Events overview
Triggering Lecture - Paolo Patelli
Lecture about the politics of the "collective":
A common world? Invoking, inhabiting, continuing a life-sustaining web
We present a series of images extracted from “The Forest Underneath” to introduce a specific site where the politics of the collective are defined by unique alliances. “The Forest Underneath” combines materials shot on location inside and around the Hambach Forest, in western Germany, into an observational film. It portrays the last remnant of an ecosystem that has occupied the Rhine plain since the end of the last ice age – and a site where corporate exploitation, environmental degradation and activism coexist. The forest, of which only ten per cent remains, is set to be cleared to mine by the energy company RWE, and currently borders the largest open-pit coal mine in Europe. The rural towns surrounding it are ghostly ruins: their former inhabitants have been relocated, and displaced refugees have temporarily succeeded them. The forest, however, is a site of contestation and resistance. It has been a political standpoint for environmentalists since 2012, when a heterogeneous group of activists took permanent residence in self-built ‘barrios’ and treehouses, behind barricades, to protect it from planned destruction.
The film depicts a common world not as something we come to recognise as if it had always been here and we had not noticed it. It rather approaches it as something we have learned to invoke through thoughtfulness and worry, but also as something that needs a strong sense of attachment and commitment to be inhabited. It thus involves “matters of concern” as proposed by Bruno Latour, and at the same time “matters of care” as advanced by feminist philosopher Mari?a Puig de la Bellacasa. Natural forces, species, technologies and materialities are entangled in the social, cultural and political life of contemporary cities and landscapes. How can we radically rethink our politics, our dealings with the ‘extended democracy’ of other species and things? How can we immerse ourselves, our bodies, in signals, in radically different, subjective worlds to let them interact and interfere with our worldview?
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Regional case studies about politics of the
Pazugoo names a constellation of objects, which are proposed as future markers for deep geological repository sites of long-term nuclear waste storage. The work takes its name from Pazuzu, the Babylonian-Assyrian demon of dust and contagion, combined with the ‘gooey’ reformulationof museum objects that form its composite body. The building of Pazugoos takes place through a range of artist-led processes and collaborative workshops, where freely available online digital 3D object files of scanned museum figures are edited according to the specific Pazuzu morphology - a figure with an excess of wings, with one hand raised upward.
The resulting hybrid objects, inhabiting museum and gallery exhibitions, act as an index for the burial project, where models are proposed to mark underground perimeters of low-level radioactive waste disposal sites, connecting them to other sites of toxicity and the currents of deep time.
The project is based on the search for cultural forms that can communicate ideas across hundreds of generations. Religious and secular belief systems are a significant part of the debate about nuclear semiotics and how to communicate important knowledge into the deep future. Weir’s projectcreates a thread of digitalmutation through replicating the figure of Pazuzu, who warns against dangers as intangible as dust and viruses, highlighting the invisibility and mutating force of radiation. Against the idea of communicating to future people like us now, and against narratives of apocalypse and salvation, the buried objects become mythic relics for unknown futures. From this speculative perspective, viewers today become relics for them, reflecting on our own entanglements within nuclear materiality.
Bart Van Gassen, landschapsprojecten Kolenspoor en Stiemervallei
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Panel debate with audience about the politics of "collective"
All the diverse participants come together to debate about the different topics of collectivity.
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Triggering Lecture - Luigi Coppola
Triggering lecture about the politics of "translation":
Today we need faith in the future based on respect for who we are or who we long to be. This demands a radical change in the narrations that question and query the current state of affairs and generate new insights into what would otherwise remain hidden. The language we use has an extraordinary potential to push towards a widening of both cultural norms and formal regulations in society.
Neoliberalism has been the dominant political and economic paradigm for the last 50 years. It has distributed wealth and power upward, influencing everything from government policies to business blueprints and global trade deals to collective agreements. Neoliberalism has also reshaped the way we think about ourselves and the world around us. Whatever else one might say about it, neoliberalism’s narrative power is undeniable. Yet today, neoliberalism is fading. As the model fails on its own terms, the intellectual dominance of the neoliberal paradigm is falling out of favor among academics, policy makers, and even the business community.
