Teaching Design – Infrequent Newsletter #2
Dear design teachers/learners and bibliography-lovers,
thanks for subscribing (or staying subscribed) to this mailing list and following the research project!
Since the bibliography is curated by me and therefore influenced by my personal research interests as well as my ongoing teaching/learning practice I am going to share some insights "out of the class room" to contextualize the sources I have added.
This newsletter has a focus on the entanglements of colonialism, the so called "anthropocene" and the climate crisis as well as decolonial theory.
By the way, the open call for contributions is ongoing!
→ Find out how to contribute here.
Warm wishes and until next time,
Lisa
From the class room
Seminar: The Last Straw – Intersectional Perspectives on Sustainability
In September my teaching position as interims professor of Design Sciences in the MA program Transformation Design (University of Arts Braunschweig) ended. One of the seminars I facilitated was called The Last Straw – Intersectional Perspectives on Sustainability. In this seminar we addressed the question of how an intersectional perspective on sustainability is important in order to develop proposals and strategies that are discrimination-sensitive and multiperspectival. We followed up on some familiar theories and themes such as ontological design (Escobar), situated knowledge (Haraway) and eco-feminisms, to reflect about how these and other approaches can be put into practice or have already been implemented in projects.
While experimenting with methods from anthropology like local field research and auto-ethnograph, we touched upon topics such as eco-ableism, crisis and urgency-narratives, anthropocene, and critical sustainability.
We had the pleasure to have Dr. Eda Elif Tibet (Critical Sustainability Lab, CH), Nathalie Bromberger (activist and initiator of the project Raus aus der Dominanz) and Angela Asomah and Lea Dehning (BUNDJugend, Locals United) as our guests.
Guest professorship at Studiengruppe Informationdesign (SI), Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design Halle
Since October I’ve been teaching/learning with a great group of students and my colleagues Prof. Matthias Görlich and Felix Egle at (SI). This semester we’re collaborating with initiatives such as Sea-Watch, Leave No One Behind and Herkesin Meydanı — Platz für Alle.
→ Find out more about previous, ongoing and current projects here.
From the website:
„The Studiengruppe Informationsdesign (SI) investigates the social and political potentials of design to articulate the conditions of today by responding to the past that today shapes our future, be it algorithmic or otherwise. The most underrated algorithm being to go talk to the people who deal with the problem every day, to work with them and to learn from them. SI focuses on design that is not only about social effects but equally the social conditions of its production. It attempts to be precise in descriptions but remains generous, humble and open in its choice of media, form and discourse. As a space for practical experiments, SI actively supports collaborative modes of production and reflection.“
→ Find more info about Studiengruppe Informationdesign (SI) here.
Added to the bibliography
Jugend im Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland e.V (Hg.): Kolonialismus und Klimakrise – Über 500 Jahre Widerstand. [online]. n.A.
Historically, countries and people of the Global North have been responsible for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions and are thus the main perpetrators and profiteers of the climate crisis. At the same time, however, it is the countries and people of the Global South who are most affected by the consequences of the climate crisis.
This means that not only the responsibility for the climate crisis is unequally distributed, but also its consequences. This is at the center of the demand for climate justice e.g. voiced at climate protests. For this reason, it is super important to put questions of systemic inequality at the centre of these discussions and to understand that the extent to which people are affected by climate change is inextricably linked to their positionality and the living conditions tied to it.
→ The publication is accessible online here.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos on postabyssal thinking. [online] Artforum, Summer 2018.
According to Sousa Santos, modern knowledge and law represent the most pronounced manifestations of "abyssal thinking". He identifies modern knowledge as a universalised power of distinction between wrong and right, with modern law deciding what is lawful or unlawful, or who is legal or illegal. The division of this thinking goes along an "abyss" that divides the world into two sides: an invisible one (the other side), the Global South, and a visible one (this side), the Global North, which builds on the former while rendering it invisible.
According to Sousa Santos, there is a need for an alternative way of thinking alternatives, because "abyssal thinking" reproduces itself, even in the attempt to reflect itself. He formulates the necessity of a "postabyssal thinking". Part of postabyssal thinking is the confrontation of the monoculture of modern science with the "ecologies of knowledges". Ecologies of knowledges are plural knowledge practices that are constantly negotiated over questions of relationships and hierarchies to each other. They establish themselves through constant questioning and incomplete answers.
