21_21 DESIGN SIGHT

21_21 DESIGN SIGHT holds the exhibition "Rules?" from July 2, 2021. A team of three directors—lawyer Tasuku Mizuno, cognitive designer Syunichi Suge, and curator Miyuki Tanaka—have combined their individual perspectives to make an exhibition that not only explores new ways of looking at, creating, and utilizing rules, but also rethinks the future of exhibitions.

We are surrounded by rules in our daily lives: the constitution and laws; protocols concerning the public infrastructures and services that underpin our society, contracts and agreements between people; culturally derived codes and etiquette; customs established unconsciously within families and by individuals; and laws that came from the natural world. Rules are extensive and diverse, shaping our thoughts and behavior.

These rules that greatly influence various areas of our lives are currently forced to undergo major shifts in response to industrial and societal changes and advances in technology. Rules are hard to pin down and can easily become mere formalities; as such, each and every one of us must be conscious of the rules around us, question their foundations, and think about them flexibly as issues in which we all have a stake. By engaging with diverse rules and constantly updating them, we can expand our society and its future possibilities in more open and enriching directions.

The exhibition showcases the existence and impact of the rules we encounter in different ways in everyday life as well as explores possible ways to design rules. This is addressed from a variety of angles: for example, rules for viewing that shake up the ways things work in the microcosm of society that is an exhibition; the regulations and restrictions that lead to new creativity; and initiatives like civic tech, in which citizens collectively tackle social issues using technology. Interpreting the exhibition itself as a model of society, visitors are able to exchange their views and make rules, to vote for things that are then reflected in the exhibits, and to move objects in the venue around: by taking part like this, visitors directly experience the rules that comprise society. This is an exhibition that nurtures in each of us the ability to engage positively with rules as active participants in shaping the future.