From a published interview with M/M Paris (Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak) (Design and Art, Alex Coles editor, Whitechapel and MIT, 2007):

Mathias Augustyniak: “…the more you are a specialist in your field, the closer you get to the essence of things. Only then can you start to have a possible relationship with another field — and this is where things start to become interesting. Being specialists gives us a point of entry — a keyhole through which we can look onto the world. It is in this spirit of specialism that we meet and work with artists.” (188)

On their collaboration with artists Huyghe, Parreno, Gillick: “As graphic design is situated at the crossroads between many different activities it seemed the perfect place from which to establish this kind of fulfilling exchange with practitioners from other disciplines.” (190)

Augustyniak: “From one field to another, there should be respect.” (190)

Augustyniak: “We are interested in dialogue between specialists” (191)

On p. 191, Augustyniak describes a collaboration they did with artists Pierre Huyghe, Phillipe Parreno and Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster for the Venice Biennale 1999. Each of the three artists was given a room, but when the artists decided to band together and project a single film in one room, the other two rooms were left empty to the dismay of the curators. M/M jumped in and created title sequences as paintings on the walls in the flanking two rooms, so the public would have a pre- and post-viewing experience, while seeing the film in the middle. This is such a nice and concrete explanation of the collaborative process. Designers are concrete, we speak in terms of things and actions!

Designers seem to constantly worry about whether they are equal to artists, or simply their “butlers,” as M/M say. They argue that true interdisciplinarity can only happen when designers are elevated to become equals, and not subordinates. That’s another theme of the profession, moving from service to autonomy.