Andrea Gaspar
University of Coimbra

Two contrasting ways of conceiving design-anthropology engagements can be considered: 1) a collaboration where designers remain designers and ethnographers remain ethnographers (Suchman 2011, Yaneva 2009): in this relationship, designers design while ethnographers observe, analyse and have a critical role – but relational resources are not fully explored; and 2) a more relational, open and unpredictable kind of collaboration where ethnographers and designers may become ‘idiots’ to each other (Michael 2012a; 2012b), Rabinow & Marcus 2008). It is the latter possibility that my article explores.

Based on my fieldwork in a design studio of Milan, I present situations that refer to my encounter with a different way of conceiving creativity and performing ‘the new’. Design and ethnography perform relationality and therefore creativity in very different ways. While in ethnography it is what comes from the outside (which is obviously also processed inside, through interpretation) that is considered generative, in design it is rather what is processed inside (through authorial creativity) that is performed as generative. While involved in the process of learning what being creative in design terms requires I was also exposed to its transformative effects. Thus, my ethnography went far beyond the description about these different ways of bringing the new into being – it ended up exploring those very same ways for my own ethnographic engagements with the design world. In this article I present my participation in a conceptual design project as an ‘engagement event’ and discuss how the “disruptive character of the idiot” (Michael 2012a; 2012b) opens up new (epistemological, creative, professional) collaborative opportunities for the ethnographers of the contemporary (Westbrook 2008).

Andrea Gaspar a lecturer in social anthropology at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. She holds a PhD in social anthropology, awarded by the University of Manchester in 2013. Her research addresses innovation practices in design, and the relationships between these practices and knowledge making in anthropology. She has also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at CES (Centre for Social Studies, University of Coimbra) in an STS research project focusing on digital scholarship and digital methods.