Anger Management
Bachelor Thesis Spring 2020
Author: Ellen Solding
Supervisor: Åsa Ståhl, Eric Snodgrass, Anna-Karin Arvidsson
Examiner: Mathilda Tham Term: VT20
Subject: Design + Change Level: Bachelor
Course code: 2DI67E
anger management
ellen solding
design + change
2020
audre lorde
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content
overview
a very short hello
feminist theory and anger what I have made
care objects
woman/designer
collaborators and killjoys feminist things
hacking crafting
anger blacksmith gifting
ongoing conversations metadesign
conclusion reference list appendix thanks
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p 04 p 05 p 06 p 08 p 08 p 09 p 10 p 11 p 21 p 22 p 26 p 27 p 28 p 29 p 31 p 33 p 35 p 36 p 40
hypnosis whisk
lipstick anger-reminder dishcloth slapper
megaphone
nail polish pepper spray alarming graters
iron stamp p 14
p 15
p 16
p 17
p 18
p 19
p 20
overview
In my project I am looking at how anger through history has been pathologized within marginalized groups and narrated as hysteria or psychological defect. Instead of being seen and justified as a reaction to an injustice endured, anger and the narra- tives of anger, have been used to oppress and perform power.
The expectations and standards for public expression of emotion differ greatly
between men and women and our internalized ideas, as women, of what is expected of us are creating toxic
relationships to ourselves and others.
Who are we controlling our anger for?
And why do we think we have to do that to begin with?
The project uses personal relationships as a tool to create conditions for change. It engages in hacking practices and situates itself within the gifting economy. In this project I am taking on a role as a designer being primarily a friend. A friend to myself and a friend to my collaborators. This positioning, in combination with the practices of care and gifting I myself perform in this project, additionally explores the role of the female designer specifically. Drawing on the concept of the killjoy from Sara Ahmed the project looks at how we create change together and what that actually means.
Anger management points to the fact that the personal and emotional is political.
The question is: How can we re-narrate our anger through design?
My project aims to look at, and hopefully help dismantle, the destructive narratives surrounding female anger and the fema- le responsibility of constructiveness and creation. Posing as an ”anger blacksmith” I am making weapons for 7 women to whom I have a personal relationship, in attempt to give them tools to remind themselves of, and express, their anger. Through in- terviews, conversation and materialization I am aiming to transform their views on their own anger and its validity.
The weapons in the project are tools made from traditionally female object pre- sent in the everyday lives of the 7 women I collaborate with. Without being
specifically violent they disrupt, object and pose questions of the labour of care they are normally used to perform.
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a very short hello
Hi! This is anger management.
Or actually the direct opposite of anger management.
Let me explain.
This is a project about anger, and female anger specifically. Female anger makes it sound like it’s specifically female but that’s not necessarily what I mean. What I mean is that female anger is treated differently, treated as something other.
When saying it is treated as other this im- plies that someone is treating it. Someone is saying what is other. Who? That’s what we are going to get into.
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I am gracing this page with what I owe my entire project to: Karlssons Klister.
Thank God for Karlssons Klister.
feminist theory and anger
What I am here to tell you is basically that anger as an emotion has been politicized and through history used to oppress. What is clear is that the narratives surrounding female anger come from whomever holds power and therefore has the ability to oppress (historically it’s white dudes).
These narratives are created to keep women in check by placing the blame on the actual anger rather than whatever caused it (more often than not something white dudes cooked up). There is a lot said through the times about female anger. It has been described as unhinged and hysterical and thus been pathologized – seen as a problem situated in the female body and mind.1 Women who express their anger publicly are forced to behave calm and collected or else their arguments become invalidated on the grounds of them being purely emotional and chil- dish.2 Men in power have also had the pleasure of possessing some kind of perceived neutral emotional expression.
Perceived is the key word here as it points to the fact that it is only neutral as they are – by being in power – reserving them- selves the right to judge what is neutral or not, placing the female body and mind in a space of otherness.3 It’s like playing with a 3 year old. No matter what you say their rules apply, they made up the game.
The requirements of the expressions of anger are not only set high for women but also any group that is marginalized or oppressed. Just like there is a trope of ”the angry feminist”4 there is a lot of narratives surrounding black people and people of a lower economical class, for example, des- cribing them as inherently angry.5
1 S. Orgad and R. Gill, ’Safety valves for mediated female rage in the #MeToo era’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 19, no. 4, 2019. Avai- lable from Tylor & Francis Online, (accessed 3 February 2020).
2 S. Orgad and R. Gill, ’Safety valves for mediated female rage in the #MeToo era’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 19, no. 4, 2019. Avai- lable from Tylor & Francis Online, (accessed 3 February 2020).
3 B. Tomlinson, Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument:
Beyond the Trope of the Angry Feminist, Tupress.Temple.Edu, 2010, ch. 1, http://tupress.temple.edu/uploads/book/excerpt/2086_ch1.
pdf).
4 B. Tomlinson, ’Transforming the Terms of Reading: Ideologies of Argument and the “Trope of the Angry Feminist” in Cont- emporary US Political and Academic Discourse’, Journal of American Studies, vol. 44, no. 1, 2010, pp. 101-116. 427. Available from Cambridge Core, (accessed 3 February 2020).
5 S. Orgad and R. Gill, ’Safety valves for mediated female rage in the #MeToo era’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 19, no.
