GOR, the Group of Revolutionary Objects: Praxis and Research

Abstract

GOR stands for Groupe des Objets Revolutionaires, or, in English, the Group of Revolutionary Objects. This group was founded by Filipe Pais, Julie Brugier and Olivain Porry in 2018, in reaction to two major planetary concerns: the climate crisis and techno-solutionism. GOR, in response, opens a fictional design space for debate and aesthetic manifestations, wherein objects and machines are given autonomy, and the possibility of disobeying whilst challenging human decisions. This article is a statement about GOR’s motivations, practice and research, written by two of the group members. In addition to further introducing the GOR manifesto and the forces which have given rise to it, it reviews its artistic practices and actions conducted during art residencies and group exhibitions; it identifies two examples of how the GOR design space can yield interesting clues in research, introducing the notion of super-object and an artistic framework named COCO2.

Keywords

• abandoned objects
• behaviours
• misbehaviours
• practice-based research
• wicked problems
• technological fix