Conversations (C) are sessions that aim to foster passionate discussion about emerging concerns, future themes and alternative viewpoints around pressing issues for the PD community. The sessions are a maximum of one hour and a half and should involve participants in more than listening. (Note: New format in PDC2020)
C Chairs: Christopher Frauenberger (TU Wien, Vienna – AUT), Yoko Akama (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology – AUS), Pablo Calderón Salazar (Universidad de Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano – COL)
C1 – A Carrier Bag Theory of More than Listening (EN/ES)
Thursday 18th of June 3:30 pm (UTC -5)
Hosts: Tania Pérez-Bustos, Lucy Suchman, Alexandra Chocontá Piraquive – BIOS
In this Conversation we invite thinking about those artifacts that hold together collaboration and participation. We take as a starting point our experience as anthropologists in a participatory design project in which a digitally-enhanced carrier bag was designed and used to connect communities including women belonging to different memory sewing circles in Colombia and researchers/designers from different locations and disciplines. The connections were made through the sharing of stories, through effortful listening, and through the fostering of new relations which together nourished different forms of engagement and careful witnessing in the comprehension of conflict and reconciliation in Colombia. In the proposed format of the Conversation we ask participants to engage in listening to stories of the carrier bag, and responding with their own stories of effortful listening related to their design practices. The Conversation aims to become a carrier bag that holds together stories of more-than-listening as integral to participatory design practices.
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NOTE: This conversation features some of the conference participants that will bring stories to the conversation.
C2 – Generando un Pluri-Glosario para Diseño Participativo (ES)
Thursday 18th of June 3:30 pm (UTC -5)
Hosts: Silvia Mata-Marín, Sofía Bosch Gómez, Marysol Ortega Pallanez, Silvana Juri – BIOS
Los métodos participativos incluyen observación, interpretación y colaboración los cuales requieren un lenguaje compartido para operar y realizarse. Sin embargo, la ausencia de un lenguaje basado en el diseño más allá de la concepción anglo-eurocéntrica del mismo es problemática, particularmente en el campo del diseño social. Este problema requiere una atención especial cuando se trabaja con comunidades que reclaman su espacio en los márgenes, ya que esto implica un compromiso en los procesos vinculantes para preservar prácticas culturales y de identidad. Los desafíos para los diseñadores son los de preservar los matices y la pluralidad de los lenguajes, y por lo tanto de la variedad de mundos que existen, para que sean verdaderamente inclusivos y permitan su coexistencia. Nuestro objetivo en este conversatorio es contribuir a la adopción de terminología de diseño basada en el contexto de las comunidades con las cuales trabajan los diseñadores. Para contribuir al desarrollo de una verdadera pluralidad e interlocución cultural — a diferencia de una mera traducción, proponemos un espacio de conversación participativo y generativo que buscará co-construir y proponer un pluri-glosario de diseño.
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NOTE: Esta conversación tiene un límite de participantes de 30 personas y se realiza en Español. This conversation will have a limit of 30 people, participants will be accepted on a first-come-first served basis. The conversation will be carried out in Spanish
C3 – Racialized Design: Developing a vocabulary of shared intention in design (EN)
Thursday 18th of June 3:30 pm (UTC -5)
Hosts: Terresa Moses, Lisa Elzey Mercer – BIOS
Racialized design will be analyzed through conversations focused on the ethics of knowing, shared vocabulary, and identifying racialized design on an international stage. The ability to identify and discuss the overgeneralization of historically powerless communities is imperative to guide the social shift in participatory design. Through the use of community agreements and a sharing of vocabulary, this conversation will allow participants to: 1) speak to their own social experiences with racialized design, or 2) convey knowledge and validation of said experiences. The learning of a shared vocabulary narrowing in on multiple elements of racialized design would enable collaborative partners from multiple disciplines to change patterns, working together to deter the continuum of this overgeneralization.
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NOTE: This conversation will have a limit of 42 people, participants will be accepted on a first-come-first served basis
C4 – The Politics of Nature- Designing for an Ontological Turn / DESIS Philosophy Talk 7.2 (EN)
Thursday 18th of June 3:30 pm (UTC -5)
Hosts: Virginia Tassinari, Ezio Manzini, Arturo Escobar, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Annalinda De Rosa
Today’s environmental emergency requires specific efforts in terms of thinking/acting in designing. The consequences of anthropocentric ways of producing, consuming and living are becoming painfully clear. Design played (and often still plays) a role in this, and therefore has in many ways contributed to feed this anthropocentric mindset, considering human interests separated from the ones of the planet’s. Design has a shared responsibility in this adopting this anthropocentric mindset, and it is hence obliged to recognize its risks and consequences. In this regard, designers are currently, and increasingly, becoming aware that an ontological shift is needed. What does it mean to take this “ontological turn” seriously? Which thinking in contemporary philosophy and anthropology can help designers – and particularly the ones dealing with subfields of design such as Participatory Design and Design for Social Innovation – to develop non-anthropocentric reflective practices that might account for the radical interdependence between people and the planet? Which kinds of transformative reflective practices might these modes of thinking possibly nurture? In this series of DESIS Philosophy Talks, we explore this subject starting from Latour’s idea of coming down to Earth, meaning count the radical interdependence connecting us to all other living creatures, as well as De la Bellacasa’s idea of “care” as relational modality within tis radical interdependence. The conversation opens the discussion about other Pluriversal metaphors – for instance coming from indigenous cultures – which can guide design to shift from anthropocentrism “down to Earth”, also exploring what concretely these metaphors could mean for contemporary design practices. Anthropologists Arturo Escobar, Mario Blazer and Marisol de la Cadena will engage with the Participatory Design community in this timely intellectual confrontation.
