2Faced

Sixteen participants in the 2014 SWEAT Workshop gathered to discuss and respond to bully culture. They asked themselves questions such as “how did the choice between kindness, compassion and intelligence, or their antithesis, become so complex?” Designers identified specific moments in their own lives that exemplified bullying; those simple acts of cruelty which emerge as individuals jockey and vie for positions of power or relevance in social constructs. The work reveals the duality to help and harm— to welcome a friend and to snicker at an enemy, and to reverse those roles the next day. The following visual experiments range from responses of empathy to admissions of duplicity towards those with whom we are trusted to share basic precepts: friendship, humanity, dignity and decency.