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These oppressive narratives create a story of anger as illogical, unintelligent and primitive, when in fact it is a valid,
reasonable reaction to any injustice endu- red. From the text The Uses of Anger6 written by Audre Lorde we learn about this intersectional perspective on anger and injustice. Lorde brilliantly describes how our anger is used against us but also how we ourselves perpetuate these
narratives of anger when we internalize them by using them against ourselves or people who are even less privileged then us. Thereby we run the errands of the patriarchy unwillingly.
While all of this evidently sucks it’s also important to understand that we often forget that it does, as we forget were it comes from. We forget that the voices in our heads, all the stuff we tell ourselves, are political. When we beat ourselves up for being to ”hysterical” or too ”needy” or too ”demanding” it is political. We have to come to terms with that the voices (in our heads or outside them) telling us that our anger is too much, uncalled for or
childish aren’t necessarily right or neutral but rather political and oppressive.
These voices are specifically dangerous when we think they are our own. We think we posses our thoughts. That the inner, the personal, is a lonesome comet floating through space but it’s not. It’s part of a bigger narrative and it’s paramount that we start searching for the origin of the thoughts we use to punish ourselves with.
If we see them for what they are (made to hurt and control) and where they come from (the ones who benefit from us staying put by beating ourselves up) we might stop perceiving them as the truth.
Lorde says that ”anger has eaten clefts into my living only when it remained
unspoken, useless to anyone”.7 This is in the center of the point I am trying to make while presenting you with my research.
These ideas of anger that we are harboring does not help us. They are destructive and they are oppressive. When we internalize them and turn them against ourselves by telling ourselves that we need to be responsible and how we should act to be accepted we eat clefts out of our living. We are doing a disservice to ourselves.
Most importantly we are wasting our time on fixing, changing and controlling our selves instead of trying to dismantle what is actually hurting us – patriarchy and misogynist ideas. This is how our anger becomes useless. By trying to control it we accept the responsibility of constructive- ness that come with being a woman, and we exept the social inequalities and unsustainable social constructs we have been conditioned to perform. Of course we have to try to forgive ourselves for this too, we have learnt that it’s a default setting.
I believe that it doesn’t have to be, though.
And even though I wish changing a
human default setting would be like going into menu on a TV and clicking a few buttons, it isn’t. How do we change what we have learned?
6 A. Lorde, ’The Uses of Anger’, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 1981, pp. 7-10. Available from CUNY Academic Works, (accessed 3 February 2020).
7 A. Lorde, ’The Uses of Anger’, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 1981, pp. 7-10. Available from CUNY Academic Works, (accessed 3 February 2020).
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what I have made
I will repeat the question: how do we change what we have learned?
We unlearn. Re-learn?
In my project I have tried to think about it as creating conditions for change. That means a few different things. Firstly it’s about materiality. This is kind of what anchors my project, well yes, materializes it. What I have done is that I have made weapons for anger for seven women that I know. These seven women will henceforth also be called my collaborators. I’m both going to, and not going to, present you to these women but I’ll get to that later.
Anyways. The weapons for anger. These weapons are basically household objects that I have taken and transformed into new objects, weapons or tools so to speak.
The reason I am working with household objects is that these objects play a certain role in cementing gender roles and how we as women perform care. Again, let me explain:
Care, or the labour of care is strongly linked to the responsibilities we take on as women. Even if we don’t think of our controlling our anger or emotions in general as responsibility as we neutrali- ze it, it is. This responsibility taints many parts of the female living and living with anger. Caring means to be responsible, mindful and positive, encouraging and accessible. On the surface anger seems to be the opposite of that. It seems to be egoistic and excluding, fast and furious, negative and mindless. When we produce care we perform feminized labour, which in Silvia Federici’s Wages Against
Housework is described as unwaged labour neutralized as women’s duties.8 It’s cleaning and childcare, cooking and baking and the emotional responsibility of relationships and whole families. Even though we have come a long way from the fifties and a generation of housewives even today we are struggling with gendered home labour and responsibility of care.
care
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8 S. Federici, Wages against Housework, Thecommoner.org, 1974, pp. 74-80, https://thecommoner.org/wp-content/uplo- ads/2019/10/04-federici.pdf (accessed 19 April 2020).
objects
This is where the objects come in.
Objects manifest this inequality – both in how they are designed (cleverly portrayed by Karin Ehrnberger in the project with the dolphia drill and hurricane mixer9 ,for exapmle) and in how we use them, and what we use. A lot of household items used for cleaning, cooking or even beauty
routines are feminized and connected to the care we are supposed to produce. Us being beautiful, controlled and pleasant, unangry women is a part of that.
In my project I have taken these object and hacked them to become weapons.
My subverting of these household objects is a protest against, and a questioning of, the labour we have been responsible for and how these objects implicitly forces us to stay in these habits and patterns of care and how that helps keep us in place even emotionally. The weapons advocate destruction and disruption, opposing themselves to the constant creation (of food, babies, time and love) and
constructiveness womanhood entails.
9 K. Ehrnberger, ’Visualising Gender Norms in Design: Meet the Mega Hurricane Mixer and the drill Dolphia’, KTH Art, Design and Sience, [web blog], 2012, https://www.kth.se/blogs/art-de- sign-science/files/2012/02/Karin.pdf, (accessed 20 January 2010).
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So that’s why I’m doing what I am doing, basically. I am looking to what I love doing as a designer, and what design
understands: the power of our objects and how they form us and vice versa. I want to subvert the narratives of anger we have internalized and materialized, and looking at how the materialized, the objects, can be a starting point.
As I am trying to create conditions for change for my collaborators, the weapons become a big facilitator, but there are more factors that play thier part. Again I’d like to point back to the aspect of care.
