What is the social form you’re in right now?

Social forms are interactions, “the social can only exist in the space between two people,” Nancy tells us in this episode with Nancy Nowacek and John Sharp. Social Form is a concept created by sociologist Georg Simmel to understand the grammar of human interactions, the kind of roles and spaces we’re occupying in relationship to one another.

Why do we care about this? We are messy and unpredictable and whenever we approach a stranger we can't really ever be sure of who they are where they're coming from what to make of the potential unfolding situation or even be able to guess at how it might unfold unless we have some grammars. These grammars developed over time as forms by which we can engage with one another. We can understand these forms undergirding lots of different possible interactions with people.

Ted Pervez, the founder of the Social Practice Program at California College of the Arts, observed that we can begin to actually manipulate or understand those forms In more detail and then manipulate them towards new kinds of interactions.

We discuss some contemporary examples: Half-way, Sideling, Arenas, and Popup Social Forms.

Nancy Nowacek is an artist, designer, and educator researching the implications of the designed world on human, non-human and social subjectivities. She is currently on faculty in the Visual Arts and Technology department at the Stevens Institute of Technology.

John Sharp is a designer, writer, and educator researching the intersection of history, play, ethics, and aesthetics, often through designed artifacts like games and sports. Together, they teach courses on creative research and social and ludic form. He is currently the director of the MFA Design and Technology program at Parsons, the New School.

nancynowacek.com

http://www.heyimjohn.com