The art of designing oneself in the work of Sebastián Errázuriz

Abstract

The article shows the aesthetic imperative of self-design in the work of Chilean designer and artist Sebastián Errázuriz. It explores the relationships that arise between art, design, technology and the market when promoting desires in what Gernot Böhme calls “Aesthetic Capitalism”. This economic model, currently prevailing in developed countries, is distinguished by exploiting the inexhaustible desires of individuals, making economically relevant the desire to be seen and heard, the desire for fame, the desire to equip their own life and the desire for mobility. In this scenario, the article goes through the common origin of design, art and technology as illusions that deceive the human being (Flusser) and give him skills that he does not have (Sloterdijk). It shows how one has gone from valuing work and matter as tools to satisfy basic needs (Smith, Marx), to use them as secondary means for the staging of one’s existence (Baudrillard, Böhme). Finally he asks about the possibility of constructing a design poetics around a common good, located above the individual desires of our societies.