For this issue, DK’s creative director Dipika Kohli worked with A. Spaice and our newly budding creative team in Penang, Malaysia, in November, 2019.
Wrapping a year’s worth of reflections on the idea of growth, change, seedlings and new beginnings, it is a soft version of something that heretofore in our magazine has been rather geometric and angular, in style and attitude. Yet time and sharing, more and more, has opened us up a little more to ourselves, and to a very small section of our innermost hearts.
Quiet places
There, in the quietest places, something new is aloft. Seeds, seedlings and search for new grounds, fallow periods and more make their way into these pages, indirectly and perhaps abstractly, but with, we hope, a feeling that gives itself rather than asks you to pay attention to it.
The artists gathered for this co-created zine are four very curious people.
Art, natural patterns, and words intertwine in a collaboration between them.
The nature of art
Lee Moore Crawford, a floral designer and artist, once struck up a conversation about the Japanese art of ikebana when DK happened upon her arranging flowers at a coffee shop in Durham, NC, circa 2011. We never forgot it.
So when DK collaborated with another creative person who takes inspiration from nature to make the cover image of this issue (Dipika Kohli took the original photograph in Huế, then forwarded it to digital processing artist Nils don Sihvola in Finland), we wanted to ask Crawford what her feelings would be. Lots came of this interaction, including a short piece, ‘Bloom.’
To give the collection continuity, we then circled back to former culture editor Michael Bridgett, Jr., whose article, ‘Why I Art,’ opens yet another fresh perspective.
LET’S TALK ABOUT learning. How we discover, find, and make new connections. Ideas, shapes of thinking and the input that comes from places that might not be the ‘usual’ ones.
No more boring meetings: What are the containers that make great conversations *happen*?
Conversations that lead to better collaboration and better work? Those are important. Let’s not waste time. Let’s make things better, together.
Better and more enjoyable: that’s the key.
How do we design the S P A C E that lets fresh thinking flow?
Let’s consider. Let’s discuss.
Min 2. Max 10.
WHAT YOU’LL GET. DK will share very short introductions to design and lateral thinking methods, including:
Grice’s ‘Maxims of Conversation’
Six Thinking Hats, a method of opening dialogue.
The Open Space Technologies how-to.
This mini-conversation will be hosted by DK’s Dipika Kohli. She has delivered seminars at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill on the topic of Design Thinking, a series caled SELF as a 9-week experiential program at Stanford University, and for an architects circle in Seattle DK was invited to present, ‘Just Be You.’
‘It’s changed. A lot. Since the good ol’ days when it was flat and you could talk to anybody anywhere and it was cool.’
‘And now?’
‘Stupid algorithms. Fake accounts. Promoted tweets, that makes it feel like garbage is everywhere and it’s hard to find the gems.’
‘Are there any?’
‘Sure. But there isn’t much discernment now between this which matters, and that which doesn’t, because…’
‘Because?’
‘A lot of things. I don’t want to go into it, here. This is public space. But I’ll write about it, in Tuesday’s issue.’
‘Which is?
‘Which is Art 4 Art’s Sake.’
‘Are you going to keep tweeting?’
‘…’
‘…’
‘I don’t know. It’s… where I used to find people and we could talk about things that really felt like things that count. Over time. And built something, ambiently. Some people who I consider friends are people I met on twitter but never met met.’
Co-create a mini-mag, S P A C E, with Design Kompany.
This is a conversation space that is available for subscribers of S P A C E to also have a chance to get to know one another, in DK’s online forums. International. Asynchronous.
Weekly.
Sometimes conversations get very interesting and we invite people to collaborate to make an issue of our mini-magazine, S P A C E.
DK are seeking people who want to write, and connect, meaningfully and in new ways, with one another.
Experience it.
