Speculative design or creating alternatives
Curators: Rene Wawrzkiewicz, Mateusz Halawa
A new discursive cycle starts on November 27. We will be hosting a designer Arne Hendriks and a theoretician of design Fiona Raby.
Considering that intentional, conscious and creative formation of the common world is the essence of humanity, it behooves to recognize design as one of the undertakings, not only by all means human, but also having vast consequences for the whole community. Meanwhile, designing is still often associated only with the “designer”, elitist things, clothes and interiors. And yet every-day reality of all of us is being designed, from pavement and railway station, to hospitals, districts, social relations and economic systems. As Herbert Simon put it, designing is organizing what there is into what we want it to be.
Hence, design is strictly political practice of creation and materialization of the future; designing means “creating worlds”. Therefore, more and more researchers of culture, social theoreticians and designers themselves are interested in understanding design as a special type of criticism of the modernity, which is not just indicating issues, but proposing alternatives (solutions). Exactly this type of people will present during the cycle lectures on speculative design.
Organisers: Biennale Warszawa, Warsaw Design LAB, School of Form of the SWPS University.