Hot Desk - Geoff Han

I write this brief for our upcoming seminar while hot desking at Die Keure, a printing company on the outskirts of Bruges, Belgium. I am here to oversee the production of a museum catalog and every half hour, I enter the factory floor where the repetitive hum of rotating printing cylinders engulfs me.

Production is the act of creating something, most often with machinery, at high speed and mass scale. The origins of typography can be traced back to the invention of hand-operated moveable type and steam-powered industrial presses. During the Industrial Revolution, technological innovation enabled manufacturing to transition from a dependance on handwork to one driven by machines. Today, the economy has shifted away from the production of goods to services and knowledge. The experience economy is driven by flexibility, mobility, and circulation.

While in the office at Die Keure, between trips to the factory floor, in addition to writing the brief for this seminar, I have been texting with the museum director, and emailing with clients and students. Over the last 17 years of working intermittently with Die Keure, project managers have become younger and hipper, reachable by text message or DM, blurring the boundaries of colleague and friend. I’ve also observed their office interior evolve from a spartan factory room into the style of a vaguely European, modern working space. These office renovations are recognizable by their bleached wood floors, bold wall paint colors, molded plastic chairs and generically patterned floor rugs – as popularized by TV shows like Emily in Paris.

Parallel to the evolution of work at Die Keure, in the past two decades, production and labor in a post-industrial world has changed dramatically. The growing presence of artificial intelligence and automation foreshadows an ominous end to work. In this seminar, you will be asked to consider the status and significance of production within the context of the post-industrial landscape.

Research a historical or contemporary means of production that is connected to the city of Karlsruhe or nearby. What were the historical precursors to your chosen production method, how did it evolve over time, and what practices became or will become obsolete as a result? After gathering your research, find an appropriate medium to translate the research through, a visual language to frame it, and a means of production to exhaust to its limit.