HOW TO TAKE PART
{Note: As of October 1, 2019, we are *only* inviting members of S P A C E to co-create with us.) Learn more and register by signing up for ‘Trust the Process’. There is a new line item, ‘Trust the Process,’ at our crowdfunding page: subscribe to S P A C E and learn more about what we are making–> Learn more and sign up.
First four guests to register will get a printed copy of one of the zines from our S P A C E collection.
Be a part of it
DK has hosted parties like S P A C E in Phnom Penh before, bringing a magic moment into shape.
There was also ‘Math & Jazz’ at Raffles’ Elephant Bar, plus a series of eight ‘Rooftop Philosophy in Phnom Penh’ events along with the first-ever ‘N’, our ‘theater of now’ big blind date party that you can read more about here. Don’t miss this chance ot catch DK on a short hop through Cambodia en route to Penang, Kuala Lumpur, and maybe further afield.
Every Tuesday since December’s start last year I’ve been sharing a new issue of our online magazine, S P A C E.
Today’s is S P A C E | Hà Nội, ‘Paper Funnel’.
Collected bits from the road, including wisdom from people I run into, like this 80-year-old man who wanted to talk about life and give me advice, on a tour last year in Melakka…
‘Don’t hurry through things, don’t disappear on people. Wait for the miracle. That’s a Grateful Dead song, “Looking for the Miracle”, but I edited it. Anyway, life advice? Be honest. With yourself, and with other people.’
–80 year-old guest of a guesthouse in Melaka, Malaysia, in response to DK’s question, ‘Do you have any life advice?’
For those who like travel writing, this is the issue to get.
I worked super hard on the lead story, a longform one called ‘Paper Funnel’.
As always, it’s still creative nonfiction, but it’s getting tighter, thanks to editorial input and proofreading and copywriting and just general advice from those who know my writing, and me, pretty damn well, by now.
The story inside will be published in October’s issue of Saathee Magazine, which is in Charlotte NC, and for whom I’ve been writing a monthly column about where I am, at the moment, on the spot.
Get everything in this edition of the printer-friendly S P A C E.
Download it, fold it, and sew it to make your own at home.
A great conversation set led to the creation of this issue of S P A C E.
Many thanks to Nils don Sihvola, whose cover art is featured here. The story is by Dipika Kohli.
NILS DON SIHVOLA
‘DIGITAL VISUAL arts-digital SLR and image processing-is my thing. In 2013 a friend sold me his Canon 500d digital camera. Instinctively and instantly, I knew that the digital camera would be my tool to make art. Art: something I’ve known since I was a child I wanted to make. Every year I practiced, and in 2017, went to study photography at Kymenlaakson opisto in Inkeroinen, Finland.
‘Ever since, I’ve wanted to investigate questions like, ‘How does form support content? What’s “balance” in a composition? What can an image say, in complement to, for example, a spoken message?’
‘In a world that relies on the flat 2d spectacle, rotating the axis to discover a fresh perspective can mean the difference between “love” and “pain.”’ Instagram: @nils_don_sihvola
In the last few days, we began to ask a couple of people if they were curious about talking together in an online forum, on the topic of W O R K. Enough said ‘yes’ to make it *happen*. So…
This week, we have begun the journey in a set of protected pages, on this website. That’s what all the protected page posts are, if you were wondering. We’re talking together, but not in public forums, because we want to keep the circle small, cozy… intimate. You talk about the things that matter the most, and you don’t want to blab to the whole wide internet about them.
Read about ‘work‘, the online dialogue, and how come we started it.
What makes for good, quality ‘work’?, this began with. In some really fascinating threads over the last three years here (behind the scenes, in protected-page posts), I have learned one hell of a lot about this, and especially, what my guests and partners in these conversations have had to say.
Things go back a ways, for example, when we were in Durham NC, DK’s Akira Morita had hosted a conversation forum that was called re (WORK).
