Looking back on their time as Nieuwe Instituut Fellows, Füsun Türetken and Christopher Lee recall a rare kind of support: structured, yet open-ended; generous, yet hands-off.

This conversation is part of our partnership with the Nieuwe Instituut. A series of 10 contributions with 10 former fellows to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the Research Fellowship Programme.

FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZ To begin, I’d love to hear how your journeys unfolded. Could you share how your engagement with the Nieuwe Instituut Fellowship shaped your relationship to institutional life and your own practice? What did stepping outside the academic framework allow you to rethink or reorient, especially in terms of input, dialogue, and recognition?

FÜSUN TÜRETKENThe fellowship at the Nieuwe Instituut was pivotal for me. Such a compact and new environment like Rotterdam sparked connections and conversations that allowed me to settle into the city in a completely new way. The institute had just undergone a major transition — from an architectural museum to a new institute exploring knowledge production in a transdisciplinary sense. It was a well-funded, well-led fellowship, not only in supporting us but also in using the fellowship to inform their own research strands.

One particularly interesting aspect was how they were feeding that knowledge back into the institution. Simone Niquille, for instance, was one of the artists later selected for the Dutch Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. I have very fond memories of that time, especially the conversations with her and the other fellows.

On a personal level the fellowship was crucial for my practice. It gave me space to develop the research and provided the necessary funding to produce the film for my PhD. The filmic component was essential for the dissertation to move forward, and three of the four chapters have since been published in various forms. For example, “Breathing Space: The Amalgamated Toxicity of Ground Zero” in Forensis, The Architecture of Public Truth, the book by Forensic Architecture, based on a research initiative we had created at Goldsmiths University in London, had been published prior to the fellowship. And others followed such as the pivotal piece funded by the Nieuwe Instituut titled Alchemic Desire, a short film examining the London Metal Exchange. In both the film and accompanying essay, I compare modern trading practices to alchemical principles, exploring how contemporary finance still draws on ancient, medieval logics.

That’s what the Nieuwe Instituut offered me — as a visual artist and academic — and it ultimately enabled me to reflect upon and continue developing the work. Somewhere in that period, Chris came to give a talk. I found it incredibly smart, especially the way he approached documents, from money to other forms of material evidence. I loved how he framed it in the recent abstract of his book, stating we need to “study up” in order to investigate those in power. It was beautiful to see how he did that through matter and materials.

CHRIS LEEI applied to the fellowship while I was teaching at the State University of New York at Buffalo. It’s a smaller city near the Canadian border, but it’s the main research university in the SUNY system. I was in a tenure-track position there, which came with research requirements. As a graphic designer, that’s a bit ambiguous — especially when it comes to academic evaluation. Client work doesn’t really count as knowledge production, so I began shifting toward a more research-oriented practice, which I hadn’t pursued seriously since finishing school in the Netherlands.

That’s really why I applied. On a practical level, I had a professional and academic obligation to produce something legible to the academy. But more importantly, I applied because I needed space to breathe. In North America, there’s very little infrastructure — cultural or financial — to support non-commercial, inquiry-based design practice. That’s why I went into teaching in the first place. But even within the so-called neoliberal university, there’s not much room for that kind of work.

So the fellowship at the Nieuwe Instituut was a way to carve out that space. And it worked. What I got out of it — initially — was time, space, and funding. I think it was a six-month program, though I can’t remember exactly. It takes a while to gain momentum, to figure out whether what you proposed is actually what you want to do. But Marina Otero Verzier set things up brilliantly. There was a real sense of support for taking time — to get oriented, to go the wrong way, to hit dead ends, to digest.

And the funding really mattered. I don’t mean that jokingly — it genuinely helped make that kind of exploration possible. What was profound about the approach at the institute was that you received a generous amount of support, and there were no imposed expectations. Not in a negative sense — just no pressure to produce a specific report or outcome. That was liberating. It created a generative space for me to think and work differently.

FTI just wanted to add that these kinds of encounters are so important because they create hybrid spaces and interstices — places where disciplines, practices, and perspectives meet. In academia, these are often coined as “labs,” though I’m not a fan of that term. What the Nieuwe Instituut offered was a truly transdisciplinary residency. As Chris mentioned, whether it’s a collective publishing platform or another experimental method, it’s essential to have spaces where such practices can unfold.

