Positioning in writing
Our task for this week has been, find a manifesto or position in art, craft, technology or science that dates before 1910 and explain what makes it relevant for our time.
I chose a position that was very important then, as it is today. The Enlightenment was influenced by the most important poets and thinkers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Immanuel Kant or René Descartes. They stood up for the questioning of processes and thinking and doubting became a virtue. The epoch of the Enlightenment had the basic idea of the emancipation of thought. One of the most famous sentences comes from this epoch: I think therefore I am. René Descartes assumed that he would not simply accept the knowledge handed down, but would doubt everything he thought he knew.
In those days, the Enlightenment stood for a knowledge that is accessible to everyone, that promotes independent thinking and that one should not believe everything one is told. Actually fundamental things, which it is however today like in those days more than ever to strengthen and defend. Today we have the problem instead of the churches through social media. Which fake news or other false information spread.
Who are you?
I’m Pascal a 32 year old student at the ZHdK. I was born in Mexico but adopted by Swiss parents when I was 5 months old. I think people who know me well see sometimes the two different side of me. For example my „Tranquilo“ side which takes everything a little bit slower and doesn’t care about details. But there is also my Swiss side who hates to be late or feel it rude if people are late. Super Swiss. Be sides that I’m a wild mixture of decisions I made in my life. I’m a electrican-fashion designer — free spirit- conceptual interaction designer. Sounds crazy… but that’s me and I love it. And I hope that it is not the end, and and that even more titles are added to it that shape me.
What is my ambition to be a designer?
Don’t have to work anymore on the construction. I really don’t want to spend any more time in this negativ field, where almost everyone is depressed in the morning and already thinking about the evening.
An other ambition to really let out my creativity but in a big scale, I don’t know how I gone achieve this goal but I really want to create all kinds of installations. I want to work with different people on different projects and create something which no one ever before saw.
I want to catch people/ audience that they forget even for a few second the world around them. That is my ambition to be a designer.
Pick a topic of interest and what do you think you can say about this that no one ever heard before?
A theme that has accompanied me throughout my life is music. I think I can really say that I have a very broad interest in music. I am very interested in what is going on in the music scene and where the whole industry is moving to. But what I can tell you, which is perhaps not so much knowledge, is that traditional African music contains an incredible complexity. How do I know that? I am currently working on a new project with a jazz musician named Omer Klein. Over a beer we talked about how eurocentric the world is. And that ours is only interested in the sounds of the western world or that it considers them beautiful. But when musicians from Europe dared to try music from Africa they failed miserably. You just think they drum around a little and stay in time. However, it turns out that the sequence and rhythms are based on mathematical formulas, which reach a complexity that we have not yet mastered.
