The Right to Design: Another Possible is Possible
Summary
This curated event is part of a series of investigations with practitioners and scholars from disciplinary fields ranging from design and architecture to anthropology and law that will not only map relationships to human rights but begin to imagine alternative framings for how rights could be practiced, made visible and extended through the discipline of design itself.
Participants include Arjun Appadurai, Agency, Arturo Escobar, Elof Hellström/Mapping the Unjust City, Anna Hydén, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Nina Valerie Kolowratnik, Thomas Marriott and Christina Zetterlund.
Supported by
Röhsska, Urgent Pedagogies (IASPIS), The Research and Innovation Office (FIK) at GU, PARSE
Description of project
Originally planned to coincide with the Röhsska Museums exhibition by Forensic Architecture in April 2020, but postponed due to COVID-19, this curated event took place at Röhsska the 7th of October.
This event with around 100 participants emerged out of an extensive dialogue and planning with the invited guests, Röhsska and IASPIS as well as other key players with regard to the technical setup, as the event was partly online, and documentation. It was organized in a series of moderated sessions. Some in the form of roundtables, some in presentations and some in conversations as listed in the documentation; As part of the event Design students from MA 2 (2021), produced and exhibition addressing Design and Rights in relation to Professional Practice
Acknowledging our limited and situated understanding of how the relation between design and rights can be understood, the event produced a tentative cartography of design rights. Firstly by recognising and inviting practitioners (listed in above and in the documentation) that in their own way, have already been engaging with these questions (although not necessarily under the rubric of design rights). And secondly, by foregrounding and sharing a range of approaches and methods that not only visualise and materialise issues of design and rights but complicate the grafting of the two terms together.
The tentative mapping for was organized through the following frames:
1. The Design of Rights
Understanding the history of Rights as designed artefacts with complex histories and politics
2. Design Rights Now
Understanding the relationship between design and rights through Intellectual Property Laws and in the form of copyright, trademarks and patents.
3. Design Rights Violations
Understanding design practices that visualise, materialise and mediate Rights violations and injustices.
4. Design Literacy and Readership
As a means to show how design itself can be the tool for producing and facilitating rights violations and injustices.
5. The Right not be designed
Understanding how ‘development projects’ as well as ‘computational systems’ intentionally design subjects and subjectivities.
While the 4 first frames were part of the original framing, the last frame “The Right not be designed”, emerged out of a longer mail conversation with Arjun Appadurai and Arturo Escobar, with regard to the framing of their session.
All sessions were audio and video recorded by Badou Jobe, also through zoom. Patrick Lacey from Åbäke, operated as a live Stenographer, throughout the event. All documentation is to be used further as research material and for publishing and the frames will be further developed through further research and events building on the base established through the Röhsska event.
Type of work
Exhibitions, events and festivals
Published in
Röhsska
Link to web site
https://rohsska.se/the-right-to-design/
View/ Open
Date
2021Creator
Kular, Onkar
Benesch, Henric
Keywords
Design
Rights
Publication type
artistic work
Language
eng