While I’m protesting this aspects of care I’m simultaneously and actively using it in my role as a designer, purposely
positioning myself as a woman and a friend. While making my weapons I am producing care and love for my collabora- tors. I am utilizing this as well as the close relationship I have to my collaborators to get to approach change on a very
personal level. This relates to how I have always looked at change. I have always felt that the ones I can really affect and be truthful – and even uncomfortably truthful – with are the ones close to me. When love and care is implied we can take the harder truths (and sentiments that might shake us and make us reconsider) we might have otherwise dismissed. This is powerful and a positive aspect of what we are
conditioned to learn as women.
woman/designer
Along with emotional labour and care comes close relationships and empathy, another condition for change, as I believe.
Now we got that covered, let’s get down to business.
I have already established that I have made weapons and that they are for seven
women that I know. What does that mean more specifically? Let me take you through my process.
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collaborators and killjoys
Once I had decided on working with people that I know I decided to reach out to seven women in Växjö (okey except one but let’s not be nitpicky here). The
reason for them being in Växjö was to make the meeting and collaborating easier.
The women I picked all encourage me to be angry and to express myself. They do it in different ways – som are encouraging and supportive verbally, some by always being there no matter what and some by making me want to be a role model, to take the fight so they can too. This relates to another feminist theorist I have relied on in this project, namely Sara Ahmed.
Sarah Ahmed and her concept of the killjoy10 has been a reference and a way for me to articulates what I am trying to help myself and my collaborators to be. The killjoy makes herself uncomfortable, she is angry and she is refusing to exist for the pleasure of men. In Sarah Ahmeds killjoy survival kit other killjoys11 becomes impor- tant, expressing how we need each other to bare the killjoying.
You could say that killjoying together is communal practice, or that we need community to killjoy. While this is true I would argue that there is more than one way to look at what community could mean. To avoid cliché pitfalls of using
”buzzwords” such as ”participation” or
”sharing” just because it is desirable and looks good we have to examine if what we are creating actually is ”community” or if we are just posing. I have tried to resist the urge to create platforms or shared rooms for my collaborators to participate in and rather kept my interaction with them in
the sphere of one on one. 10 S. Ahmed, Living a feminist Life, static1.squarespace.com, 2017, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59b02ee849fc2b75ee0772c- f/t/5b097a470e2e723b74306a54/1527347798402/sara-ahmed-li- ving-a-feminist-life-1.pdf, (accessed 24 March 2020).
11 S. Ahmed, Living a feminist Life, static1.squares- pace.com, 2017, p. 244, https://static1.squarespace.
com/static/59b02ee849fc2b75ee0772cf/t/5b097a470e-
2e723b74306a54/1527347798402/sara-ahmed-living-a-feminist-li- fe-1.pdf, (accessed 24 March 2020).
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My collaborators haven’t entered this project wanting to partake in groups or communities but rather to talk to me, and I have tried to work out ways where I honor this while still creating a extended (meaning deepened and stretching over time) support system. This support system, and the notion of the killjoy – and what it inspires to – also helps create these conditions for change I am talking about.
Again I am using my care for my
collaborators to inspire this killjoying in them, the same way they inspire me.
Alright, as promised back to my process.
I picked out women to work with, reached out to them (luckily they all said yes to collaborating) and off we were. I decided to conduct interviews with all of them individually to talk to them and ask questions about anger. These were my questions:
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My interview form, not filled out.
With my questions I intended to try to open up a space for new thoughts with my collaborators. I didn’t want them to have perfect answers to my questions and did not even expect them to have thought about these things before. The point was that I wanted them to get a look at what they thought about anger to begin with.
I think understanding, and getting a look at, our current narratives of anger is para- mount to trying to start changing them.
And now we bump into the problem of anonymity. For a while I debated on how much to share, and how much I could ask for my collaborators to share, publicly in this project. In the end I decided on not sharing anything that would reveal who they are at all. I want to honor the main condition that is creating this project – the trust and intimacy I share with my collaborators. Still I want to paint you a picture of who they are.
One of my collaborators is someone I live with, and a close friend. One is my
therapist. Two are friends I see
regularly that are in similar places in their lives, doing similar things to me. One is a close relative. The last two are a part of my boyfriends family, one teenager and this teenagers mother.
I can also paint you a picture of who they are by presenting you the weapons I made them. These descriptions of the weapons are accounts of my interviews with each woman. They serve as summaries and a way for me to present the content of what came out of the interviews. Here goes:
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This is a hypnosis whisk. It’s hand
motored and hypnotizes as you whisk. This whisk is for one of my friends and I made it for her because she said to me in her interview that she felt most connected to her anger when she was baking.
Sometimes she even throws baked goods into the wall in frustration (I relate to this).
This friend has had a long, quite destructi- ve relationship in which she was
manipulated by her boyfriend. She told me this relationship has left her feeling she is always wrong and her boyfriend even told her her anger was invalid, childish and her problem, having nothing to do with him.
Outside of her home and domestic relationships my friend is more confident with her anger, therefore
I wanted to make a weapon made to bring anger out at home, where she actually needs it. The whisk is meant to divert attention and disrupt manipulative
conversations. These kind of conversations can often be hard to leave, end or feel heard in. Hopefully the whisk can serve as an escape and a way of saying enough is enough.
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The whisk has fabric sewn on to make the sound smoother.
