Starting from the story of Ann Lee, the founder of the egalitarian Shaker sect in 1774, Witches of Design combines the tenets of Shaker design–famous for its rocking chairs, flat brooms and other iconic objects–with the seditious figure of the witch. In 1837, the community's established ritual order was disrupted by impromptu bouts of ecstatic trances–the start of the so-called Era of Manifestations. Driven by the spirit of Ann Lee, unruly sisters began to shake, spin and misappropriate th...

A counterhistory and new historiography of design.In Design by Accident, Alexandra Midal declares the autonomy of design, in and on its own terms. This meticulously researched work proposes not only a counterhistory but a new historiography of design, shedding light on overlooked historical landmarks and figures while reevaluating the legacies of design's established luminaries from the nineteenth century to the present. Midal rejects both linear narrative...

A design theorist (Alexandra Midal), a neuroscientist (Albert Moukheiber), two designers (Antoine Fœglé and Emma Pflieger) and two curators (Jolanthe Kugler and Scott Longfellow) take a look at the mechanisms behind the flat-Earth theory, and the ways in which "alternative" narratives are disseminated.Like a giant tortoise shell, with a dome or without... the many different forms of flat earth are a map-like portrayal of dissent, a final bastion to refute modernity. What is flat ea...