Especially in the context of neoliberal academia, these spaces become even more vital. For me, it was pivotal to receive funding — to access technical equipment, to get on site, to film, to understand what I was looking at. The residency allowed for an open-ended research question, with no fixed expectations. And that kind of openness really inspires people to act.

KOOZFrom our perspective, one of the most compelling aspects of the fellowship was the creation of space for experimentation. As you mentioned, Chris, it wasn’t about producing a final product — it was about having the freedom to explore ideas and processes. I’d love to hear your thoughts on whether that openness also created a sense of uncertainty. What is the potential of a space for experimentation when there’s no expectation of a concrete outcome, but rather an invitation to engage with ideas, provocations, and speculations? How did that nurture your practice, and how did it differ from the conditions you’ve encountered elsewhere — whether in academic institutions or client-based work?

CLThe uncertainty was, in retrospect, incredibly generative. I think what really set the tone was Marina’s opening speech, or orientation. I can’t remember exactly how she framed it, but I felt a strong sense of trust. The Nieuwe Instituut’s selection process is rigorous, so they know they’re getting people who care deeply about their work. There’s no need to hold anyone’s hand, and I think that was their approach: trust the fellows to take it seriously.

So yes, the uncertainty was refreshing. It created a kind of bubble — being in that space, at that time — which began to dissolve once I returned home. For me, the meta-framing of the whole experience was my tenure-track career. I want to be careful not to romanticize it, especially not the idea of passion for its own sake. In my case, I eventually burned out — not immediately, but over time. There was a lot that was rewarding, but it also fit into a tough professional economy.

As I said earlier, I didn’t apply purely out of love for research. There was a rationale behind it — a need to produce something legible to the academy. Still, I look back on that time with real fondness. It remains a reference point for how things could be, or maybe how they ought to be.

FTWhen we think about the operational modes you’re forced to follow in tenure-track academic positions — the nitty-gritty of CVs and metrics of success — I try to resist them as much as I can. But inevitably, you find yourself caught in that system. Attempts to be independent are thus important.

Two years ago, I was invited to join an independent group working to create a new association aimed at supporting thinkers, academics, and artists from Turkey — bringing them to Berlin through a structured support system. The reason is simple: there’s little public funding for the arts in Turkey. It’s a kind of mini-America, where the art and intellectual scenes rely heavily on philanthropic support. In contrast, countries such as Germany — and the Netherlands, as we’ve been discussing — offer robust public funding.

We founded the association called STRÜKTÜR in 2024 — which I am heading as Co-Chair — and launched a two-month artist residency program as well as a format titled reading room that provides a critical art discourse regarding Turkey’s art scene. We received a grant from the Goethe-Institut for our project titled The Rehearsal & The Playbook. The project explores new authoritarianism and populism, but what struck me — and what connects to our conversation — is the subtitle: The Rehearsal & The Playbook. It made me think of fellowships and residencies as rehearsal spaces. These interstitial platforms allow experimental methods to be practiced, shared, and iterated. They become repositories, but also rehearsal stages for other modes of thinking and doing.

These spaces are rehearsals. The question for me is: how do we make them sustainable beyond the fellowship itself? Beyond the single moment of a grant, an exhibition, or whatever the format may be.

I also remember what I thought of as a less than ideal presentation I gave at the Nieuwe Instituut. I was still struggling to understand my own diverse and vast material. I had applied with it, but hadn’t gathered it fully, and suddenly we were asked to present. I didn’t know how to present it yet concisely. In the end it didn’t matter — it was a rehearsal stage. These moments of uncertainty were part of the process, too.

KOOZThis brings us to the core of your research. What we found particularly compelling was the emphasis on creating space for experimentation — where the focus isn’t on producing a final product, but rather on exploring ideas and processes. Chris, you spoke to this earlier. I’d like to understand how this approach shaped your investigation into currency. What led you to that topic, and what was its relevance in 2016 and 2017 — both within the context of the Nieuwe Instituut and in relation to broader spheres of power and politics at play during that time?

