Rebecca Wilkinson
Perform—Produce
Perform — Produce defines graphic design as a discipline rooted in work rather than a process that springs forth spontaneously from the creative imagination.
Perform — Produce is driven by strict constraints and machine-like craft, employing outdated tools and the physical body in processes of making that are stubbornly slow.
Perform — Produce deploys performance as a tactic to expose the otherwise invisible labor of design, and to reveal the ways design acquires value.
Perform — Produce proposes a new organizational model that integrates live happenings, cross-disciplinary exchange, and self-publishing to consider not just the product of design but also the conditions under which it is produced.
Glossary
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A video essay that defines the terms “perform,” “produce,” “translate,” “instruct,” and “circulate.” The designer’s hands flip through, spin, gesture at, and point to content contained in library books in a performance style that instructs and indulges in visual puns.
Common Dimensions
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Common Dimensions is a research platform and print publication that investigates the chair as a symbolic, discursive, and designed object. The project seeks to expand our understanding of (and connection to) chairs through a series of interviews with artists and designers, a visual library, and a database of essays on topics related to industrial design, production, technology, and more.
Common Dimensions Issue No. 1
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An interview with Maxwell Fertik whose dis/assembly chair series explores flat pack furniture, mass-manufacturing, value, and time. The main section of this print piece borrows its format from the IKEA instructions manual. Other
sections include a visual footnote insert, and a pre-cut plywood sheet enabling the reader to make
their own mini dis/assembly chairs.
Common Dimensions Issue No. 2
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An interview with architect and artist, Markus Berger, about the aesthetics of repair and his Providence-based workshop, The Repair Atelier. Tilted images and texts are a nod to the broken chairs brought in for repair, and the book’s insert references Kintsugi, the Japanese practice of visible repair in the history of an object.
Common Dimensions Issue No. 3
Image
A double-sided broadsheet that features an interview with designer Bill Carrol about his Dust Chair, an object inspired by Gee’s Bend quilts that’s fabricated out of wood dust and scrap material. In the spirit of the Dust Chair, this publication was risoprinted on waste paper stock of various colors and weights found discarded around
the RISD MFA graphic design studio.
Perform — Produce
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Thesis book for Perform — Produce, which features 2 written essays, 1 visual visual essay, and interviews with artist Bridget Moser, designer and design historian J. Dakota Brown, Designer and educator, Doug Scott, and artist and curator, Micah Lexier. For more, go to performproduce.com
