Guest contributor and European correspondent Lara Chapman visits ‘GEO-DESIGN – Alibaba. From here to your home’ at the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven as part of a collaboration with the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) for Dutch Design Week.
Wednesday, 7:39pm: Click. A new tab is opened. Tap tap tap. A few keys are pressed. Enter. Scroll. Select. Click. Tap tap tap. A query is typed. Ping, a reply is received. Click. An Item is added to the basket. Click. Details are autofilled. Click. *Ping*. Confirmation email is received at 7:47pm.
Friday, 10:19am: *Ding Dong.* A Door is opened. A “pen” scratches on glass. A package swaps hands.
This scenario seems unremarkable, possibly even mundane. The cycle of search, browse, purchase, repeat, is constantly taking place online. However, for research designer Martina Muzi, e-commerce is an “incredibly urgent topic”. The ease of our interaction with e-commerce platforms belies a complex and sophisticated infrastructure that is entangled with areas such as political diplomacy, psychology, logistics, algorithms and new forms of labour. E-commerce is shaping our everyday behaviours in subtle but undeniable ways. Furthermore, its forces are invisibly shifting and re-defining contemporary geopolitics.
At the exhibition ‘GEO-DESIGN – Alibaba. From here to your home’, nine multidisciplinary design researchers examined China’s largest e-commerce website Alibaba.com from diverse angles. Held as part of an ongoing collaboration between the Van Abbe Museum and the Design Academy Eindhoven (DAE) as part of Dutch Design Week, the investigation-led project was conceived and curated by Martina Muzi and Joseph Grima. The selected designers, who are all alumni of DAE, had just two months from their briefing to the exhibition and undertook an intensive process of research, concept development and realisation.
The exhibition includes many media and many topics, which makes the magnitude of the Alibaba Group and its intricate infrastructure accessible, at some level, to every visitor.
The complexity of Alibaba is seen in the monumental inflatable globe by Irene Stracuzzi which visualises the global structures and geographical traces of the company. Her project, entitled ‘Custom Printing 4 Meter Inflatable Globe’, uses data gathered from ‘Ali research’ – an institute established by Alibaba in 2007 – to map the company’s roads and shipping routes which connect 200 countries. Stracuzzi illustrates the changing geopolitical conditions by inverting the traditional colonialist map and presenting the southern hemisphere at the “top” of the world.
The globe was commissioned through Alibaba and custom-produced to Stracuzzi’s design by the Chinese company Singular Inflatables Co. It therefore demonstrates the efficiency of the very logistical structure that it depicts.
Not only does the exhibition present interesting analyses on the activities of and phenomena emerging from the world’s largest shopping mall but it also challenges the notion of what an exhibition is and what it is for. ‘GEO-DESIGN: Alibaba. From here to your home’ makes a strong case for the use of an exhibition as an opportunity to undertake deep research and present that to the public. This departs from the more traditional retrospective or catalogue-based curatorial approach and instead aligns itself with methods of investigative journalism. Muzi believes that designers have a unique position from which to conduct research: “If you research in between politics, society and culture then being a designer somehow protects you. We [designers] have a title that is changing and it gives you freedom – the freedom of expression, the freedom of language and also the freedom of access because you are a creative looking at the world and responding to it.”
Muzi’s own project, ‘Diamond Model’, utilized this freedom of access to do field research in China. Her research examined the clusters of e-commerce villages in Zhejiang province that rely on a co-dependence of online and offline systems to survive. By presenting a research-based film and a huge diamond painting, Muzi uses the case study of a new craft called ‘5D Diamond Painting’ to understand the systems and forces at play which are invisible on the online interface of Alibaba.
Another form of research in the exhibition applied existing news media to construct a portrait of the e-commerce platform and its founder Jack Ma who is currently the richest man in China.
‘Double 11’ by Alice Wong examined Alibaba’s commodification of emotions, especially those of loneliness and insecurity. Wong’s video installation uses found footage which has been edited to play across seven differently-sized screens in a sort of surreal collage. Wong used archival research to trace the origins of ‘Singles Day’ which is a Chinese holiday celebrating not being in a relationship and represents the largest shopping day on earth yearly. This manipulation of feelings for profit is juxtaposed with footage of Jack Ma repeating the word “trust” over and over in different contexts. The work compels viewers to consider the values and motives behind the corporate image of Alibaba and Ma that claims to be built on the philosophy of trust.
Similarly, ‘Ali-Atlas Mapping Alibaba Diplomacy’ by Studio Maxime Benvenuto uses news sources to create a portrait of Jack Ma which focuses on his diplomatic influence. “You think diplomacy isn’t connected to design but it is. If there are some changes that you are not aware of then your place also changes. It’s all about agreements.” emphasises Mazi. Benvenuto sourced documentation of meetings that have taken place between Ma and international political leaders. By cataloging these events and presenting them side-by-side, the blurring of boundaries between private companies and nation states is starkly presented.
Looking at the non-human aspects of the company, design duo Arvid&Marie observed the algorithms which are constantly “working” behind the scenes to entice customers to stay on the site. Their installation shows a series of bizarre objects such as plastic fish slippers and a home sauna shaped like the top half of a woman. After examining the ecosystem of the website, Arvid&Marie were unsure about whether these curious products are purchasable or are simply invented by algorithms based on search history to keep a customer entertained and browsing. In perhaps the first time these products have been “made”, the designers created cardboard simulations of their likeness. From one side of the room, these objects can be read as photographic representations of these otherwise online products. However, when you look at them from behind, these cardboard figures reveal the extensive metadata that leads the algorithm to highlight certain things to you personally.
In a similar line of inquiry, ‘The Best Part of Possibilities, Advertising Made by A Bot’ by Allison Crank examines Alibaba’s recent use of two new softwares that use artificial intelligence to generate advertisements.
Other projects deal with the way Alibaba is changing the labour market. The performative pieces ‘Live Streaming’ by Jing He and ‘E-hustling East-Africa Online with Alibaba’ by Leif Czakai & Timm Donke both use the museum as a space from which to conduct business. Meanwhile ‘Hello Friend E-Commerce and Analogue Forms of Trade’ deconstructs a smartphone to reflect upon the fast paced Huaqiangbei Electronic Market in Shenzhen. Each of these projects uncover the relationships and tensions between the online and offline world.
With one project shown in each room of the Van Abbe Museum, the exhibition slowly builds an understanding of Alibaba’s tentacle-like influence across the globe through a layering effect. The individual works show the fascinations and personalities of each designer but combined, the project becomes whole.
Wrapping up our conversation, Martina Musi asked me: “What is the geography of algorithms?”
Hesitatingly I responded, “I suppose, maybe, it is a new geography…?”
“Exactly! The geography of networks is a new geography. So all the design that comes out of a new understanding of geography can be called geo-design. This is what happens here.”
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