some assembly required

I was very taken with Sayers’ discussion of exploded view diagrams as “creativity in a box: prescribed workflows and prefabbed systems disseminated for uniform use” (5). As “documentations of how we start in the middle” (4), the well-known examples of instructions included in pieces of IKEA furniture or LEGO sets particularly caught my attention: when I was a kid, I positively adored (read: obsessively coveted) LEGO sets (I wouldn’t ever let my parents *help*—they’d always meddle in my method and mess up the builds), and as I’ve grown older the same has become true for IKEA furniture (complete with my rather maniacal resistance to assistance). Sayers’ critique of such formats targets their predetermined outcomes—creativity with a finite product is no creativity at all. Sayers claims that “what is needed, then, are opportunities to re-signify the conceptual matter of assembly and maintenance as an indeterminacy, not a given. This way, both assembly and maintenance are interpretive practices or negotiations instead of how-to scripts” (5). He suggests artistic instances of exploded views as an alternative to these scripted forms.

The point is a good one: indeterminacy breeds ingenuity, and vice-versa. But as an avid IKEA furniture builder I would like perhaps to consider whether there isn’t more to be said about these “how-to scripts,” and whether they really are as devoid of “interpretive practices or negotiations” as Sayers seems to suggest. True, I love assembling IKEA furniture because it’s a challenge with no stakes—success is guaranteed, provided the instructions are followed appropriately. I also happen to be good at it (I will take my IKEA building blunders to the grave), which makes the experience an almost meditative one. So, two questions: 1) why does the process still retain a sense of the creative for me, and 2) why does the vast majority of people absolutely dread it?

I believe these two questions are related, so I’ll go ahead and consider the second one first: I know I might get pushback on this statement, but IKEA assembly instructions are remarkably clear: they consist precisely of the information required for the project—any more would be confusing, and any less would be insufficient. Ergo, people in general either don’t like to follow instructions, or aren’t good at following instructions (and I would argue that for the most part these two claims are the same thing). Without trying to elide the very real socio-political biases inherent in IKEA instructions (the most blatant being ableism), I would like to suggest that the general aversion to IKEA assembly arises from the rigors of “making” involved in the process—whether or not the end product is fixed, it takes interpretation and negotiation to pull it off without a (sometimes disastrous) hitch. Which leads me to my first question: though I would never argue that completing an IKEA build somehow equates creating something in the authentic sense of the word, I would contend that such an activity engages modes of creative practice.

So if conceptual matter resides “between thinking and doing, hacking and yacking, writing and building, scholarship and service, creating and critiquing, breaking and repairing, innovation and maintenance, and making and not making” (9), does it actually matter that, in the case of IKEA furniture, the blueprint is predetermined? To be clear, I do not think that predetermined forms of making should be celebrated as somehow generative or potent in the same way as other examples of critical making clearly are, but I do think there might be something worth attending to in this particular "middle"--some wiggle room between "fixed" and "outcome."

Sayers, Jentery. “I Don’t Know All the Circuitry.” Making Things and Drawing Boundaries. UMinnesota Press, 2018, pp. 1-18.