1st Edition
Design and Political Dissent Spaces, Visuals, Materialities
This book examines, through an interdisciplinary lens, the relationship between political dissent and processes of designing.
In the past twenty years, theorists of social movements have noted a diversity of visual and performative manifestations taking place in protest, while the fields of design, broadly defined, have been characterized by a growing interest in activism. The book’s premise stems from the recognition that material engagement and artifacts have the capacity to articulate political arguments or establish positions of disagreement. Its contributors look at a wide array of material practices generated by both professional and nonprofessional design actors around the globe, exploring case studies that vary from street protests and encampments to design pedagogy and community-empowerment projects.
For students and scholars of design studies, urbanism, visual culture, politics, and social movements, this book opens up new perspectives on design and its place in contemporary politics.
1. Introduction
Jilly Traganou
SECTION 1: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AS DESIGN AGENTS
Part 1: Visuals and Objects of Protest
2. The Green Stripe: The Color of Identification
Victoria Hattam
3. Strategies of Creative Dissent under the People’s Republic of China’s ‘One China Policy’
Kyle Kwok
4. The Slovene Zombie Uprising
Ksenija Berk
5. The Distribution of Abilities: Disability, Dissent, and Design Activism by the Gothenburg Cooperative for Independent Living
Otto Von Busch and Hanna af Ekström
Part 2: Artifacts in the Afterlife of Protest
6. Art of the March: Archiving Aesthetics of the Women’s March—Interviews with Alessandra Renzi, Dietmar Offenhuber, Siqi Zhu, Christopher Pietsch, and Navarjun Singh
Grace Van Ness and Prakash Krishnan
7. Dissent, Design of Territory, and Design of Memory: The Museum of Slavery and Freedom at the Valongo Wharf, Rio de Janeiro
Barbara Szaniecki and Ana Helena da Fonseca
8. Beautiful Trouble: A Pattern Language of Creative Resistance—An Interview with Nadine Bloch
Evren Uzer
Response to Section 1
9. Response to Section 1. The Objects of Political Creativity
James Jasper
SECTION 2: DISSENTING THROUGH MATERIAL ENGAGEMENT
Part 1: Political Contention by Design
10. Vulnerable Critical Makings: Migrant Smuggling by Boats and Border Transgression
Mahmoud Κeshavarz
11. The Madrid Hologram Protest and the Democratic Potential of Visuality
Ksenija Berk
12. Data Acquisition, Data Analytics, and Data Articulations: DIY Accountability Tools and Resistance in Indonesia—An Interview with Irendira Radjawali of Drone Academy, Indonesia
Alessandra Renzi
13. Politics of Design Activism—From Impure Politics to Parapolitics
Thomas Markussen
Part 2: Spaces of Contestation and Prefiguration
14. The Agonistic Design of Conflict Kitchen
Veronica Uribe
15. Events and Ecologies of Design and Urban Activism: From Downtown São Paulo to the Peripheries
Kristine Samson
16. Temporarily Open: A Brazilian Design School’s Experimental Approaches against the Dismantling of Public Education: A Conversation on Design Pedagogy as Dissent.
Zoy Anastassakis, Marcos Martins, Lucas Nonno, Juliana Paolucci, and Jilly Traganou
17. Designing Post-carbon Futures: The Prefigurative Politics of the Transition Movement
Emily Hardt
18. Occupied Theater Embros: Designing and Maintaining the Commons in Athens under Crisis—An Interview with Eleni Tzirtzilaki
Orsalia Dimitriou
Response to Section 2
19. Response to Section 2. Designing while Dissenting while Dissenting while Designing: A Response in Counterpoint
Zoy Anastassakis
Biography
Jilly Traganou is an architect, and Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Parsons School of Design, The New School. She is co-editor-in chief of Design and Culture, and author of Designing the Olympics: Representation, Participation, Contestation (Routledge, 2016).
"... lively and timely... the volume is a welcome addition to the growing literature on design and politics. It will interest researchers and teachers of design as well as social life, while also being accessible, at least in part, to a more practice-oriented readership."
--Design and Culture
"Design and Political Dissent is a far-reaching and ambitious book not only in its intellectual and geographical scope, but also in its diversity of topics and formats."
--Journal of Design History
