I am a flâneur, watch me meander
I am a flâneur, a flood that meanders towards the sea. The sea is ever changing. It is nature. It is wild. When I research I let my mind wander, I take note along the journey and try not to judge while I diverge over and over again. I just take note. I reflect upon my experiences as a flâneur and this builds the core of my design practice.
My practice is one of holding space. For myself and others. To listen to what is said, unsaid and sometimes only implied. I see my role as creating the space for experience, thoughts and ideas to thrive and develop. I bring you to Café de Flore at the Left Bank in Paris, together we in spiriti sit down with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir and let our thoughts flow as the Seine does next to us.
I dial up and down my presence in the research depending on what phase I am in and what the need is. I am both a filter and a vehicle for thoughts. In researching in this way I build my own intuition and I fine tune my senses making them receptive to correlations, patterns and anomalies. I see broader brushstrokes, fine lines and spilled paint.
I gain from the disorder of my own curiosity
When I flâneur I go deep and broad. I have in the past experienced this as frustrating and as a disruption to my own practice. Almost like being in a maze, walking backwards with my eyes closed hoping to find the rainbow. However, after reading the works of Nassim Taleb and his concept of antifragility I have shifted my perception of the maze. The maze is an a-maze-ing place to be and there are multiple rainbows around every corner.
The antifragile gains from and thrives when exposed to stressors, uncertainty, randomness, and disorder. “When you are fragile, you depend on things following the exact planned course, with as little deviation as possible — for deviations are more harmful than helpful. […] When you want deviations, and you don’t care about the possible dispersion outcomes that the future can bring, since most will be helpful, you are antifragile.” (Taleb, 2012, p.71)
To introduce antifragility in my practice is to be the flâneur, to not assume and predict outcomes and prospects. The flaneur and curiosity in itself holds an antifragil property. I grow from my experiences as I move from space to space. The more I meander and wander “off the beaten track” my knowledge and experiences get richer and more diverse. It is my curiosity that leads me and it is my curiosity that feeds the antifragile in me. In essence, I gain from the disorder of my own curiosity.
Taleb N,N. (2012) Anti-fragile: Things that gain from disorder. London: Penguin Books.
Graphic design: Ellen Jonsson
Kristin Hall holds a MA Digital Management from Hyper Island UK. This reflection was part of her final project at Hyper Island called Feminism + Business: a proposal to rethink, redesign and dare to dream. The project explored how we might imagine a new paradigm in business based on feminist business principles and opportunities for adoption at the core of business.