Here’s a pic.
re(WORK) the open space hosted by Akira Morita in Durham NC when DK was based there. From left: Beck Tench, Rob Petrusz, Victor Jimenez (standing), Carter Cue, Alice Williams. The location is: Bull City Coworking. Photo: Laura Hamlyn / August 2012.
While it’s great and awesome to be able to get together in real life for conversations, sometimes people are just in very different parts of the world whom we are interested in gathering together in space. So that’s why we do the online conversations. We want to connect, and interconnect, a very wide range of perspectives so that we can learn from each other and discover new inputs.
What is ‘work’?
Well let’s just get right to it, shall we?
What is work, anyway?
That’s the focus.
This exact, narrow query.
From DK:
‘What is the future of work, that’s a different question, and a favorite of some of the people whom I used to know, back in Seattle, when we sat around with our super remote and super design-your-own-day style of working, whether over Belgian beers at Stumbling Monk at Designers’ Korner, say, or over coffee at Top Pot on Summit Avenue, which was just down the street from one of the offices I used to rent, on Olive Way. It was so good, those days of being in the space of playfulness and learning, together.
‘I still remember when LS came by to one of the ‘Dream Kitchen’ lunch sessions. I remember how he said some things that really resonated with me, and had heard about the event, somehow, I think through the newspaper maybe or some other spot, I swear, I have no idea, but then, years later, sitting in a house in the north of Finland, I suddenly remembered it.
‘How it felt to receive new people from ‘the internet’ to my office, welcome them to the conference room table, share coffee or tea or whatever, and then just… talk. We talked then in that session about what our dreams were outside of work. It was… great. To have a chance to hear out what people were feeling and thinking, but just for a time, and then everyone went along on their own, separate journeys. I wrote to LS out of the blue, more than a decade later, hoping I spelled his name correctly and hoping he was the only one who had that gmail address. Surprisingly, I got through. He wrote right back and asked me what I was thinking, where I was, how I was doing, and I did the same. Our journeys went in many directions, of course, in separate phases, but hell, what a cool thing it was to have heard someone say, ‘I remember that conversation.’
‘Really?
‘Wow.
‘But: come to think of it, I remember, too. Which is exactly why the words ‘Hit the high note’ came back to me, all these years later. LS said, on the call that we had, that they weren’t his words, but he was quoting. Didn’t matter: the feeling of wanting to raise the bar never left me, and ‘hit the high note’ expressed it so very clearly, so very well.
‘I remember a lot of them. Not all, of course. And I get to hear so many of them, day by day, because of the design intention that it took all these years to crystallize. Optimizing for the ‘a-ha’ moment–I can tell you more about this.
‘I have a lot more to say.
‘And so do our guests, I imagine, too.
‘Let’s get to it.
‘Let’s go.
‘I’m gonna share more when I’m ready, about the new things beginning, thanks in large part to SJ. It’s cool. I’m jazzed. It’s… flowing.’
Be a part of the conversations
We’re going to get started soon. I’m sending the pre-start homework out this weekend. Ask us anything, if you are curious, through the form at the end of this page. If there’s enough interest, we’ll do a real-life version of this, somewhere in Vietnam, in the early part of September.
Read about’work‘, the online dialogue, and how come we started it.
For the summer of 2019, DK and friends are co-creating the zine series, ‘In the Vernacular’. Free to apply. Apply here.
Select candidates will be invited to register (programme fee is USD $160) at this page.
Don’t miss the chance to be part of an international conversation in which new and different others DK has personally connected with in real life or on the internet are gathering to share, learn, and continue to discover ways of taking old ideas and breaking into the new.
WHEN. 1- 30 June 2019.
WHAT IT IS. Architects, designers, graphic artists, graphic illustrators, and writers are invited to co-create the series with Design Kompany’s A. Spaice. Hosting the conversations in asynchronous online exchanges, DK will gather the key points of the emerging dialogues and create custom prompts every Tuesday. To more the direction of the conversation so as to come up with a coherent set of thought to then pack into weekly digital zines. These, together, will get us talking, and talking together, in S P A C E.
