The history of capitalism can be described in terms of the deconstruction and (virtual) reconstruction of sensuality. This is clearly exemplified in the evolution of money and its change from gold to silver coins and paper notes which are credited with the myth of gold while having no material worth of their own. This loss of sensuality (paralleled by a loss of sense) poses a fundamental problem for any form of design, since design is commonly understood both as being sensual and as producing sense.

The rise of industrial production and the commodity society is accompanied by an insistent attempt to find ways of sensually perceiving the object-for the sake of the subject. Art historical examples of this can be found everywhere from Romanticism to the Arts & Crafts movement, the Deutscher Werkbund, the Bauhaus school, Art Nouveau, Functionalism, Constructivism, Dada, and Surrealism, up to the present day. However, a closer look at the present with regard to sensual perception reveals the radical impossibility of sensual certainty. This is where design comes drastically into play: We are living in artificial worlds, created by designers with the help of engineers-often on behalf of marketing managers. We delight in the gloss of fictitious sensuality, especially when the sensory illusion is so perfect that we do not even notice we are being deceived.

In this area design plays the role of the agitator, competent of the fact that everything is artificial and in the knowledge of how artificiality can be created. Design is inimitably and indispensably social. It is a product of the commodity economy and, for that very reason, both its apologist and servant and its most competent adversary and critic. One of the most peculiar differences between design and society's general perceptions and production is that design is aware of - or at least feels - the problem of sensuality. Therefore, the appreciation of design within our social life is a crucial factor in dealing reasonably and insightfully with our reality.

The full text (German only) is published in:"Design und eine Politik des Objekts" in: Jean Baptiste Joly, Catherine Perret, Julia Warmers Fetisch + Konsum / Fetish + Consumption , merz & solitude (Stuttgart 2009).