This is a lipstick anger-reminder. This weapon is for my therapist. She feels powerful when wearing lipsticks as it reminds her of her mother. This lipstick I have made from a wooden flagpole and an emptied out lipstick case. The lipstick says NEJ (NO in swedish) because this
collaborator expressed that she feels that she has to bite her tongue, and can’t be
”overreactive” or ”too much” at work. The NO stands for listening to the inner
voice – our gut feeling maybe – that wants to disagree. Anger helps us stand up for ourselves, resist and oppose when we need to. Understanding that our inner NO serves a purpose and that our anger can guide us there is something my therapist have taught me and this is me returning that favor.
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The lipstick looks just like a normal lipstick but is made from wood and has the word no on it.
This is a dishcloth slapper. This weapon is made for a teenager in my boyfriends family. She has to help cleaning at home and hates using the dishcloth. I have combined the dishcloth with a pot handle as this collaborator makes her breakfast porridge in a pot every morning and thus the handle brings comfort. This teenager takes a lot of responsibility at home, much more than her brother who is also quite keen on being a so called pain in her butt.
The dishcloth is made to be slapped in his face when he is irritating and is also a way for me to tell my collaborator that maybe she doesn’t have to ”let her anger go” like her parents are telling her.
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The slapper has small embriodered symbols.
This is a megaphone. It is for the mother of the previous collaborator, also a
member of my boyfriends family. This megaphone is made from a plastic coffee filter (she loves coffee) and a dish brush (she hates them). This collaborator lives with a significant other that sometimes can be emotionally distant and she feels she has to not only do her part in taking care of the family and home but also remind him constantly of his. I want to encourage her, even if she feels it’s useless to be angry anymore as it leads nowhe- re (her words, not mine), to remember to speak up. Even if it can feel tiring and overwhelming to always pick the fight (and a form of responsibility in itself) there is a self value in expressing ones feelings. This way they are out of ones body and mind and in the open.
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The megaphone is held together with string and glue.
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This is a nail polish pepper spray. It is made for my housemate. She workes with a few men that are allowed free rein at her work, doing as they please and
speaking as much as they please (too much). While being fed up with them my collaborator finds it hard to express her anger and often stays silent or starts crying instead, which is something she doesn’t like. This spray is ment to be used to spray nail polish in the faces of these men – or any men for that matter – to make them shut up but also to mark them. This is my collaborators way of leaving her mark of anger and disapproval with nail polish, which is something she hates. It is made to be carried outdoors where my collaborator works, attached to pants or a bag.
The spray says NO.
This is two graters made to be rubbed together making an alarming noise. This is for another one of my friends and it’s made from graters because she hates them, and hates how she always cuts herself on them. I have made soft protective edges for her and I have made them so that she can notify her significant other that he has stopped listening to her, or is in his own sphere, disregarding her. My collaborator thinks it’s hard to express her anger verbally and often carries it around for a long time before letting it out. Hopefully these graters can be a more accessible way to make her anger known. They also work as brass knuckles if you wish.
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One small and one slightly bigger grater, worne on one hand each.
This is an iron stamp. It is made for a collaborator that is a close family relative.
It is made from a tiny iron and has the word NEJ (NO) under it and comes with a ink pad. This is made to stamp on bosses or husbands that are patronizing, maybe even in their faces. Sometimes we don’t have to take the responsibility of
expressing why we are angry, but rather just show that we have had enough. This collaborator thinks she has to express her anger perfectly but I am giving her the opportunity and encouragement to not.
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The stamp with its lid on, without, the inkpad with lid on and without.
When Sara Ahmed writes about the killjoy she also writes about her killjoy survival kit, and in it she mentioned the value of feminist things. She says that we have to value these things as they create a space to live in, they create a horizon to look at and they function as reminders.12 This is what I want my weapons to be, tools in a killjoy survival kit; a condition to relearn.
Even if my weapons are so called (feminist) things, and protests maybe, they don’t stay in the realm of props. My weapons are not critical design objects13 in that that they are only posing a question, stating critique against controlled perfect unangry women.
They are actually ment to be used. This in itself might be a utopia; many of my
collaborators might never dare to use their weapons for real but I am giving them away saying that they could, and that I believe they are allowed to. I want to give them that utopia. A new way of looking at ones own anger and it’s validity exists in that utopia; my weapons materializes a new narrative.
12 S. Ahmed, Living a feminist Life, static1.squares- pace.com, 2017, p. 241, https://static1.squarespace.
com/static/59b02ee849fc2b75ee0772cf/t/5b097a470e-
2e723b74306a54/1527347798402/sara-ahmed-living-a-feminist-li- fe-1.pdf, (accessed 24 March 2020).
13 Dunne & Raby, Critical Design FAQ [website], http://dun- neandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13/0, (accessed 30 April 2020).
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Another thing, if we are returning to my process, is my method for making my objects. What I have done is that I have been hacking.
feminist things
Before my interviews I asked my collabora- tors to bring household object or an object associated with feminized labour that they like or use a lot and one they hate. I explai- ned it like this:
I wanted to make the weapons by merging what my collaborators like and disslike because I wanted to combine the comfort of an object they loved with the joy and protest of not having to use something they hate the way it is supposed to be used.
Actually not all weapons are created this way, I am lying. Some of them (like for ex- ample the spray) is just what my collabora- tor hates. I wanted to make her turn what she hates the most herself (nailpolish) onto her enemies. Other weapons just consists of a loved object (like the lipstick). I wasn’t to strikt with my own rules and rather did what made the most sense.
hacking
A text to one of my collaborators.
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14 Wikipedia, Hacker [website], http://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/
oxford-referencing/internet-websites, (accessed 28 April 2020).
