TY - JOUR

T1 - Designer Security: Control Society and MoMA's SAFE: Design Takes on Risk

AU - Lacy, Mark

PY - 2008/4

Y1 - 2008/4

N2 - This article suggests that Gilles Deleuze's writings on societies of control provide useful insights on changing configurations of biopower in contemporary societies. However, far from the dystopias depicted in many popular visions of the future, such as the films THX 1138 and Minority Report, societies of control are being shaped by the work of designers, creating the potential for an `ecology of control' that can become `benignly' woven into our lives. MoMA's exhibition SAFE: Design Takes On Risk is a fascinating introduction to designers' responses to risk and insecurity around the planet, along with work that interrogates critically our obsessions with risk, control, and insecurity. SAFE illustrates an emerging synergy between designers and policymakers that makes possible the intensification of control society through products of `communectivity' (such as the ironic `Homeland Security Blanket') and designer security. Indeed, `designing in' protection and `designing out' insecurity are mantras that are increasingly important to contemporary discourses of security in risk-obsessed states. The article expresses the author's concern that discourses of design and security suppress anxiety about the ethico-political consequences of control society, along with broader issues of security politics, at the same time as they install new policy initiatives and `synergies' through the desire to design out insecurity.

AB - This article suggests that Gilles Deleuze's writings on societies of control provide useful insights on changing configurations of biopower in contemporary societies. However, far from the dystopias depicted in many popular visions of the future, such as the films THX 1138 and Minority Report, societies of control are being shaped by the work of designers, creating the potential for an `ecology of control' that can become `benignly' woven into our lives. MoMA's exhibition SAFE: Design Takes On Risk is a fascinating introduction to designers' responses to risk and insecurity around the planet, along with work that interrogates critically our obsessions with risk, control, and insecurity. SAFE illustrates an emerging synergy between designers and policymakers that makes possible the intensification of control society through products of `communectivity' (such as the ironic `Homeland Security Blanket') and designer security. Indeed, `designing in' protection and `designing out' insecurity are mantras that are increasingly important to contemporary discourses of security in risk-obsessed states. The article expresses the author's concern that discourses of design and security suppress anxiety about the ethico-political consequences of control society, along with broader issues of security politics, at the same time as they install new policy initiatives and `synergies' through the desire to design out insecurity.

KW - control society

KW - design

KW - security

KW - biopolitics

KW - risk

U2 - 10.1177/0967010608088781

DO - 10.1177/0967010608088781

M3 - Journal article

VL - 39

SP - 333

EP - 357

JO - Security Dialogue

JF - Security Dialogue

SN - 1460-3640

IS - 2-3

ER -