CLThat story goes back to when I first arrived in the Netherlands to study at the Sandberg Institute. It was around the time of the housing crisis in the United States, which triggered the global financial meltdown. My interest in money started then — partly as a personal joke. I’ve never really had money, so I became curious about it. As a designer, I started asking naïve questions like, “Why can’t I design money?” or “Why can’t I create it?” That seemingly stupid question turned out to be incredibly generative.

It began as a personal circumstance, but I think it has broader appeal. Money as a design object — especially in a context like the Netherlands — was something I could explore seriously. Coming from Canada and the U.S., where speculative, critically oriented design work is rare outside of academia (and even then, still quite rare), the support structures in the Netherlands opened up possibilities I hadn’t considered before.

As for its relevance at the time — well, I think money is always relevant, unfortunately. But in 2016 and 2017, I was particularly interested in how currency intersects with my field: graphic design. Over the past few decades, graphic design has slowly developed a kind of self-awareness. It’s moved beyond being seen as a trade and started positioning itself as a discipline — sometimes aligned with the humanities, sometimes with science and technology.

I think this shift is largely driven by academia. What I mean is, design schools have had to justify their existence within universities, especially since the rise of desktop publishing and digital tools. That’s led to a kind of intellectualization of the field — historicizing, canon-building, and challenging those canons. Compared to architecture, graphic design’s theoretical development has been slower, but it’s happening.

FTMuch of my research doesn’t begin with a clear plan. I’ve never been the kind of person who says, “I’m going to do this, then that, and then I’ll arrive.” That’s just not how I work. But I’ve always had a strong sense of what I’m deeply interested in. So my process is more intuitive — feeling through the materials, knowing there’s something crucial I wish to investigate, even if I can’t immediately see what links them.

In my case, it was a conversation with someone where I admitted I was deeply disenchanted with my PhD. I knew the material was rich, but I couldn’t find the thread that tied it together. Then I came across the concept of panmetalism in Deleuze and Guattari’s work, and suddenly everything clicked — it was all about metals. That led me to earlier writings by Deleuze and Guattari, and also to Reza Negarestani’s book Cyclonopedia, where oil is treated as a sentient entity. I later returned to Jane Bennett’s Vibrant Matter, which helped me think about metals as vibrant agents and actants.

This became a kind of forensic reading of metals — tracing their role in global trade, conflict, and extractive economies. It exemplifies how independent research can be grounded in material investigation while also interrupting dominant narratives. That was crucial for me: thinking through metals allowed me to explore colonial legacies, contemporary warfare, climate engineering, and bureaucratic structures.

I think your work, Chris, also shares this fragmentary and temporal approach. It doesn’t follow a clean, linear narrative or a straightforward career path — and I’m not looking for that either. The same goes for my research: I’m not interested in utility or neutrality. I’m trying to challenge those very notions. This is where the design of state documents comes into play. A lot of power is embedded in their design — whether it’s documents, currency, or monetary systems. I’ve been looking into these structures as well, though of course you’re more of the expert, Chris.

Take the London Metal Exchange, for example. Once you start researching it, you’re drawn into bimetallism, the Nixon shock, and other financial infrastructures that I might have known about vaguely, but not in depth until I began the work. These global logistics systems are often the targets of critique, but when you zoom into specific sites, things shift. A student once asked me, “Have you ever been to the London Metal Exchange?” I hadn’t. But going there in person opened up the entire research. Being on site made me understand what it was really about. It’s not the same as sitting at home, reading a book, or browsing research material from afar.

So I guess my work is about blurring material research, geopolitical critique, and aesthetic speculation. That’s the most constructive and compelling space for me to work in. If you look at the final chapter of my PhD, it turned into this complex, playful, experimental narrative.