15 Closed Exhibition – Disobedient Objects, Victoria and Albert
Museum,[website], http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/
disobedient-objects/, (accessed 3 February 2020).
16 O. Von Busch, ’Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design’, PhD Thesis, University of Gothenburg, 2008.
The concept of hacking, although, has transfered into other fields and come to help us think of ways of subverting, alte- ring or reclaiming objects, practices and situations, for example. This way hack- ing has become a tool or a method that, among other things, has been connected to activism. Hacking objects can have political purposes and hacking can be a way of performing direct action. The V&A exhibition Disobediant Objects15 – showing objects turned into tools for protest – is a great example of this. Another example is Otto von Bush who describes how hacking fashion can be social activism through DIY culture, using the world hacktivism.16
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For making my weapons I bought second hand objects. I started picking out red items. This was a coincidence; I happe- ned upon two vital objects (a whisk and a coffee filter) that happened to be clear red and then I kept finding red or neutral objects that fit with that.
My starting to work with the objects hap- pened to coincide with the outbreak of covid-19. This ment that instead of being in school and the workshops as planned I became confined to my home as I had symptoms of a cold. I had originally pla- ned to work with the method of hacking in my project but this ment that the hack- ing became even more real, or even that I hacked the hacking.
Let me explain: hacking is a method that may be most commonly used within tech- nology or computer science. According to wikipedia a hacker can be either someone with knowledge or skill (in this case about computers) that can overcome a problem, or someone who hacks their way into com- puter systems (potentially with malicious intent).14
Red second hand objects.
For my project I was inspired by this aspect of hacking being political and resistant. I wanted my weapons to be that.
What I mean when I say that I hacked the hacking is that I also had to hack the method for working, and the situation.
Instead of having all the tools I needed I had to dig around the basement of the house I live in to try to find whatever left over saws or pliers my landlord left behind. Luckily my landlord is crap at cleaning out her old stuff and tools were found. Also lacking material to build my weapons from (some wooden pieces mostly) I also took advantage of the fact that she doesn’t know what is hers in her basement and sawed a wooden tray, a woo- den brush handle and a miniature flagpole to pieces. A start to my criminal career or just hacking? Nobody knows.
I guess it could have been very frustrating not being able to make my weapons exactly the way I wanted to but to be perfectly honest it wasn’t. Sure, it
probably made it less effortless having to use an old metal say with no handle and really crappy sanding paper from (proba- bly) 1978 but being limited and confined, more than anything, ment that I had to be all the more creative. I found joy in hacking like for real and definitely enjoyed having to figure out how to solve problems.
In a way it lowers the pressure quite a bit knowing that you can’t craft a perfect item and besides, using limited resources and improvising was my childhood. Being a crafty kid growing up in the countryside must honestly be the origin source of all hacking.
My process with the weapons started with figuring out what situations in each
collaborators life they where suited for.
From there I made som sketches that I would later semi-disregard depending on what I found when buying objects to build from. I built almost all the weapons simultaneously, both to make myself unstuck if one didn’t work as planned and also to make them feel like they belonged together. I didn’t want the weapons to be iterations of each other but rather iterate laterally with all my weapons, slowly going forward.
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My original sketches with my collaborators names covered.
With almost all weapons something went wrong (as it inevitably does). I couldn’t make a wooden dish brush handle fit to a coffee filter and had to use another, plas- tic one, I found in a cupboard. I broke the lipstick case I bought (bye bye 140 kr) and had to sacrifice one of my own lipsticks.
More than once I had to repaint a pink hue I decided on using that was too red and I couldn’t remove a stain from a pink cloth I wanted to use.
All of this was ok though as it led me on in my process. The plastic dish brush
handle happened to be pink and when I saw that color with the red I knew this was a color scheme I wanted to go for. Giving away my own lipstick made that weapon even more meaningful and almost never is redoing and iterating bad. All my trails and tribulations with sanding in the bathroom sink, melting plastic under the kitchen fan and sawing through so much plastic with a shitty saw made me care all the more for my weapons and the people I made them for. I cared enough to continue and thinking about my collaborators through the process made my bond to them even stronger.
Pink brush i found.
Sacrifised lipstick.
Wrong hue.
Sanding in the bathroom.
Melting plastic.
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Apart from labeling my work as hacking I have also considered what I have done as crafting.
Crafting isn’t necessarily so different from hacking in my project. The hacking was also my crafting of the objects. What I see as different between the hacking and the crafting is that hacking more heavily influences the thought or the idea of the making whereas the crafting resides within the work of the hand.
When I sat for hours sanding a tiny piece of wood into the perfect size to fit into a pot handle or a bit of a flag pole to fit into a lipstick I felt I was crafting. Slowly stitching on fabric to a whisk felt like crafting.
crafting
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There was something in the slow work of the hand and the meticulousness that formed a nice contrast to the more brutal – as I saw it – nature of the hacking. My weapons consists equally much of glue, sawing stuff to pieces and melting plastic with lighters as they do embroidery, painting fine details and slowly shaping things into perfection. Both crafting and hacking where equally important and are equally reflected in the aesthetics of the weapons as well as what they represent.
They are angry yet gentle. Appropriating masculine culture in being weapons and simultaneously representing care and femininity.
Moments of crafting.
While working with these weapons the thought of my role as a blacksmith evolved. Making weapons being the job of a blacksmith traditionally situates my project in that tradition. Maybe I was the anger blacksmith? Liking this notion I started to research female blacksmiths in history. Even though it has been a traditio- nally male trade female practitioners exi- sted17, which I found inspiring and a legacy to carry on. One of my tutors (shout out to Anna-Karin) suggested that it was almost like anger therapy. My collaborators comes to me with their anger and stories and I listen and transform that into weapons;
therapeutic tools that can help them mismanage, unmanage or maybe just manage their anger in a different way.
