About
We tend to think of design as making new things, and that designers act through addition and intervention. But, in a world where human activities often violently constrict the lives of others, how can designers also cultivate creative acts of undoing and leaving be?
Through three presentations – on un/making (Prof. Åsa Ståhl), cripping (Prof. Laura Forlano) and grace (Dr. Erik Sandelin) – we populate a palette of generative nos and nots in contemporary design.
After the presentations, professor Catherine D’Ignazio moderates a discussion on the emerging landscape of design and negation.
Food and drinks will be served.
Everyone is welcome!
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WHAT: 3 x short lectures + discussion
WHEN: Monday November 16, 6-8 PM
WHERE: MET Auditorium (W41-1216). In-person only.
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Åsa Ståhl is professor of design at HDK-Valand, Academy of Art & Design at the University of Gothenburg. Ståhl’s work combines participatory design, speculations, and feminist technoscience. She works experimentally, collaboratively, and process-oriented across different fields of knowledge and integrate research, teaching and external collaborations on the topics of futures, un/making, householding, and democracy. Ståhl co-leads the artistic research environment Design after Progress: Reimiagining Design Histories and Futures, which carefully seeks to untie design’s entanglement with progress and to craft concrete imaginaries of a more socio-ecologically just design.
Laura Forlano, a Fulbright award-winning and National Science Foundation funded scholar, is a disabled writer, social scientist and design researcher. She is Professor in the departments of Art + Design and Communication Studies in the College of Arts, Media, and Design and Senior Fellow at The Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University. She is the author of Cyborg (with Danya Glabau, MIT Press 2024) and an editor of three books: Bauhaus Futures (MIT Press 2019), digitalSTS (Princeton University Press 2019) and From Social Butterfly to Engaged Citizen (MIT Press 2011). She received her Ph.D. in communications from Columbia University.
Erik Sandelin makes prototypes to activate and investigate gracious modes of life. Sandelin is currently a postdoctoral fellow in the Data+Feminism Lab and in the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing group at MIT. He holds a PhD in Art, Technology and Design from Konstfack and KTH in Stockholm, and is the co-founder of interaction design and innovation studio Unsworn.
Catherine D’Ignazio is an Associate Professor of Urban Science and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT and Director of the Data + Feminism Lab.