Designer, director and activist Nelly Ben Hayoun has recently completed her latest documentary titled I am (not) your monster. She told Dezeen that we must change the way we see leadership and power structures if we wish to see a more representative and critical design industry.
“In design, which is much the same as the technology industry and so on, you find that leadership doesn’t represent the majorities,” said Hayoun.
“The discipline has to interrogate itself as to how we develop and how we think of leadership and how we bring in role models from the start. Not only to women but also gender diversity, which is completely non-existent in the design industry,” she explained.
I am (not) a monster, the 34-year-old designer’s third feature-length film is being released later this year. It sees Hayoun interview a number of subversive figures from all across the cultural gamut, ranging from theorist Noam Chomsky to Pussy Riot’s Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and cyborg Neil Harbisson.
Throughout the documentary, the London-based designer impersonates the 20th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt as she interrogates subjects on what it is that makes a monster in present-day society.
“The film is advocating a reclamation of ownership of politics from the perspective of citizens and doing this through the vehicle of looking at education in this time in history where we can tend to forget how important it is to develop a critical form of thinking,” she told Dezeen.
“What is the monster at this point in time?” she asked. “For Arendt, the monster was someone who was not thinking and what makes people monsters. In the thinking of Arendt, it is actually institutions and bureaucracy that will turn you into monsters because you won’t be allowed or be provided with platforms for critical thinking in these institutions.”
Read more on Dezeen: https://www.dezeen.com/2019/03/15/design-power-structures-nelly-ben-hayoun-i-am-not-a-monster/
Directed by Nelly Ben Hayoun
Director of Photography: Fiona Braillon
Editor: David Potter
Executive Producers: Nelly Ben Hayoun and Christo Hird
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