Something connected to the work of blacksmiths is leaving the stamp of the maker on a finished work. This is something I took on and on all my weapons I have left this symbol , as a mark from the maker. It’s a small hello to my collaborator reminding them of my support as much as a trademark.
anger blacksmith
17 W. Zeitman, Badass Blacksmiths: Women’s Work and Transgender Identity [website], https://www.autostraddle.com/badass-blacks- miths-womens-work-and-transgender-identity-266870/, (acces- sed 26 March 2020).
18 Museum of London, The Suffragettes [website], https://www.
museumoflondon.org.uk/discover/suffragettes, (accessed 13 March 2018).
19 Museum of London, Toffee hammer used by militant suffragettes:
c.1911 [website], https://www.museumoflondonprints.com/ima- ge/399783/toffee-hammer-used-by-militant-suffragettes-c-1911 (accessed 13 March 2018).
20 BBC, Suffragette-defaced penny [website], http://www.bbc.co.uk/
ahistoryoftheworld/objects/iVUVhaKVREWjsHrr9IoOOA, (accessed 13 March 2018).
Another, both visually and contextually, important reference in my project are the Suffragettes and more specifically their weapons and tools. Of course what they fought for also resonates with my project and their unwillingness to comply and be quiet and pleasant is inspiring18, but what I have taken most inspiration from in this instance is how they used toffee hammers to break windows19 and how they had their own stamps20, for example, using graphics in their fight. This influenced my weapons with their mark and my usage of
household objects as weapons.
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gifting
After finishing my weapons I gave them away, simply. When I handed them over (without hugging and being 2 meters apart) I gave all my collaborators a letter. In my letters I individually told them why I had chosen them for my project and why they were important to me. I also explained to them what their weapons were made to do and why I decided on making them the way I made them. This connected back to our initial interviews and conversations and was a way for me to show my
collaborators how I had understood their needs. My weapons, in themselves, show what I encourage my collaborators to do, and how I encourage them to express themselves. My letters add to that by explaining why – and here I’m basing myself in both my own opinions as well as my research – I think they should. While the interview opens up for beginning to think about anger the letters and weapons continue that, presenting new narratives and offering new approaches.
Writing these letters was almost as important as making the object and a process of crafting as much as anything.
I don’t think that my objects would have had as big of an impact without them as they helped translate the objects and the care that had gone into crafting them. In my appendix (p. 36) you can see of one letter, with personal information blacked out.
The act of gifting the objects and letters in itself has meaning in my project. I have decided to gift the weapons I make to my collaborators as yet another way of
utilizing this ”role of a woman” I’m talking about and the feminized labour that comes with it.
Often the duty of gift giving falls on women because of the understanding and care needed to produce or give a fitting gift. Gifting in itself also expresses care.
Genevieve Vaughan talks about the gifting economy as a contrast to (but still exsisting within) the market economy.
21 Women and the Gift Economy: The Alternative Paradigm [on- line video], Genevieve Vaughan, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=-vDh7nXf-fY, (accessed 20 February 2020).
She says the market economies capitalis- tic values are strongly tied to patriarchal worldview whereas the gifting economy builds on feminine values.21 Values I think we need in order to move into a more sus- tainable living economically, socially and environmentally, as they center around the opposite of what is rapidly driving the world to an imminent end – meaning care, togetherness, fairness and empathy. Gifting in my project becomes an important way of using these values to create an even closer bond to my collaborators.
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In the end of my letters I added two things. Firstly I asked for documentation of my collaborators life’s with the weapons, asking them to formulate observations and sending them to me with an image of the weapon in their home or life. You can read some of these reflections in the appendix (pp. 37-39), along with seeing some of the photos. The reflections I received showed me that my collaborators used their
objects as materialized reminders or killjoy things. Although none of my collabora- tors have actually used their weapon yet (and maybe never will) they seem to have started new processes and new narratives, which I am grateful for.
Secondly I added, in the end of my letter, an invitation to subscribe to a newsletter.
Newsletter might not be the perfect definition but it resembles a newsletter in it’s form. What it is is simply a weekly reminder of anger, it’s validity and my continuous support. Sometimes the newsletter comes with a exercise to try or just a seed for thought. The reason for making it an email newsletter is that it’s easy and accessible and comes with no requirement to reply.
ongoing conversations
I’m not creating a platform that requires group participation or commitment but rather a space without the pressures of participation or ”community”. It’s just me talking to them; a prolonged conversation.
I hope that this conversation can be a condition for change, a space that carries the values of care that I am promoting.
So far I have sent out one newsletter and even though no replies where required my collaborators did. This have created spaces for me to also keep the individual conver- sations going, outside the newsletter.
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My first newsletter.
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This means that my project is situated in a timeline, but also in my project in itself I am working with time. With my newsletter I am stretching my community and the space of support and encouragement I am sharing with my collaborators over time. I am wishing to create conditions to
re-learn and create new narratives of anger and that takes time. Our existing
narratives of anger have been repeated to us and formed through repetition. As many times as we have heard our anger is
”wrong” or ”crazy” we need to hear that it is not. This is why I am sending out the newsletter, and why I am stretching my project over time.
