The Sweet Flypaper Podcast with Marquise Stillwell

Editing by Tony Trolly

Co-Hosted by Sandra Simpson

Audio engineering by Hasan Insane

Designer Marquise Stillwell’s new podcast series “The Sweet Flypaper” - borrows its name from “The Sweet Flypaper of Life,” a 1955 fiction and photography book by photographer Roy DeCarava and poet Langston Hughes, describing 1950s Black family life in Harlem, New York City.

Joined at the beginning of each episode by friend, educator and Creative Economist, Neil Ramsay, this conversation series responds to a growing need to reexamine how design powers the world and our lives, and its potential to thoughtfully – and poetically – influence societal change. Stillwell firmly believes in the concept of holistic design practices, which, with the help of Ramsay, he uses as a guide to navigate through the ten episodes of the first season.

From Deb Willis’ celebration of Black history, joy and progress through photography, to Paola Antonelli’s philosophy that design democratization and literacy can be a catalyst for progress, Stillwell takes us on a warm, approachable journey through the nuances of creative process and their power to change the world.

Listen on Simple Cast | Spotify | Apple/iTunes | Podtail

TRANSCRIPT

Nu Goteh
Hi, my name is Nu Goteh, co founder and creative director of Deem Journal, we're excited to introduce to you Deem Audio. Deem Audio is our exploratory approach to interviews, oral histories and storytelling. Team audio will consist of five episode programs, highlighting voices, themes and topics within the theme community. With that love to introduce our introductory series The Sweet Flypaper hosted by Marquise Stillwell.

For the The Sweet Flypaper, Marquise sat down with authors, thinkers, designers, and changemakers, to discuss the power of design across disciplines, and the power to create better conditions. For the human experience of the original 10 recordings, we selected five episodes, that really start to highlight how design can show up as social practice, ranging from topics of process, identity, research, and machine. Marquise weaves together a strong narrative that really helps us to start to find new ways to think about how design shows up in our life. Hopefully, you're able to pull some references and insights that can help you better understand or contextualize your practice as a designer, and as a change maker. With no further ado, I'd love to introduce Marquise Stillwell.

Marquise Stillwell
My name is Marquise Stillwell, co-founder of Deem. And design shows up in the work that I do, as a filmmaker, as a designer, as an entrepreneur, as an environmentalist, by making sure that people are at the center of everything that I do. And with people it's about the process. It's about the process of how do we become we? And how do we actually start to think about our relationship between each other design, fell in love with the outputs and the outcomes. For me, I'm in love with the process. And the process for me begins with how we socialize together, and how we work together and how we build. So everything that I do, design is a social practice, meaning that this is how we socialize. This is how we live together, not designed as this outcome of elevated fidelity. But it's really about the fidelity of the process and how we connect to each other. That's the through time. And that's why I'm as a designer.

NG

So Marquise, you participate in many mediums, both print, and also film. Why audio? Why podcasts?

MS
Audio for me, is about dialogue. It's that relationship that you start to build with the person that whether it's just sitting cross, or it's on video, and you start to really build this intimate conversation and back and forth, which is very different than other mediums where it's maybe one to many, or many to many, the interaction is very intimate. And then when it goes out the ability for the audience to actually walk down the street. And what they do is take that conversation, and they may feel like it's out of context, because they're sitting in a park, or they're sitting in a car. But it's beautiful, because we also bring them into the room as well. So there's a relationship of space and dialogue within the conversation.

NG
So with the Sweet Flypaper, you have a very eclectic and diverse group of thinkers, designers, different people who participate in design in a different way. What was the intention with the curation?

MS
Yeah, so when when you think about The Sweet Flypaper, first, we have to acknowledge where it came from. Right. And so The Sweet Flypaper of Life was a book that was originally done to explore and investigate life in Harlem, in the street. But it wasn't about street photography. It was literally the people in the street who are taking photos and looking at life. And so for me, this intersection between city people and planet is a place for me to start to ask bigger questions, and think about how do we live at these different intersections. And so for me the Sweet Flypaper was about having a platform to investigate the intersections of life, and really think about the why, and the how we live, not just the what, and go deeper in those discussions with different types of points of view different individuals from different walks of life, to take that deeper and further.

NG
From the interviews and conversations that you had, what were some of the insights or some of the things that you've been able to take away with you into your practice?

