Shadow Monsters of Modernity

Shadow Monsters of Modernity was a three-day intensive workshop and performance as part of the Interakcije education platform dealing with contemporary design practices in the local context of Split, Croatia. The workshop explored how design can be used to reimagine and update Marx’s monstrous metaphors, to provide what David McNally (2011) describes as “disruptive strategies of re-embodiment”, images that can de-familiarise and make visible the abstract horrors of late capitalism and highlight social inequality and injustice.

Exploring radical puppetry as a form of creative resistance and a means to embody political discourse, participants co-created monstrous shadow puppets as metaphoric beings, to express and discuss social injustices that are haunting the local community in Split. Through a process of co-design, collective animation and rapid prototyping the workshop explored how make complex issues more tangible.