Ask what can be!

“Critique and design both share a special relation to the sphere of the possible. This sphere comprises all the phenomena, events, or entities that are neither necessary nor impossible; this sphere contains all entities that a) are, but could not be, b) are not, but could be, and c) are, but could be otherwise. The possible is one modal sphere besides the necessary and the impossible and it is put forward here as the sphere of accidence. Critique loosens the dominant structure of modal beliefs; design hardens new forms of otherness; early phases of conceptual design have loosening effects, critique might evoke defence movements that have hardening effects in turn. This essay discusses the modal effects of critique and design, their modal transformative power, and their specific relation to accidence.

Critique challenges the status quo. To criticise a phenomenon presupposes that it can be different. No one would criticise gravity for instance. Design on the other hand explores, reveals, and develops possible differentness. Imagining and shaping different forms presupposes the belief that they are possible. No one designs a round square. As two dynamics of the accidence sphere, critique and design describe two different yet connected human-world relations and they reveal our worldview, our modal judgments about this world – that is what is deemed possible, impossible, or necessary. To criticise something means to reveal its accidental character – its possible differentness –, which opens it up to design efforts in the first place. Vice versa, designing something – trying and finding other forms – shows the designer’s conviction that new forms are not only possible, but worth the actual designing efforts, and therefore not just different, but better. Exploring and actualizing better forms is in itself a way to criticise present forms. Understood as accidence dynamics, one can be critical by design or enabling design by critique. Concrete actions, i.e. practices of critique and design, possess a modally educative power; they help to find out whether something could actually be otherwise. In addition to that, critique and design have transformative power over the structure of modal spheres; they work as drivers, challenges, and consequences of accidence. The transformative effects of critique and design on the modal structure can be – and mostly are – unintended side-effects, but it can be strategically positioned as the actual objective as well. Actions oriented in the latter sense can be called modal critique and modal design. “