However, those advocating for a more just and equitable system of political economy do not yet have a unifying philosophical paradigm or narrative framework. Therefore we question what deep narratives are needed to create a just and equitable economic system after neoliberalism. What strategies advance those narratives? What alignment among organizations and practitioners is needed to produce narrative change on a global scale?
The commons re-appropriation movement has a particular role in the creation of those new narratives. It is increasingly present within our society as a (micro) social revolution practice that germinates on a small scale and embraces the complexity of relationships with other generative practices. Social design can play a fundamental role thanks to its innate ability to intervene at all levels in the construction of commons, on the level of the first revelation from the latent state, the activation of a shared social imaginary, the symbolic translation of processes into visual imagery and narrative, the activation of the fundamental rituals and celebrations and the transmission to the outside. In order to activate this complex role it is important to incorporate the strategy of participatory research that connects intervention with practical knowledge, social sciences, and technical disciplines, offering multiple answers which adapt to the context.
In this reflection I would like to underline a practice-led strategy I am exploring in different contexts, that consists in a series of actions that are aimed at promoting climate change adaptation and the resilience of marginal systems. As a practical example I'd like to investigate the implications of language and terminologies embedded in dominant monocultural approaches whilst seeking to counter-verbalise them. How can one challenge the existing vocabulary underlying the politics of traditional botanical taxonomies and classifications? What new signifiers can agro-political practices articulate in order to question the power exercised through dispossession and exploitation of land, communities and biodiversity?
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Regional cases about the politics of "translation"
Presentation of multiple case studies about the politics of "translation". The case studies deal with designing large-scale infrastructures with communities, seasonal migrant labour in Borgloon, process design beyond the tradition of management thinking and participatory speculative performance and toolkit to rethink new laws for refugees.
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Panel debate with audience about the politics of "translation"
Debate between multiple participants about the different topics of politics of "translation"
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Triggering Lecture - Els Vervloesem
In the world of design, the social aspects of spatial development projects drew more attention in the last few years. This switch has its consequences for the design practices. The part of designers, working together with a network of different actors, professionals and non-professionals, is getting bigger and bigger. It’s not the designers who defines a solution for an existing problem anymore. It is his or her task to start a search for new chances and opportunities, to accomplish positive changes in the future. This concept translates itself to the setup of collective actions and new alliances between designers and citizens, civil servants, entrepreneurs, activists, students, civil society organizations, academics and others who are involved in the process of creating cities and public spaces.
This shift in design practices has a lot of potential. These practices of designing space show the designers how to play their role as a pro-active and socially engaged actor in society, which reaches much further than classic procedures and working methods. Some specific initiatives for urgent social matters, like the revival of slow connections to create meaningful public spaces, are a good example of this change of mentality (case 1 and 2). Another example is a construction project or a temporary installation, like the creation of an imaginary space to make meeting each other possible in a public space. It seems that these practices vary strongly, but have in common that they all aim to take care of the world. The question is how these collective practices enrich the social role of the designer in the creation of public spaces.
Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2011) developed a frame of mind about the matters of care within the context of science and technology studies, which offer the tools to criticise and observe this new mentality for designers. She pleads for an ethos of care and remarks that this is not only a matter for the techno-scientifical aspects of modern society, but that it’s also important and relevant in architecture and urban design disciplines. How can design practices contribute to a better future in a caring way? Keeping the political-philosophical concepts of matters of concern (latour, 2004) and the public concern (Mouffe, 1993) in mind, combined with the insights on care of feminist literature, Puig de la Bellacassa (2011) defines how we can apply this abstract and political perspective in innovative practices, aimed at social changes. She is convinced that “[…] the commitment to care can be a speculative effort to think how things could be different”.
Designing in a caring way can be perceived in many different ways. Inspired by the frame of mind about matters of concern, I identify three different ways of thinking and working. Each of these methods makes it possible to focus on multiple momnets of social and spatial design processes. At the same time, they provide a guideline to reflect upon selected cases.
