Each artist was asked to respond to the “New Public Design Manifesto” prepared by the curator. But we were not interested in the so-called “public design” in the first place. As a socially negotiated activity, designing is rarely private, and there are public dimensions to it even when it’s not explicitly done for the public realm. “Public design,” therefore, is either a redundant duplication in terms or a covert condemnation of design as it is normally practiced: that it’s not good enough for the public.
We don’t like the insinuation, and we don’t care too much about the public anyway. Then, perhaps, we shouldn’t have accepted the invitation to the show. But then again, we wouldn’t be able to tell the world that we were not interested in “public design,” if our voice was simply absent. Instead, we chose to exhibit these posters as a sign of our active disinterest or an active sign of our disinterest.