I explored this rare earth element found in volcanic mud pots — essentially the primordial soup where organic bacteria need neodymium to catalyze life. I didn’t know that until I spoke with a biochemist at Radboud University in Nijmegen. We filmed and interviewed him, and later discovered that neodymium not only catalyzes organic systems — it’s also the same metal used in hard magnetic drives for computers and digital devices. It’s the very substance that animates our digital figurines. So in my PhD chapter and the excerpt essay that derived from it titled “Superconductive Lifelines of Metallic Monsters” published in the online Journal “Umbau”, we’re moving from volcanic organic bodies to Frankenstein bodies, to what I call the “new kin” — digital entities, including digital Black supermodels that are created and exploited. There’s an arc here: metals as superconductive lifelines for these metallic monsters. It is an intense essay that transcends the linear classic paper or chapter.

I enjoyed mixing the genres in this essay, and I believe I found something meaningful that makes sense in the end. Fact and fiction, historical and contemporary are woven together, based upon intensive archival research.

You asked why we started these projects. For me, it was partly a sense that there was something interesting to work with, and partly coincidence — encountering pivotal concepts through reading, listening and conversation. In the essay I mentioned above, Breathing Space, about 9/11, my take was to not treat it as a mediated event, but as an environmental disaster in one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Unfortunately, people are still dying from the toxic air at Ground Zero, the toxic torts are ongoing..

One of my most supportive PhD supervisors was Fareed Armaly — a brilliant artist, thinker and mentor. He truly understood what future research and knowledge production could be. Coming from a Palestinian-Lebanese-American background, he brought a versatile perspective to the work.

Eyal Weizman gave me space to explore. And then all the creative experiments we’d been allowed to pursue in the PhD — alongside people like Lawrence Abu Hamdan — were put to the test. I think we both completely rewrote what a PhD could be at Goldsmiths. But then you face two external PhD examiners in your Viva, and the question is whether they will go along with it.

CLJust before moving to Tokyo, I was living in New York City, and you still see ads encouraging people affected by 9/11 to claim health benefits. The catastrophe is ongoing — there are still so many people suffering. That’s one thing I wanted to acknowledge.

The other is about what the fellowship afforded: the ability to visit sites, to be physically present in spaces. Like you said with the London Metal Exchange, that kind of embodied research is transformative. When I was in Rotterdam, I’d travel every couple of weeks to Frankfurt to visit the European Central Bank. I went to Paris, trying to access the old observatory, and ended up stumbling across le mètre étalon in front of the Senate. I spent time in Amsterdam and in the Plantin House in Antwerp. I didn’t always know what I was doing there — I was just scanning things with my phone, stitching them together in software, drawing, collecting. I still have all that material, though I’ve never used it. But spending that time, and those hundreds of euros, helped the story begin to take shape.

I had a hunch that the history of metrication was somehow connected to Frankfurt and Mainz — regions with deep ties to typography, money, and measurement. There’s a lineage there, from early printing to financial systems. Slowly, the narrative started to cohere.

What I began to feel was that these places — often celebrated as sites of Enlightenment and Western progress — could also be read as horror exhibits. I started to see them as sites of crime. I’m borrowing here from Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, whose work on Potential History helped me reframe these spaces. Some of them are corny tourist destinations, which makes them even more resistant to critical scrutiny. But precisely because of that, they escape indictment. Being able to sit in those spaces and think allowed for a profound shift in perspective.

It’s similar with metals. As I mentioned earlier, I had this clumsy but useful framework for my research: thinking about the metallic ontology of money and typography. What I find characteristic of many projects at the Nieuwe Instituut is this approach — starting from something banal or quotidian, something seemingly smooth or neutral, and then realizing it’s hiding something. It’s problematic. And having the time to sit with that, to reconsider and reframe, is what makes the work possible.

FTThis mode of working — blurring material research, geopolitical critique, and aesthetic speculation — represents a nonlinear methodology that resists easy classification. I think that’s what both of us are doing. It becomes part of a broader effort to reclaim the archive — or, as Saidiya Hartman puts it, to reclaim the silences in the archive.

We reinterpret materials and material evidence by looking at them through a nonhuman, ontological lens. And in doing so — perhaps unintentionally — we propose alternative futures. Whether it’s through design, art, or historiography, the medium doesn’t matter. What matters is the speculative potential.