The first method starts on the moment where designers observe the work field for the first time and defines the way of collecting knowledge. How can designers avoid some perspectives being excluded in advance? It’s the definition of ‘who is involved?’, but also ‘who cares?’, ‘why do we care?’ and ‘how do we care?’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011: 96). The second method is about the way of interpreting knowledge, events and experiences. How do designers deal with conflicts in individual interests and shared concerns? What if, for instance, the individual parking space and an increase in the amount of collective green are placed opposite to each other? How can designers think and work past their own normative ideas, paired with and isolated position, convinced of their own truth? The last method is about caring as a verb. It’s about the vision on the world, which defines how you would change the world. Which role could designers play in making the matters of care visible, where designers mostly don’t give a lot of attention to? And, in which way translates this in concrete interventions?
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Panel debate with audience about the politics of "care"
Debate between multiple participants about the different topics of politics of "care"
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The Politics of Design: Act 1 Exhibition
The Politics of Design: Act 1 exhibition presented works of 15 designers and collectives selected as participants in the 'Situated Actions' strand of the 15th edition of the international Participatory Design conference. UHasselt, Faculty of Architecture, LUCA School of Arts, Z33 - House for Contemporary Art, the city of Hasselt and the city of Genk present these 15 situated actions in order to address the debate on public space (in Hasselt) and on the politics of design. This 'first act’ was a first exhibition in a longer trajectory, that aimed for starting new collaborations on a local, regional and international context.
The Politics of Design: Act 1 intended to contextualise participatory design practices that were part of the Participatory Design Conference by placing them in a dialogue with several local and international projects which will also be presented in the exhibition. The exhibition presented 3 thematic clusters that made tangible the politics of ways in which participation is given form. These 'ways to participate' are: BODY (participating as an individual and a physical body through practices of care and work), COMMUNITY (participating through and towards creating a collective through practices of commoning and representation) and CITY (participating as a stranger in larger scale networks, through practices of data production and collection, and contributions to complex challenges, such as sustainability).
Selected situated actions encompassed Participatory Design-inspired exhibitions, interventions, participatory walks, public debates, performances and other interactive formats. The exhibition was curated and prepared by Mela Zuljevic, Jan Boelen, Ils Huyghens and Liesbeth Huybrechts
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‘Health Cultures - Healthcare and Multiculturalism’ is a 2-year ongoing design research project that looks at the health sector and how it is developing within the context of a growing multicultural society, the decreasing welfare state and the expanding digital culture. We collected visual data in different health-related contexts in Genk (BE) - sport infrastructure, professional football club, doctor’s residence and practice, hospital, healthcare logistics. This supported us to question whether caregivers and care receivers from different cultural backgrounds could better collaborate via the exchange of a richer diversity of health data for self-monitoring and to complement the official health records and interactions. Therefore, we highlighted the ‘interfaces’ - tools, data, codes and interactions - currently in use in these contexts to design possible scenarios for self-monitoring and we imagined how new health interfaces could be designed and integrated into existing collective infrastructures in Genk (cultural centers, associations, public infrastructures, etc.) To invite other people to think with us on how interfaces could allow for self-collecting and monitoring of health data in relation to existing collective infrastructures, we designed a screen-installation. The installation uses an algorithm to search for visual similarities between the data we as design researchers collected in the health field (on codes, tools, data, interactions and collective infrastructures) and triggers with questions the participants to imagine collective infrastructures that offer access to novel interfaces for self-monitoring of health (e.g. breast self-screening data collection, sleep patterns, etc.). Project by Teis De Greve, Daniela Dossi & Irma Földényi
The Post-Labouratory is an answer to the rapid automation of labour and the resulting cultural crisis. It liberates us from the idea of the necessity of labour and supports us in discovering our true desires. It offers participants the possibility to abolish their job by developing a robot that does their labour with the engineering help of post-labour companions. Through the abolition of their labour, the participants can explore a post-labour future. The post-labour companions assist the participants to reconsider their desires during individual sessions. The creative action of making and discussions about work, leisure and life enables this passage. The Post-Labouratory claims that the quality of automating technology increases if the specialists – people working in the job to be automated – take an active part in the development of the robot. During the development process the robot becomes the apprentice of the participant. The Post-Labouratory combines the skills of the participants and the post- labour companions that include design, engineering and social sciences. The Post-Labouratory supports the transition of workers into non-workers and the building of a post-labour future. Project by Ottonie von Roeder
