Not Just for Christmas

Advent Calendar Guy Julier |

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"There are many ways to have an ethical, green, or sustainable Christmas. If there was one thing you would want people to do every day as well, what would it be?"

"There are many ways to have an ethical, green, or sustainable Christmas. If there was one thing you would want people to do every day as well, what would it be?"

Guy Julier is Professor of Design in the School of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Leeds Metropolitan University. He has worked as an exhibition consultant at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Design Museum in London, and a freelance design consultant and writer. His PhD investigated the relationships between design and political and economic change in Spain and Hungary since 1980. Professor Julier's current research interests include design-led urban regeneration, audit culture and the creative industries, and concepts of design culture. He is the author of The Culture of Design, and the Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Design since 1900. His most recent book is the forthcoming Design and Creativity: Policy, Management and Practice, edited with Liz Moor. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Design and Culture, and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Visual Culture. and isBack Londonto correspondentthe for (Madrid).NJfC Advent Calendar	"Christmas could never be any more ethical, green or sustainable, in any direct sense. While Christmas carols and candles exhort a celestial ambition, so our base humanity is also revealed in the carnival of it all. At this time of year in Catalonia, the caganer finds its way into nativity scenes. This model of a man defecating at the back of the most holy tableau has several functions. It provides light relief. It reinforces the human aspect of the Christmas story. It reminds us that everyone performs this basic function. It shows that Christmas (or, more specifically, the birth of Christ) comes, whether we are ready or not. It is not so much a disruption of the nativity as a commentary. Both Nietzche and Žižek would love the caganer. So I’d like people to indulge some kind of carnivalesque excess at least once a day. Sustainability should be about having and being more. More resilience to global changes. More beauty in its material and human infrastructure. More convivial in its diversity and social connections. Our essential shitiness is worth celebrating. "

Guy Julier is Professor of Design in the School of Architecture, Landscape and Design, Leeds Metropolitan University. He has worked as an exhibition consultant at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Design Museum in London, and a freelance design consultant and writer. His PhD investigated the relationships between design and political and economic change in Spain and Hungary since 1980.

Professor Julier's current research interests include design-led urban regeneration, audit culture and the creative industries, and concepts of design culture. He is the author of The Culture of Design, and the Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Design since 1900. His most recent book is the forthcoming Design and Creativity: Policy, Management and Practice, edited with Liz Moor. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Design and Culture, and sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Visual Culture. and

isBack Londonto correspondentthe for (Madrid).NJfC Advent
Calendar

"Christmas could never be any more ethical, green or sustainable, in any direct sense. While Christmas carols and candles exhort a celestial ambition, so our base humanity is also revealed in the carnival of it all. At this time of year in Catalonia, the caganer finds its way into nativity scenes. This model of a man defecating at the back of the most holy tableau has several functions. It provides light relief. It reinforces the human aspect of the Christmas story. It reminds us that everyone performs this basic function. It shows that Christmas (or, more specifically, the birth of Christ) comes, whether we are ready or not. It is not so much a disruption of the nativity as a commentary. Both Nietzche and Žižek would love the caganer.

So I’d like people to indulge some kind of carnivalesque excess at least once a day. Sustainability should be about having and being more. More resilience to global changes. More beauty in its material and human infrastructure. More convivial in its diversity and social connections. Our essential shitiness is worth celebrating.
"

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