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metadesign
These objects I have made, and these conversations I am having I do place, somehow, in a metadesign framework. I am thinking of what I am creating – these materializations and conditions – as a seed for change.22 This, to me, means that I am seeing how my project aims at creating conditions to change narratives together with a few people, and how their
narratives, and mine, are part of bigger ones, bigger paradigms, the micro in the macro. Seeing my project as a seed for change also means that it is a part of bigger context, where hopefully more projects and other works interlink. My project can create change and adress narratives but individually it can only ever do so much. I see how my work connects to feminist work before me and work yet to come.
22 M. Tham, H, Jones ’Metadesigning Tools: Designing the seeds for shared processes of change’, In: Changing the Change. An international conference on the role and potential of design research in the transition towards sustainability, Turin, Italy, Goldsmiths Research Online, 2008.
A last little appendix to my process is a mini zine that I created. It is more or less an instruction to making your own weapon for anger and I have places it in public spaces.
It is targeted – and talking to – women and even though I can’t have a personal rela- tionship to anyone who picks up my zine it still consists of an invitation to join the newsletter.
Back and front of my mini zine. It exists in English and Swedish and is printed on pink paper.
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To conclude this repost, and this project I’d like to repeat the aims of it. I set out to challenge narratives of female anger through conversation and materialization.
Have I done that? I guess it is hard to tell.
This project isn’t working with any surveys or following up on results. This project is just me, and my efforts to help people I care about (and myself, if we’re honest).
Working with people that I know might seem like an easy way out or a shot cut but I believe it’s the opposite. Working with people that I care for has meant that I have cared all the more for what I have created for them, and how I can help them. This also made the project very real. It wasn’t a proposal of a way of working or a theoreti- cal concept but something that very much happened. The weapons meant something, and our conversations too. And even
though I cannot know precisely how much change I have enabled with my collabo- rators I know that working like this, with close friends, made it count for me.
conclusion
In hindsight I wish I could have inclu- ded how to also talk to your friends about anger, or create conversations about anger in my zine. It could have been a toolkit for anger in more ways that the material.
Also I wish that I could have met even more with my collaborators, and talked even more about anger. I think that what we shared in the interviews and the letters, and all responses after the letters, have been the most rewarding. Covid-19 and the timeframe of the project made it hard but then again it doesn’t have to stop now, and that’s the beauty of working with people close to me.
Going forward I would love to think of how I could make weapons that are even more accessible to use. I don’t want to compromise the protest the weapons pose but I think there is a fine line to explore between usability and conceptuality that I haven’t yet fully understood. After all I only made seven weapons and I haven’t had that much time to understand how they are being used or use them myself.
Maybe I will make one weapon for me to start with, and continue my work as the anger blacksmith from there.
I have gotten a few questions throughout about what kind of design this project is and I have struggled to answer. As I have already stated I see how it fits into the metadesign framework or method. Does that make it metadesign? Potentially it does, but it is not only that and don’t ne- cessarily fit perfectly. Most design
(metadesign included) does work with nurturing the positive and anger doesn’t always seemingly sit inside of that (even if I would argue that it does). Maybe my project needs a space and a formulation that includes its rebelliousness. Something loud and humorous, because that’s how I view it. My weapons are quirky and ironic albeit serious and demonstrative. On top of that they have gotten an even more grave meaning in the times of corona when domestic abuse has flourished and they have become potential weapons for self defense. What I am doing is feminist work and what I have come to name it for myself is design for anger. It is materiali- zation and conversation made to change politically charged, oppressive narratives of anger. This, at least, is design for anger to me.
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I would like to leave this with a short note on why I decided to make weapons.
Calling my objects weapons can sound vi- olent and I am aware of that. It tickles the connection between anger and
violence that I don’t necessarily believe has to exist. In a sense I am advocating violence but that is also an exaggeration.
Non of my weapons can hurt more than a kitchen knife would and to turn things on it’s head I think the narratives on anger and oppressive demands on women is violent in themselves. A lot of the time I, personally, feel scared to speak up or act out in fear of ruining a relationship.
So many times I have kept things in, in an attempt to take responsibility for the survival and perceived happiness of the relationship. Maybe if I had spoken up or slapped a dishcloth in a boyfriends face or sprayed his eye with nail polish that would have been the end of the relationship – not so much because the other party leaving but because it would have allowed me to see that maybe if I want to slap someone in the fact with a dishcloth, I should leave.
By leaving space for expressing anger my weapons also offer a space to ruin
relationships. So many times I wish I had ruined relationships and I wonder what would have happened if I did not keep my anger in but rather had shown it, felt it and trusted it. That goes for many, many other instances in my life as well.
After doing this project I think I am most taken aback by how medieval having to advocate something as simple as anger seems. How crazy that we still think we have to be so pleasing and gentle, and how absurd that we beat ourselves up so much for being angry. I had to resist the urge to, throughout this report, defend anger and overly explain why it’s not bad, because that is what I have had to do throughout this project, even with classmates and other women. This aversion to anger might seem protective of positivity and
happiness but I think all it protects us from is change.
We might feel more comfortable if we think we avoid anger because it’s ”violent”
or ”destructive” than if we realize that we avoid anger because we have been told all our lives that we are wrong, ”obnoxious”
and ”crazy” for feeling it. I think it’s time we face that. Even if we might be challeng- ed and dismissed if we express our anger freely, in less controlled manners, I think it’s worth it. Sometimes having just one other person cheer you on can be enough to help you through it.
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35
reference list
Ahmed, S., Living a feminist Life, static1.squares- pace.com, 2017, https://static1.squarespace.com/
static/59b02ee849fc2b75ee0772cf/t/5b097a470e- 2e723b74306a54/1527347798402/sara-ahmed-li- ving-a-feminist-life-1.pdf, (accessed 24 March 2020).