‘The whole is something other than the sum of its parts.’
THE STORY IN A NUTSHELL. Going to different parts of the world, mostly Southeast Asia and Northern Europe, to discover the interestingness. And I mean, interesting to me. I look for the contemporary aesthetic, but also, what the people are telling me who are ready to share, honestly and from the heart, in very short impromptu bursts. (A very close friend of mine says what I do is have a series of ‘one-chat stands,’ which, I guess, is pretty accurate.) There is an intimacy there, but it is fleeting. Indeed, ephemera is one of the keywords of our weekly e-mag, S P A C E, which is up to 22 issues now, and all of them are in our online store.
Searching for the story
People tell me all kinds of things, you wouldn’t believe it. But it is not my goal to put their stories verbatim into text: that is boring, uncreative, and unoriginal. That is outdated. ‘He-said, she-said’ reporting bored me utterly when I used to work as a reporter, for about two years at a weekly and then two more at a daily. I wanted more. I wanted the earnestness and inspiration, the road, the journey, a bit of creative and artistic license, the travel (but not the instagram-porn kind) rather that which is learned when you spend time in a place (and which someone in Thailand once called ‘slow travel’ which I thought was a cool way to put it), and I wanted, more than all of those things: sincerity. Ergo: creative nonfiction, made in situ, on the spot, out of the collage that is real life (and paper, sometimes, too).
Richness and complexity aside, there was that magical element that was missing, all that time, when I was running around, floating, writing things, here and there, wanting desperately to hit a mark but not knowing which one or where in the hell it was even close to. But then, in 2017, I went to Battambang in Cambodia and stayed four nights and five days, offline, exploring the story. Decding I would compose something on the spot, based now whatever conversation happened to fall into my world, and whatever bits of paper, stories, books, or ‘miscellaneous’ wandered into my world. In this way I wrote, ‘Here Comes the Dance,’ a very short short about the Age of Anxiety and a thirtysomething I had met in a hotel common space who was very happy to talk at length and without pause about it, which I had welcomed, and the other things, bits from books, that found their way into that very first issue of S P A C E. I can talk more about that another time when I am not in a place with people taking lots of camera photos around me, this is my cue to cut this short and go now, I have to get some new pictures for new issues of S P A C E that are getting made now. Here in Latvia. A lot of things.
But suffice to say, the story is the journey, of discovery and. Much, much more. More soon. Oh, look at that. Right now, just now, starting… a parade? There is a flash mob going by me, now, with bubble-blowers.
My gosh. I love Rīga.
Photo: First zine made in Rīga, April 2019. Short post about arriving to this city is here. Picture taken by A. Spaice
Make a ‘zine’ with DK. Get to know more about the DIY-style of publishing a mini-magazine. Techniques, templates, samples and demonstrations are all part of this short, sweet creative workshop that has been traveling Southeast Asia and N. Europe since 2017.
Discover S P A C E, the conversations and the zines. Make, take, converse, and enjoy. Learn more about DK’s Atelier S P A C E and couture zines at instagram.
Workshop fee: €15, includes workshop materials + 1 coffee or tea.
Meet DK in real life for conversation about whatever we discover about one another, when we make time for real life. And some really incredible cakes. Join DK for this short and sweet real-life popup conversation party. Small. Cozy. Relaxing. No need to prepare anything, come with an open mind and a story to share. Your ticket includes one cake + coffee or tea + a surprise mini-gift like the small book, ‘The Book of New Things,’ pictured below.
Explore, together, the lost art of conversation. If you are creatively inclined, come to the event and while you are here ask us about opportunities to be published in our weekly magazine, S P A C E. Currently writing a series of fresh issues each week, which are set in Latvia. You can learn about this work to make a mini-magazine every week, at our website. Questions? Get in touch wtih us through the form at our contact page.
