A vision & a collection of S P A C E made to realize it

Dipika Kohli

The vision

S P A C E started out as a reaction to the mainstream media’s castings of peoples and places that are ‘exotic’ as something ‘other’, to be exalted or observed rather than commingled with.

Maybe it’s colonization that got us perturbed, or the high school British Literature and American Literature course syllabi that were insisted up on us as ‘literature’ without the global context of so, so very much more that can round out one’s perspectives, and challenge one’s beliefs. That, to me, is real travel.

More room for dialogue, more scope for relating, more opportunity for discovering Self in Other… that’s what I wanted to set out to explore and co-create and then record in weekly e-mag format, in this collected series. In the end, or at least, one chapter’s end, it was to spend a great chunk of time uninterrupted in Vietnam (pandemic) in order to find… Solitude.

Solitude (Kismuth Books / 2021)

The collections

The series has been going since 2017 and began in Cambodia with the first sequence, ‘A Philosophy of the Moment.’ Here are some of the other collections, made in popup ateliers in the places where we’ve been, looking for the real and the now. In other words, true stories.

The people who tell their stories to us, directly. In the way they speak. After a period of time in which to build trust, and establish rapport. Not everyone is open to it. But a few are. And when I find them, that’s where we do the Atelier S P A C E jam. To make the zine, and our own, co-created and highly curated arrangements, of S P A C E.

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A Philosophy of the Moment, Winter 2018
Finland, Cambodia

The Book of New Things, Spring 2019
Vietnam and Japan

In the Vernacular, Summer 2019
Latvia, Slovakia and Poland

Trust the Process, Autumn 2019
Malaysia and Vietnam

Uncertainty, Winter 2019
Cambodia

In the Flowers, Spring 2020
Vietnam

Start with Something Simple, Summer 2020
Vietnam

Here & Now, Autumn 2020
Vietnam

Trust, Winter 2020-2021
Vietnam

Comfort, Spring 2021
Vietnam

Summer of Design, Summer 2021
Vietnam

Solving for I, Autumn 2021
Vietnam

Relational Aesthetics, Winter 2021
??

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See all issues from these sets in our online shop:
http://designkompany.gumroad.com