note to update #39

Words play an important role In Stordes’ work about scenarios of acting. Words carry meaning in an organisation in the sense that not only acting can be captured in words, but that words and language used influence and even determine the acting.

For a scenario to be a work of art and the palette of acting to become deeply enriched, reassessing the words and the language used in an organisation is crucial. An alternative vocabulaire that is both critical towards the current acting and aspirational in its surprising deviations needs to be sculpted.

Stordes develops in collaboration with Lena Karson a set of interventions to play the language and flip the acting.

This update contains a linguistic experiment with short texts about organisational life. Some rudimental elements of management speak remain but deviating words add ambiguous tension to the sentences.

Small sketches that investigate the visual representation and abstraction of organisational realities complete the update, The images have no titles to allow agency to the viewer to add words.

a provocative agency of us

preludes constructive

resistance

company data shows

you’re special

really, believe me, it is true

getting lost is a beautiful strategy

for needless growth

executives loose their minds

when educated emotions rule

it is in ephemeral embodiment

that hyper efficiency emerges

as of today

we declare leadership

a hopeless act of hubris

projections of desire

make your work digestible

performance indicators inhibit

speculative forecasts

for better

ultra light structures

affirm the strength of the organisation

keeping your team

on an edge of envy

endless unpredictability

surprisingly guides innovation

happily exposed

to the tabula rasa

of unmet expectations

all drawings by hein duijnstee (2025)