Partisan is a socio-political plaything designed by Maria Horn, a member of the Bond design collective in New York. This trio of 3D puzzles leads to thinking about crucial global issues through pieces that represent energy, religion and power. The puzzle includes interlocking pieces that are negative and positive; by putting all the positive pieces together, the user creates a dove of peace, but all the negative ones will end up as a weapon of destruction. The pieces are housed within stylized humans, just as we harbour varying slates of negative and positive feelings and outlooks inside ourselves.

There is a sense that, with Partisan, you might be preaching to the converted. Who is Partisan aimed at?
Partisan is aimed at both "converted" and non-"converted".

It is a product that was designed taking as a point of departure the values it represents and how they challenge the status quo by merely stating the variables implicit in social and political issues. These complexities of the variables are -most of the time- implicit for those that perceive the significance.

But in this case made explicit for those that prefer to only feel and not to read to much into the represented issues. This is design embodying a new approach to decorative arts. The toy allows a friendly approach to a not that user-friendly matter.

In addition to creating a statement on world affairs and the way we govern ourselves, do you have a point of view on action toys and games?
Action figures are foremost representations, embodiments of power and/or gender roles -G. I. Joe or Barbie types-
There is an ongoing surge of extremely "individual" action figures, to even toys you can totally customize.... People buy them because they identify with these objects.
All those figures play in the idea of puppets to a master; a supreme consciousness given by the user. All cultures have these types of representations and games. We have evil and good in those representations; archetypes of social standards.That materialization of values is what I find extremely interesting as a tool to engage people with very relevant global issues. That level of awareness might help to challenge the status quo.


What other similar projects are you working on?
I created a toy puzzle that reflects on the sectarian violence and geographical division of Iraq. A map of Iraq is divided into three sectors: Sunni, Shia, and Kurd regions. The only way to put the pieces of the map together is by taking the piece that corresponds to a given religious/identity/region out of the body of the doll. It both expresses ideas of internal systems of belief and political violence.