Closed Exhibition – Disobedient Objects, Victoria and Albert Museum,[website], http://www.vam.ac.uk/
content/exhibitions/disobedient-objects/, (accessed 3 February 2020).
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dunneandraby.co.uk/content/bydandr/13/0, (acces- sed 30 April 2020).
Ehrnberger, K., ’Visualising Gender Norms in De- sign: Meet the Mega Hurricane Mixer and the drill Dolphia’, KTH Art, Design and Sience, [web blog], 2012, https://www.kth.se/blogs/art-design-science/
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vu.edu.au/oxford-referencing/internet-websites, (accessed 28 April 2020).
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Orgad S., and Gill R., ’Safety valves for mediated female rage in the #MeToo era’, Feminist Media Studies, vol. 19, no. 4, 2019. Available from Tylor &
Francis Online, (accessed 3 February 2020).
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BBC, Suffragette-defaced penny [website], http://
www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/iVUV- haKVREWjsHrr9IoOOA, (accessed 13 March 2018).
Tham, M., Jones, H., ’Metadesigning Tools: Desig- ning the seeds for shared processes of change’, In:
Changing the Change. An international conference on the role and potential of design research in the transi- tion towards sustainability, Turin, Italy, Goldsmiths Research Online, 2008.
Museum of London, Toffee hammer used by militant suffragettes: c.1911 [website], https://www.museu- moflondonprints.com/image/399783/toffee-ham- mer-used-by-militant-suffragettes-c-1911 (accessed 13 March 2018).
Tomlinson, B., Feminism and Affect at the Scene of Argument: Beyond the Trope of the Angry Feminist, Tupress.Temple.Edu, 2010, ch. 1, http://tupress.
temple.edu/uploads/book/excerpt/2086_ch1.pdf).
Tomlinson, B., ’Transforming the Terms of Reading:
Ideologies of Argument and the “Trope of the Angry Feminist” in Contemporary US Political and Academic Discourse’, Journal of American Studies, vol. 44, no. 1, 2010, pp. 101-116. 427. Available from Cambridge Core, (accessed 3 February 2020).
Vaughan, G., Women and the Gift Economy: The Alternative Paradigm [online video], 2016, https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vDh7nXf-fY, (accessed 20 February 2020).
Von Busch, O., ’Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design’, PhD Thesis, University of Gothenburg, 2008.
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autostraddle.com/badass-blacksmiths-wo- mens-work-and-transgender-identity-266870/, (accessed 26 March 2020).
appendix 36
This is one out of seven letters that I wrote. I have censored it in order to keep my collaborator anonymous. The name of my collaborator is in the pink star at the top (but now covered).
Following are images of my weapons taken by my collaborators, acompanies with observations they have made during thier first time with the weapons.
”One observation about the weapon is that it looks so cute on the outside but it has an insidious inside and function. Looks gentle but can hurt. Sneaky.”
37
”Anger is the NO to the thought that I cannot claim space as I am. As a woman.
Wearing lipstick. That lipstick or make-up should mean that I am vain when in fact it is a part of my armour. Lipstick is one part of the NO that makes me understand my integrity and that makes me proud to be a me, woman, human. The NO makes me feel my edges and makes me
understand where I begin and end.
My weapon is a yes to saying NO.
To speaking up, for myself and for what is important, both in my life and the world.
We can’t just skip over anger. It needs to be allowed, felt, formulated and
communicated to be intergrated. I am at the age of 62 less frustrated, more
centered. I am ready to take on the world.
Speak up. Make it better. And anger makes me happy! Happy to feel the irrepressable anger of women.”
”Anger has been an emotion I honestly feel is foreign and hard to deal with. It was very exciting to see what kind of weapon you have made for me. When I saw them, they immediately made me feel being cared for. The fabric binding on the edge says it all. ’It is like your own screaming’ - something my partner reflected, I thought it was interesting, It’s like we have lost the ability to scream, like what babies do, along our way of becoming a woman. They are thoughtfully made, and not at all what I imagined, but loved from the first sight. I have a smile on my face everytime I see them, remind me that I’m entitled to be angry and I can express it. They now lay on a shelf in front one of my wedding photos, haha. Also I see them as art pieces, so they have been
proudly displayed.”
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”My weapon recides underneith my palm that gives me fresh air, next to it is my wine and my first aid kit. A corner of necessities.
Turning the whisk is very satisfying, I do it when I think.”
”From your letter and my weapon I take with me that we can never hear it enough. That our anger, our feelings, aren’t the problem. That we are allowed to say NO and express our anger. I now understand how important it is to convey to all women that it’s not they who are wrong, that there is no shame and guilt in expressing anger. And that we don’t exist to please anybody. I have carried my weapon in my backpack but mostly it has been placed on my drawer. It stands the- re, in almost flourescent red, exclaiming NO. No to everything that’s wrong and unfair and for everybody who hasn’t or can’t say it them- selves. I was angry the other day and the weapon helped me being angry instead of turning to self hatred I usually feel when I am in fact angry. I didn’t use the weapon for real but the weapon is also inside me. I am spraying my anger.”
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thanks
To my collaborators, first and formost. This is thier project as much as it is mine, it is ours. I dedicate it to them.
To Lena and Christina as well as Åsa, Eric and Anna-Karin for guiding me (mostly) through zoom meetings and screens.
To my landlord for being so messy and such a hoarder.
To Karlssons klister, my lifesaver.
And to all brilliant, angry, loud and persistant feminists before me, and those yet to come.