I think our practices benefit from these hybrid ecosystems — spaces that combine institutional and independent research. There’s rigor, but also resistance. We push against the boundaries of classical disciplinary frameworks. I see that in your work, and I know I do it in mine.

Maybe that’s where things converge: being invited into academia precisely to challenge its limits, and then finding ourselves in departments where we’re always positioned as critical thinkers, “outsiders”. That’s how I’ve felt in classic monodisciplinary academic settings I’ve entered.

CLI relate 100% to everything you’re saying. Going back to the motivation for my book — which emerged after the fellowship — I had a conversation with senior faculty in my department during my midterm tenure review. They asked, “What’s your trajectory?” I said, “I’m working on a book.” And they responded, “What kind of book? Who’s the publisher?” I said, “I don’t know yet.” They insisted it had to be a prestigious academic press.

I told them, “I’m not a trained academic. I don’t write that way.” And they said, “If you say you’re writing a book, your reviewers will come from conventional scholarly disciplines. They won’t understand if you, as a graphic designer, produce an experimental book — where the object itself is a direct articulation of a critical position, through its production, content, and form.” They’ll just ask, “Who’s the publisher? What are the citation metrics?”

At that point, I thought, I’m sunk. I’m not going to make it. But I came out of that conversation defiantly. I thought they don’t understand that what they consider knowledge production is entirely contingent on formal qualities — on banal printing technologies, on invisible and increasingly devalued design labor.

And I’m not even arguing this from a Marxist labor theory-of-value point of view. I’m arguing it materially: if your book doesn’t have a spine, a cover, spellcheck, or paper that lasts more than ten years, your knowledge production is compromised. So in my book, I tried to make those operations visible — the production decisions, the scaffolding that supports conventional knowledge formats.

The book was written in Adobe InDesign — not as a manuscript handed off to a publisher. I was editing passages of text to fit images, adjusting layout as part of the writing process. The design wasn’t an afterthought — it was integral to the argument.

FTI’m still teaching at KABK — the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague — even though I received a professorship seven years ago in Germany which is my main occupation. For now, I have not given up the position in The Hague because I’m invested in the Master Non Linear Narrative program led by Niels Schrader. I think your work and mine — and many others that emerged from the Nieuwe Instituut — aren’t just critiques. They’re rehearsals of other ways of knowing.

What’s fascinating is how matter itself becomes language. When you talk about using design tools as a script — where the act of publishing becomes a refusal of standardized, Western, white academic formats — I relate to that deeply. The idea that a footnote must sit in a certain place, that the spine must follow a certain logic — it’s all so rigid. There’s a fantastic book where the footnotes take over the main body of the text, the become actors, via those footnotes jump from page five to page eighty-five. It’s playful, imaginative, and a literal refusal of linearity.

I’m drawn to modes where form becomes argument — whether in design or elsewhere. These encounters between different research ecologies can still sustain politically charged methodologies. That’s important to me. Design becomes critique, but also imagination. And I’m not talking about innovation — I’m not interested in that keyword. I’m talking about originality, as well as being true to yourself.

To give you an example: I had a PhD scholarship from University College London, and I gave it up to return to Goldsmiths the intellectual ecology at Goldsmiths — the people around the table — was far more compelling than what I would have had at UCL. I knew exactly how that classic PhD would have ended up, and I wasn’t interested.

So yes, I understand where you’re coming from. We’re trying to trick the system, to challenge its formats. And I don’t know what Federica thinks, but I’ve been reflecting on something she wrote in an early email about how these fellowships and independent research practices might shape the future. That question has stayed with me.

KOOZ We’ve talked a lot about methodology, approaches, and the ways these spaces can be hijacked or reconfigured. We’ve also begun discussing formats, particularly the book and publication. Chris, you work extensively through publishing, and Füsun, you do as well — but also through other modes of knowledge dissemination.

I’m curious: what mediums do you think are most relevant today? Is the book still a format that can be hijacked and used to carry these forms of knowledge production? What possibilities do digital platforms offer? What about lectures or other performative modes?

And how do you operate — both once a project has taken shape, and even during its formation? What are the mediums through which you translate your ideas, especially in relation to this idea of language?

