volume 13/ MISCHIEF.

The water is rising, the ice is melting, the forests are on fire, and the land is sinking. The storm is coming! The oceans are ACID! The fish are DYING! Trash is circling and circling in the widening gyre. Every day is a new catastrophe, we’re rushing toward a precipice, we’re out of time, we’re out of luck, we screwed the pooch, dropped the ball, botched the delivery, broke the system, went hurtling down the road of good intentions — we’re sorry, officer —

In design, we’ve been trained to respond with Solutions. So we’ve scaled up, we’ve made maps, we’ve run the numbers, we’ve analyzed the data, and aha! we found the answer: a 40-story apartment building made out of responsive mushroom bricks that cleans the air, collects stormwater, and hooks into a regional transit system to create a network of disruptive makerspaces that in turn will get to work on solving poverty.     

"I've got you this time, Brer Rabbit," said Brer Fox, jumping up and shaking off the dust. "You've sassed me for the very last time. Now I wonder what I should do with you?"

Throughout history mischief makers have plagued the over-powerful, puncturing the smug assumptions of Fat Cats, Big Cheeses, and High Muck-a-Mucks. From Coyote to Anansi to Shakespeare’s fools, the trickster holds the trump card when the chips are down, the stakes are high, and the owner of the casino is the President of the United States. We posit the wicked pleasures of the trickster tale as an enticing alternative to dreary disaster-capitalist narratives, technocratic solutionism, and universalist fictions of Authority, Progress, Unity, and Truth.

The   editors  of    lunch 13: Mischief   cordially invite articles, letters, manifestos, anti-manifestos, quasi-manifestos, graphics, poems, comics, napkin sketches, recipes, games, and dirty jokes that approach design more impishly than urgently, that uproot assumptions that solutions are the solution, that wiggle under the garden fence and leave the farmer with a fistful of fur — but no bunny.

“I was born and bred in the briar patch, Brer Fox,” Brer Rabbit called. “Born and bred in the briar patch.” And he skipped away as merry as a cricket while Brer Fox  ground his teeth in rage and went home.

Mischief. Great escapes. Hijinks. Antics. Shenanigans. Trolling. Tomfoolery. Subterfuge. Pranks. Perversity. Contrariety. Bending the rules. Dismantling the master’s house. lucky number 13.

Editors
Kirk Gordon
Sarah Pate
Madelyn Hoagland-Hanson
Colin Gilliland

Image by Ronan Bouroullec.