The installation shows two perspectives on the ongoing project series ACTING THINGS, that investigates processes of production as socio-material ritual, play or choreographies of daily life. Till now six ACTING THINGS experiments have been staged that investigate the continuous negotiations between human and non-human bodies, social interactions and material structures and how they are mutually influencing and shaping each other. The video documentations give an overview of the past experiments. By choosing perspective and highlighting findings, each experiment is both reflected and analyzed as well as its narration defined. On the other hand, the installation addresses the processes and developments behind these experiments opening up as a possible approach for choreographic design practices. Project by Judith Seng
Co-production Teatime is a prototype developed to support inquiry processes in co-production – the close collaboration and co-creation of knowledge between academic researchers and partners from industry and municipalities. In an attempt to bridge gaps between stakeholders with different interests, expectations and knowledge horizons, the teatime explores the use of artefacts and ritual in dialogue-based inquiry. The purpose is to prompt playful interactions, the sharing of diverse perspectives, and to deepen understanding about ways of co-producing. Co-production Teatime is developed within Laura Gottlieb’s PhD project, which uses a design-oriented research approach to explore creative and experiential ways to prompt inquiry in co-production. In the situated action, participants from the conference are invited to partake in a short version of this teatime. The discussion will focus on challenges in co-production. The purpose is to share experiences with other researchers and to address areas for development and future research in co-production. The teatime will stimulate the senses as a means to trigger metaphors, reflection and discussions about this topic. Project by Laura Gottlieb and Jennie Schaffer
The “Office for Bureaucritic Imagination – State of Exception” is a participatory speculative performance inspired by Hannah Arendt and Giorgio Agamben’s philosophy on the potential of active participation in the process of law generation, thus questioning today’s ideas of democracy and participation in city life. The concept, “State of Exception” is influenced by Agamben’s notion of a space where the normal laws and regulations in society are suspended. This idea is borrowed for the performance, in which the status quo of laws is questioned and new laws are imagined. In a representative democracy, participation in politics is often understood as being reserved to politicians. Although politics affects the lives of every individual, the divide between public interests and private interests is becoming increasingly apparent. Participatory democracy bridges the divide between public and private interests in juxtaposition to bureaucratized and elitist form of politics. Hannah Arendt’s concept of participatory democracy encourages action, plurality and freedom – where human multiplicity and different standpoints can pave way for interesting debates and better political inclusivity. In order for political participation to take form, spaces for political action are required. The “Office for Bureaucritic Imagination” is a performance, speculative design and a stage where the coming together of a diversity of people to deliberate on public affairs allows for different voices to be heard and considered, especially those from the unrepresented segments of the population. The office provides a meeting point for politicians, civil servants, citizens and local associations to speculate on alternative futures through laws. Project by Virginia Lui & Virginia Tassinari
The ‘Library of Engagements’ is a live installation. It is a participatory design tool for engaging citizens in the production of space, urban and architectural design in the city. This piece of work aims to bring the debate about community participation and public consultation in the built environment to as wide an audience as possible and hopes to contribute to the movement to obliterate the myth that space is produced by a single person. Most of all it is generous and connects to the individual participant to suggest a method that they could use in their own community or neighbourhood. The librarian, Emily, invites individuals, or small groups to share a collection of “methods of engagement” – which are inspirational ideas to transform where you live. Emily will personally present the methods in the form of a library catalogue and archive, which she will share through objects, artefacts and stories to suit each visitor. Emily is an architect and urban designer with a desire to involve as many people as possible in the design of spaces, buildings, neighbourhoods and cities. The Library of Engagements will take place on Tuesday 21 August at Fietsbar Cycle Shop, Minderbroedersstraat 54, 3500 Hasselt and it is open to the public - everyone is welcome to attend.
