism, have simply been stretched taut into the twenty-first, and the whole thing is…