CL I see your question as one about impact. There are different ways to consider impact — whether it’s the economics of publishing online versus in print, or producing a play, a podcast, or something else. Each medium carries its own logic of reach and resonance.

As a provocation, I’d say this is where print still matters to me. Not in a nostalgic sense, but because I’ve started to notice how online publications can disappear — archives vanish. Print might have lower immediate impact, but its temporal reach can be longer. That matters, especially when thinking about political struggle. Do victories have acute impact now, or do contributions resonate over time? That’s one way I approach it.

In terms of practice and research, my book Designing History tries to articulate three modes of design history. In my book, I style these as "Design1" "design2" and "design3" (where "1" etc. are set as subscript, and "Design1" is the only one capitalized). "Design1" is the history we teach in schools. It affirms the contemporary state of the discipline. Design Two is a proposal for a history centered on documents: money, passports, birth certificates — not as affirmations, but as indictments of design-as-accomplice to state bureaucracy, colonial systems, and capitalist infrastructures.

So what could a space like the Nieuwe Instituut do? What could these “bubbles” offer? I propose a Design Three — a mode oriented toward study, creative experimentation, and struggle. Where Design Two sustains the memories and claims of state and capital, Design Three seeks to undo them. It might involve obliteration, destruction, sabotage.

For example, Willem Sandberg — the namesake of the Sandberg Institute — participated in planning the bombing of the Amsterdam registry during WWII to compromise identity records. He was a graphic designer. But we don’t teach that in design history, because it won’t help students get jobs. That’s the problem.

So my provocation is: are we — and are these institutions — willing to go into dangerous territory? To challenge the very foundations of what we consider legitimate knowledge production? I’ll be honest: I’m not ready to commit criminal acts. But I put it out there in the book. Maybe we need to abandon bourgeois disciplinary categories altogether. Graphic design might not be a useful framework for what Design Three calls for.

KOOZJust reflecting on the book as a medium — since both of you work extensively with publications — I’m curious about its power. Chris, your recent book emerged partly from your time at the Nieuwe Instituut, and Füsun, you’ve been working with books and printed matter for over a decade. What is the potential of the page today? Does the book still offer a space for slowing down, for deeper attention? Where do you see its relevance now, especially in relation to other mediums like digital platforms or performative formats?

FT I think it really depends on context. At the academy, I often see myself as a kind of trickster within the institution — exploiting whatever possibilities I have to either slow things down or accelerate them, depending on whether I’m in conversation or trying to infuse students with critical thinking, which feels increasingly urgent today. I’ve also come to realize that I’m an activist at heart, even if I didn’t set out to be one. I tend to find myself in spaces where activism and reclaiming space and our voice is necessary. Thus, before reflecting on the format of the book itself I’d wish to express that it is publishing itself which we have to reclaim, as feminists and/or queer academics, writers etc. Whatever form of publishing that might concern.

When it comes to books, I find beauty in the slowness of publication and editing. Especially in a time dominated by social media — where everything is reduced to a five- or ten-second read — I’ve come to value deep research and storytelling. Whether it’s oral, audio, or shared over coffee in a conversation, I cherish stories that unfold slowly. That’s what a book offers me: a kind of in-person slowness. I’m not interested in the accelerated serotonin hits of Instagram. In fact, I find the constant phone-checking deeply unnerving.

So yes, I’m making a kind of pamphlet for the book. Its slowness is a timestamp — a snapshot of a moment in time. Sure, when you look back after ten years, you might think, “I should’ve included that,” but that’s also the beauty of it. Unless you publish a second edition, it stays as it is. I love that about books. Once they’re edited, they sit there. They hold space.

I also believe in the power of books politically. The fact that books are still banned or burned in some countries makes me want to defend them even more. Whether or not they’re sustainable — materially or economically — I still speak for books. That said, I also enjoy reading on screens. A book can be a PDF. I want publishing, book trading, and book fairs to survive.

And maybe this isn’t a popular opinion, but I’m a huge fan of the art book. I love the type, the spine, the graphic design — the haptic experience of holding a book. I love having one with me, in the train or at the seaside. There’s something irreplaceable about that.

