Doing and Undoing Post-Anthropocentric Design

Alongside Li Jönsson, Martín Tironi and Pablo Hermansen, I’m chairing the DRS 2022 Bilbao track Doing and Undoing Post-Anthropocentric Design.

Here’s the track abstract:

In an often referenced keynote lecture for the Networks of Design, Latour (2008) introduced the titan Prometheus, who defaced the gods and gave fire to humanity, as a symbol of modernism for the design community. If the Greek titan inflamed progress by disruptive innovation, radically breaking the more-than-human order of the Gods, the opposite, namely, to design from within, mediating and negotiating in a careful and modest way, is to contest progress and its powers.

Consequently, we want to encourage design researchers to go along with Prometheus’ brother Epimetheus. Often depicted as the foolish brother, he was in fact the one giving each mortal creature the equipment it would need to live well, favoring reproduction over production, careful transformations over disruptive ones.

Doing and Undoing Post-Anthropocentric Design calls upon design researchers to critically share experiences where the reproduction of democratic and sustainables forms of more-than-human coexistence are in play. We encourage a special attention to socio-ecological transformation and situated embeddedness. As Bellacasa (2017) asks, ‘What does caring mean when we go about thinking and living interdependently with beings other than human, in “more-than-human” worlds?’ What are the ‘Arts of living on a damaged planet?’ (Tsing et al 2017).

We hope this Theme Track will assemble provocative experiences and reflections, which address questions such as: What are the implications of designing on a planet in ruins? What needs to be undesigned, and how? What design-research instruments and repertories could promote reproduction over production, careful transformations over disruptive ones? How to design futures beyond the idea of human progress?

References

  • De la Cadena, M. & Blaser, M. (2018) ‘A World of Many Worlds’. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Haraway, D. J. (2016) ‘Staying with the trouble’. Durham: Duke University Press.
  • Hermansen, P., Tironi, M. (2021) Cosmopolitical interventions: prototyping inter-species encounters. In Rucker, Stanley; Roberts-Smith, Jennifer and Radzikowska, Milena. (Eds). Prototyping Across the Disciplines. Bristol, UK: Intellect Books. pp. 22-44.
  • Hillgren, P.-A., Lindström, K., Strange, M., Witmer, H., Chronaki, A., Ehn, P., … Westerlaken, M. (2020) ‘Glossary: Collaborative Future-Making’.
  • Jönsson, L., Light, A., Lindström, K., Ståhl, Å., & Tham, M. (2019) How Can We Come to Care in and Through Design? Proceedings of the 8th Bi-Annual Nordic Design Research Society Conference: Who Cares?, 1–8.
  • Latour, B. (2008) A Cautious Prometheus? A Few Steps Toward a Philosophy of Design (with Special Attention to Peter Sloterdijk). In J. G. Fiona Hackne & V. Minto (Eds), Proceedings of the 2008 Annual International Conference of the Design History Society (p./pp. 2-10), Florida: Universal Publishers.
  • Puig de la Bellacasa, M. (2017) ‘Matters of Care: Speculative Ethics in More Than Human Worlds’. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. 
  • Tironi, M., Hermansen, P.  (2020) Prototipando la coexistencia: diseños para futuros interespecie. ARQ, no. 106: 38-47.
  • Tsing, A. L., Bubandt, N., Gan, E., & Swanson, H. A. (Eds). (2017) ‘Arts of living on a damaged planet’. University of Minnesota Press.

Making and Opening

Entangling Design and Social Science

24 September 2010, 9.00 – 5.30 | Ben Pimlott Building – Lecture Theatre | Goldsmiths, University of London

Design and social science disciplines intersect at a number of points. While there is excellent work exploring many of these points of contact, there is also a tendency for social science to treat design as a topic (eg what does design do and how might this be accounted for in sociological terms?), and for design to treat social science as a resource (eg what useful knowledge does sociology produce and how can this be deployed to model users or construct scenarios?).

This day conference will contribute to the move beyond this pattern. Collecting a group of leading practitioners in design and social science, the conference will present a series of dialogues and commentaries on a range of common, open issues:

Speculation/Anticipation;

Participation/Impact;

Discipline/Contamination;

Making/Method.

In the process, the conference will explore possible, emergent interrelations and synergies between design and social science, for example: how might the practices of speculative or critical designers furnish social science with new insights into the study and articulation of society? How might social science’s interest in complexity contribute to the iterative process of making in design? Speakers will include: Bill Gaver, Pelle Ehn, Mike Michael, Bill Moggridge, Harvey Molotch, Michelle Murphy, Lucy Suchman, Nina Wakeford.

This conference is limited to 60 delegates. To book a place please contact: Sociology@gold.ac.uk. £15.00 Full Price £10.00 Concessions. Sponsored by: Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process, Interaction Research Studio, Incubator for Critical Inquiry into Technology and Ethnography. This event is financially supported by the Economic and Social Research Council and is part of London Design Festival.

Making and Opening
Poster for the Making and Opening conference.

The Objects of Design and Social Science

The Objects of Design and Social Science is the title of a series of seminars for this academic years at Goldsmiths. The programme has been put together by the Interaction Research Studio and the Centre for the Study of Invention and Social Process. The topic of objects is used as a device to hopefully pull out some intersections within the practices of social scientists and designers.

Below is a list of presenters and dates for these seminars, which are free and open to all. They take place at 4:00pm-6:00pm, at the Interaction Research Studio, 6th Floor, Ben Pimlott Building, Goldsmiths, New Cross, London, SE14 6NW.

Autumn Term 2009

Seminar 1 – Wednesday October 14th
Introducing the Objects of Design and Social Science
With: Bill Gaver, Tobie Kerridge, Mike Michael & Alex Wilkie, Goldsmiths

Seminar 2 – Wednesday November 4th
Buildings as Things
With: Albena Yaneva, The University of Manchester

Seminar 5 – Wednesday November 18th
Speculative and Critical Objects
With: James Auger, Royal College of Art & Jimmy Loizeau, Goldsmiths

Spring Term 2010

Seminar 4 – Wednesday January 27th
Objects and Services
With: Chris Downs

Seminar 5 – Wednesday February 17th
From Objects to Issues?
With: Noortje Marres, Oxford University

Seminar 6 – Wednesday March 10th
Object Fair
With: Bill Gaver, Tobie Kerridge, Mike Michael & Alex Wilkie, Goldsmiths

Poster for the Design and Social Science Seminar Series.