Research Fellow Program Tools of Drafting

Like the French projeter or the English to project, the German verb entwerfen– meaning “to draft” or “to design”– derives from a quick movement of tossing something away: a gesture of distancing and loss of control. This gesture is oriented by a particular purpose or aim, but is by no means determined by the latter. Whoever drafts a project attempts to give form to the unknown or unthought: He or she lays down a graphical or, in the case of a model, a three-dimensional bridge to nothingness. In modern linguistic usage, almost any practice that comes into play when works of art, architectural structures, machines, musical compositions or texts are being planned can be called “drafting”. The horizon of meaning ranges from sketching, modeling and composing to planning, conceiving and constructing. The means employed in this sign and desk adventure are as diverse as they are heterogeneous: From pencil to CAD program, from graph paper to 3D printer, the most varied media and tools could and can be made serviceable for drafting.

The projects of the Research Fellow Program, on the one hand, dealt with the history and theory of these tools of drafting and, on the other, investigated the modes of drafting action: hence, the procedures that are developed in using the instruments and models. They thus deepened our understanding of one of the core focal points of IKKM research: the question of the power to act of non-human agents. By looking at the history and theory of drafting, the Research Fellow Program attempted to highlight the exteriority of shaping, forming and thinking in both methodical and thematic fashion: both with respect to the concept of the tool, which was subject to critical revision from the standpoint of recent studies of cultural technology and of science, and with respect to the concept of drafting as a practice that characterizes and supports the modern artist, architect, engineer, and scientist. From this perspective, drafting appears not as one activity among others, but rather as specific modern modus operandi, which precedes the concept of the discovering, investigating, creative, future-oriented subject as its precondition.