→ The article is accessible here.
Max Liboiron: Pollution Is Colonialism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2021.
Dr. Max Liboiron gives a very personal account, situating plastic pollution and its study as a process that is interwoven at various levels (historical, political, economic, etc.) with ongoing colonial relations to the land and its inhabitants. Plastic, Liboiron argues, is an ideal tool to change dominant colonial concepts of environmental pollution and research by making visible relationships and responsibilities that are obscured by environmental rhetoric and industrial infrastructures. They see the differentiation of terms such as colonialism, capitalism, environmentalism, decolonial and anticolonial as fundamental for this, in order to make differences recognisable that are important for political action. These are a prerequisite for preventing colonial land relations from being reproduced in scientific work. By defining environmental pollution as a central element of colonialism, rather than its by-product, they open up a space for thinking about the role of science and scientific practice in the realisation of colonialism and anti-colonialism.
Liboiron draws for this, among other things, from their work as Executive Director of Civic Laboratory for Environmental Action Research (CLEAR).
→ I really enjoyed watching this video about CLEAR. You can find it here.
Ariella Aïsha Azoulay: Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso Books, 2019.
Words from the publisher's website:
"Azoulay argues that the institutions that make our world, from archives and museums to ideas of sovereignty and human rights to history itself, are all dependent on imperial modes of thinking. Imperialism has segmented populations into differentially governed groups, continually emphasized the possibility of progress while it tries to destroy what came before, and voraciously seeks out the new by sealing the past away in dusty archival boxes and the glass vitrines of museums."
Bayo Akomolafe: A Slower Urgency. [online] www.bayoakomolafe.net, n.A.
From the Nigerian philosopher Báyò Akómoláfé I learned the concept of slower urgency. He shares an African proverb on his blog that I find very meaningful and helpful: "the times are urgent; let us slow down." Akómoláfé invites us to slow down, to decelerate. This might feel counterintuitive at first, especially when we feel constantly confronted with crises. He writes: "in ‘hurrying up’ all the time, we often lose sight of the abundance of resources that might help us meet today’s most challenging crises. We rush through into the same patterns we are used to. Of course, there isn’t a single way to respond to crisis; there is no universally correct way. However the call to slow down works to bring us face to face with the invisible, the hidden, the unremarked, the yet-to-be-resolved. Sometimes, what is the appropriate thing to do is not the effective thing to do."
→ The article is accessible online here.
Françoise Vergès: Racial Capitalocene – Is the Anthropocene racial?. [online] Verso Blog, 30.8.2017.
The term "anthropocene" was introduced in 2000 by atmospheric engineer Paul Crutzen and biologist Eugene Stoermer. The scientists use the term to try to describe a new geological age in which humanity has the dominant geophysical influence on the earth's system. The term is important because it raises important questions of accountability.
However, there is also a critical discourse around the term. French political scientist and activist Françoise Vergès, for example, criticises the narrative for referring to the threat to humans as an undifferentiated whole. The problem is that it does not distinguish who is really responsible for the life-threatening changes to the earth and the climate.
→ Access the essay here.
Conversations continued …
In summer 2021 we had the pleasure to talk to Katharina Brenner, Luisa Herbst, Destina Atasayar and Lucie Jo Knilli about raising awareness for self-care and mental health in art/design schools. At the time the group studied together at University of Arts Berlin (UdK). They shared with us their experiences of organizing a student-led seminar called Eine Krise bekommen, struggling with implicit expectations and creating networks of solidarity.
→ Read the conversation here.
→ Find out more about the conversation series here.
ongoing Open Call
We invite contributions from you; design educators, students, alumni, researchers, pedagoges, enthusiasts and others to submit and share the sources which are reference points and/or inspiration to your practice! Your contribution will be published in our infrequent newsletter and in our text-based bibliography.
→ Find out how to contribute here.
Info
Teaching Design started as a collectively gathered bibliography focusing on design education from intersectional feminist and decolonial perspectives. Since its launch in September 2019, it has expanded into conversational formats, workshops, a temporary library and a space for reflections, which all has led to the platform in its current form.
→ Learn more about the research project here.
Currently the bibliography as well as this newsletter is curated and edited by Lisa Baumgarten unless mentioned otherwise.