But I’m also an audiophile. Many people are. And we have to acknowledge that not everyone can afford or carry a book, or even read one. That’s why I’m invested in formats like Radio Round Table, which I started, in which we try to transmit knowledge beyond the academy. Still, even that requires internet access.

So maybe I’m not the right person to ask — I’m biased toward books and audio. But I also see exhibitions as spaces for storytelling. Maybe we shouldn’t fixate too much on the book as a format. As we’ve seen in works like Anselm Franke’s essay exhibitions, the exhibition itself could be considered a book.

In the end, I’m torn. One part of me says: refuse the format, think critically. The other says: I love a good book. So maybe these formats can coexist.

CL I’m glad you said that because I feel similarly ambivalent. Part of it is that making books is my job — and honestly, I’d rather be on a beach hearing a story than working on a manuscript. But when I think about the book in relation to academia, I’m struck by its role in the economy of knowledge production. The peer review process, editorial gatekeeping — it’s all part of a mechanism that legitimizes knowledge. And while that might be obvious to some, it wasn’t always clear to me.

What interests me now is suspending the value we assign to the book, or to the archive — the fixed document that, as you said, can’t be edited or revised. There’s an aura around books, a kind of “truthiness,” to borrow Stephen Colbert’s term. Books can carry this epistemological weight that feels unquestioned.

So I’m drawn to other forms of knowledge — other mechanisms of production and transmission. That’s where rehearsal becomes compelling. I think of Azoulay’s work, where she talks about rehearsing the world of her family in Algeria, a world where Jewish and Muslim communities coexisted, and where jewelry-making became a mode of cultural continuity. That kind of embodied, iterative knowledge feels vital. The book is a lot — but it’s not everything.

FTAnd as you said, I find it deeply problematic that one can only be considered a “true academic” through peer-reviewed articles and institutional validation. I do refuse that notion. It systematically excludes entire communities — nations, ethnic groups, individuals — who are rooted in oral traditions or who simply don’t have access to these academic structures. Even within Europe, someone outside the academy is often written out of the conversation.

It’s a self-sustaining cycle, much like certain development agencies that spend their budgets on problematic interventions just to secure the next one. The academic publishing system operates similarly: legitimizing itself through its own mechanisms. I’m not interested in reproducing that system of power, and I think the book — especially the peer-reviewed journal article — can become complicit in that.

This is what I meant earlier about being original. I’m not interested in perpetuating a format that reinforces exclusion. We need to think critically about who gets to produce knowledge, and how. The book is one format — but it’s not neutral, and it’s certainly not the only one.

Bios

Chris Lee is a graphic designer and educator based in Tokyo, JP. He is a graduate of OCADU and the Sandberg Instituut. He has held academic appointments at the University at Buffalo SUNY, the Pratt Institute, and the Design Academy Eindhoven. He has worked for The Walrus Magazine, Metahaven and Bruce Mau Design. He was also the designer and an editorial board member of the journal Scapegoat: Architecture/Landscape/Political Economy. He recently re-issued an expanded edition of his book on the document: Designing History: Documents and the Design Imperative to Immutability (Set Margins’, 2025). He is currently a PhD Researcher at Tama Art University.

Füsun Türetken is Professor of Intersectional Futures at the University of the Arts Bremen and a Graduation Supervisor teaching Media Theory and Visual Culture in the Master Non-Linear Narrative program at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague. In 2008, she was the director of the German Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, together with raumtaktik. For four years, she worked as a researcher, editor, and curator for the project Shrinking Cities in Berlin. Since 2010, Füsun has taught at various universities and academies in Germany and abroad, following a transdisciplinary teaching approach. Füsun is Chair of STRÜKTÜR, a Berlin-based association committed to developing support structures for artists from the geography of Turkey. Fuüsun has been a recipient of the DAAD fellowship, the HNI Fellowship in 2016 and will start her fellowship at Kulturakademie Tarabya in Istanbul in 2026.

Federica Sofia Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and digital curator whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2015 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Parallel to her work at KoozArch, Federica is Architect at the architecture studio UNA and researcher at the non-profit agency for change UNLESS where she is project manager of the research "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.