In our recent design calendar post on the 85th anniversary of the opening of the New York Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, we noted that they are currently presenting an exhibition under the title "Design and Violence"
Although "presenting" is perhaps not the correct phrase, for rather than display objects as part of a traditional exhibition in their spacious if crammed base in Manhattan, for Design and Violence the MoMA are staging what they refer to as an "experimental online curatorial project".
To this end the exhibition curators first compiled a list of objects and projects which have a connection with violence, be that direct or indirect, and subsequently invited international experts from various fields to discuss one of the objects in an essay. These essays, and the public responses to these essays, then form the online exhibition.
Which brings us to journalist and critic Alice Rawsthorn's Design and Violence essay on George Nelson's monologue "How to Kill People"
In the late 1950s the Charlotte, Michigan based aluminium manufacturer Aluminium Extrusions established what they playfully referred to as the "First Chair in Educational Television", the holders of which being invited to present a televised lecture on a subject of their choosing.
Following presentations from architect Minoru Yamasaki and designer Richard Latham came on November 20th 1960 George Nelson and his 25 minute appeal for maintaining quality and standards in the design of weapons.
Alice Rawsthorn doesn't like it. At all.
Now we greatly respect Alice Rawsthorn's works, and there is certainly an awful lot uncouth scallywags such as us can and indeed should, if not must, learn from Ms Rawsthorn. However. We fear she may have missed something quite important.
Yes, in "How to Kill People" George Nelson states that design for killing has the "unquestioning support of society" Yes, George Nelson states that there is a difference between ""the respectable kind of killing" (his euphemism for government-sanctioned warfare) and "murder."" Yes, George Nelson states that the great advantage for a designer working in creating tools of war is that "no one cares very much what anything costs."
No, George Nelson doesn't "ask whether it would be more productive to focus the design resources currently expended on “How to Kill People” on “How to Stop Killing People." Nor does Nelson "question whether so many designers should invest so much of their time and energy on armaments"
But then, why should he?
For although one can't actually see it from the film, George Nelson's tongue is firmly in his cheek.
It is a talk about design. A delightful wander through the history of weaponry and warfare which serves as an exemplary illustration of how design evolves, how successful design thinking functions and above all about a designers responsibilities.
A brutally dark, deeply comic and at times genuinely unsettling illustration. But an illustration nonetheless.
Unable to find any clever minds who have analysed the text, we'll have to do it ourselves.
In effect Nelson begins with a basic problem: A wants to kill B. So A hires a designer to help him. B has however also hired a designer to help him defend himself. And off we go. Until we come to today's modern "de-personified" machinery, machines in which the "designers have designed the excitement out of killing." Indeed so complex and incomprehensible are the tools of modern warfare that we can only understand and relate to them as children's toys. How, asks George Nelson towards the end of his lecture, "can we re-introduce the personal element into the activity that has been man's favourite throughout history"
The monologue is an appeal for keeping the human in design, for not losing sight of the purpose and function of design and for always remembering for whom one is designing and why one is doing what one is doing.
Design shouldn't become so abstract that it becomes irrelevant.
At the end of his lecture George Nelson contemplates a world in which legalized killing has been outlawed, designers, he assures us, will find something else to do, "and personally I think it would be nice if that "something else" has to do with people"
Not just in terms of the tools of war, but in home furnishings, in office furnishings, in architecture.
That said "How to Kill People" is also the most wonderful critique on the absurdity of organised violence, a critique which considered in context of today's modern drone based warfare is all the more scathing, blistering, unequivocal, and in many ways more relevant now than it was then. It has certainly got a lot darker.
But judge for yourselves.
And Design and Violence can be viewed and followed at http://designandviolence.moma.org
