Dialectics of design or the unbearable persistence of the Avant-garde

Contemporary creative endeavour – design as much as art– remains trapped between two seemingly contradictive yet equally strong tendencies: the avant-garde aspiration to shape the social world in a progressive, emancipatory way and the market urge to adjust to commercial exigencies of globalised, neoliberal turbo-capitalism. They both stem from the avant-garde cleavage and as such they have been both present for almost a century now. None of them can get stabilised as a finally dominant force, yet none of them can get completely eliminated neither. It’s their dialectical interplay and tension that constitute the most important characteristic of modern artistic creation.