'Art appears when what is made feels as if there is a profound misunderstanding at the heart of what it is, as if it were made with the wrong use in mind, or the wrong idea about what it is capable of, or simply the wrong set of assumptions about what it means to fully function in the world. A work works by not working at all. By not obeying the law of any system or authority external to the process of its own making, a work emphatically expresses its own right to exist for itself and in itself, and questions — by merely existing — the rule of law that works to bind all to semblance of the common good. Art is a lawless proposition.' Do you agree with Chan’s definition of art? Do you think this can be extended to design as well?

Chan is right, art breaks laws, but I can’t think of an instance of completely lawless art. Artists are constantly negotiating laws, or to use another word, expectations: an internal expectation to make art, the expectation of the gallery for production, the expecation of the hosting instution to install something ‘artful,’ and the expectation of the viewer to encounter art.

So as Chan explains art is made when these expectations are challenged (which is to an extent what we expect art to do), and to challenge these expectations an artist needs to be strategic towards their audience. Perhaps truly lawless art can only exist without an audience, or without consideration thereof.

Chan’s statment can be extended to design, and I think it’s useful! Especially as design perhaps has a broader audience and a broader range of operation than art, both bringing broader expecation. A book, for instance, has to be interesting to other designers, to publishers, to the author, to the lay reader, who may judge it solely on content, and to the designer herself. But I think that design breaks laws for the audience by proposing a new structure. While art is allowed to surprise, baffle, shock its audience without offering any more fulfillment of expectation, except that they have encountered ‘art,’ and therefore should reconsider their own understanding of laws, designers tend to replace the laws they break with new laws.