MS
The through line that I felt with the interviews was this idea of empathy and understanding the lived experience of empathy through storytelling. Storytelling is so important in regards to amplifying and even by really making lived experiences the facts of lived experience, more tangible and so process comes in empathy comes in, we really go deeper in regards to how people are living their life and the process they go through to investigate the process they go through with their art, and what they're thinking. So it's really those deeper stories around what you may see as facts of who are they, where are they from, what do they do. But until you add story to it, it’s just the baseline fact. And that's the beauty of the work that we do. It's the beauty of being a designer. And I really believe that the Sweet Flypaper amplifies that through each story.

NG
One of the things that stood out to me was process research and identity in which you explore that in many different ways with some of your interviews. One that really stood out is Sara Zewde and her approach to process and research. Why was that important for you to highlight?

MS
Because we emphasize so much in design, the outcomes, the fidelity of outcomes, and we don't always celebrate and understand the process. And so for the conversation I had with Sara, it was really important to get a better sense of her process. And I do believe that when we start to celebrate and elevate the process, the outcomes are elevated, as well. But if we only think about the outcomes, I really believe that we're missing something in regards to an elevated outcome, an elevated outcome that is more human, that has more dignity to it, that has more story to it, that allows people to show up and see themselves in their spaces. And the way that Sara does that is magnificent.

NG
Mel Chin also really highlighted empathy as part of the process. Where does empathy sit with your process?

MS
Empathy is everything. Again, empathy is a muscle, it's something that has to be built. And when you're listening to this conversation I had with Mel, you can really see the lived experience, you can hear the lived experience, you can feel the lived experience, and through that lived experience that builds the muscle of empathy, understanding. Therefore, when you look at the work that is produced, you can see where he is able to express the space of how other people show up as well, and how everyone can see themselves in the work, and how he creates these bigger questions and narratives around his work through the use of empathy. But again, empathy is not this outcome or this thing that you can grab off the shelf. It's a lived experience that requires vulnerability, and through that vulnerability it builds your muscle to be empathetic towards others.

NG
Dr. Ingrid Waldron did a very good job highlighting the need for duality and the need for individual approaches when it comes to design. What did you take away from that conversation?

MS
Duality is really important, this idea of identity in the way that we express ourselves. And as we are becoming more fluid in the way that we express our individual self, in a larger context of this world, my hope is that we start to get rid of the boxes that we check in how we how certain entities, whether it's government or corporate, requires us to identify. And we start to get to a better place to where we can have not a double consciousness in regards to how we live our life, but a duality in the way that we want to be seen.

NG
You touched on vulnerability earlier, this is your first time recording a podcast. How did you go into this? And what were some of the things that you needed to learn and stretch and take on to be able to produce such a great piece of work?

MS
For me, the vulnerability was in regards to really trying to make that connection with the person that I was speaking with in that dialogue, doing it in a way that we start to forget that there was a microphone that this was being recorded. And then we just had a conversation. So how might we go from dialogue to conversation? How do we start to allow the audience to come in as well? So a lot of my research that I did, it wasn't about me investigating necessarily things that I didn't know. I wanted to think about what other people wanted to hear. What are some things that I want to be brought out? The other piece of this is how might I create conditions to allow the participant to bring forth something that they may not thought of? That “Ooh, that was a really good question.” It's one of my favorite lines when you get someone to say that. It’s because I’m doing the research. I’m doing the reading. I’m investigating, and I’m getting to a place where we’ve created enough trust in the dialogue, that it turns into a beautiful conversation.

NG
If there's one thing that you want the audience to look forward to, and that you look forward to from the entire series, what would that be?

MS
I hope that the outcome is better questions. My hope is that when you're done listening, is that you start clicking and Googling and you start to go deeper into the conversation you start to hear and see what else they've been talking about. I hope you become a fan of them. And you start to want to see their work more. And you also take on some of the ideas around practice and empathy and approach to your own work. And so my hope is that this is a learning library, a sound library and audio place where people come and they come back to over and over again, and they also start to share.

NG
Listen to The Sweet Flypaper on Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @deemjournal to stay up to date on upcoming episodes. Also, we'd love to hear from you. Email us at hello@deemjournal.com with any questions or comments. Deem Journal—exploring design as social practice.