Sustainability is an important topic on the agenda of many cities today, certainly since the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were officially launched in 2016. To further investigate this meaning of sustainability on the level of the city and its citizens, a group of local and international students, designers, artists and architects and the city of Hasselt worked together to see how people share (in) their city today and how this can advance the sustainable development goals. During PDC’18 we present an interactive exhibition that discusses the role of PD in contemplating on and articulating the political potential of spatial sharing in the city in addressing these sustainability challenges. On the one hand, we showcase how communities already organise and share their common concerns, goods or information (i.e. commoning) in Hasselt, often on a micro-level. On the other hand, we present design proposals that experiment with how spatial practitioners can give form to infrastructures to support these practices to relate to or act against various institutional frames on a meso- and macro-scale to disclose and enhance their political potential and gain impact on a supra-local level (i.e. institutioning). The situated action invites participants to reflect on different types of sharing detected in Hasselt (care-, value-, trade- and need-based sharing). Together they discuss what actions can contribute to the development of institutioning as a conscious practice by designers to develop infrastructures that can enhance the political potential of self-initiated and already existing sharing on different scale levels. Project by Teresa Palmieri, Liesbeth Huybrechts, Oswald Devisch and Roel De Ridder
The project ‘WegenWerken’ (RoadWorks) looks into the role of soft connections in the city of Genk to visualise and encourage their future as public spaces by contributing to community life, local economy and sustainability. We are interested in learning how a participatory design approach can help us understand, test and activate them as spaces of productive potential in city-making. We experimented with different participatory mapping tools leading to interactive design output including a slow road network map of Genk as well as a toolkit with actions to realise and activate this network. Both are framed and informed by an in-depth interaction between the scale of the city (the network) and the scale of the neighborhood (the path). We will exhibit the different mapping tools produced within this project and an interactive map which will engage the visitors to use or complete the toolkit of actions by looking into the space of connections between the cities of Hasselt and Genk. Here, we aim to explore the performative and political characteristics of the mapping tools in relation to the participatory framework. Project by Mela Zuljevic, Barbara Roosen and Liesbeth Huybrechts (De Andere Markt)
The project Master Plan for Duamdong was presented as a suggestion for the local population, city planners and politicians to contemplate on, test and negotiate with each other the near future of the place they inhabit. It started as an art project initiated by Gwangju Biennial in South Korea. It started in spring 2016 in the Nuribom Community Centre in Duamdong in the outskirts of Gwangju and continued until spring 2018. The aim was to create a discursive platform for working on issues related to the neighborhood's near and possible futures, for instance, on resolving the problem of garbage collection and separation, parking issues, the regeneration of small street gardens and the development of a rooftop plant camp. The project was further contextualized by a series of open lectures which took place during the opening month of Gwangju Biennial in September 2016. The project was composed as an action research project with several parts: 1. Learning from Duamdong, several workshops with residents from Duamdong. 2. Project proposal; a video-documentary. 3. Public presentations and events; meeting between artists, residents, politicians and city officials. 4. Public lectures and discussions on the subject of gentrification, eco - community and self - organisation. Project by Apolonija Šušterši? with Dari Bae
The Democratic Drinking Bar is an interactive situated action by Ann De Keersmaecker that intervenes in the PDC2018 official reception bar. The drinks menu of the Democratic Drinking Bar is created together with the stakeholders of the conference; people that navigate in close proximity of the bar, from international workshop hosts to the local cleaner. Each stakeholder can make several decisions, from putting a drink on the menu and naming the price of that drink, to deciding where the profits of the selling of that drink go to. By inviting the stakeholders to shape the drinks menu, Ann De Keersmaecker co-acts as a bar owner, intervening in the existing bar. The democratic intention of the intervening action changes the selection of drinks, the financial model, and possibly even the decisions of the visitors of the bar. The Democratic Drinking Bar questions the semi-publicness of a bar, whether and how a bar represents the people that meet there and visit it. It attempts to visualise a small-scale locally embedded democratic system intertwined with the capitalist system. Ann De Keersmaecker believes that a bar, where a specific audience meets, may be shaped by that audience and its stakeholders. Project by Ann De Keersmaecker
De Eendagspartij (The One-day Party) is an intervention that aims to give citizens, in light of the upcoming local elections in Belgium, a platform to voice their own views as opposed to having to conform to one of the existing party programs. The fictitious political party will invite residents of the city of Hasselt to join and shape their own program on the dedicated day. By stimulating the involvement of inhabitants in the shaping of their own environment the project questions the functioning of a purely representative democracy. Furthermore, the project discusses the issue of ownership in public space by letting the participants design and print their own posters and post them in the surrounding public space. It explores the use of vernacular (graphic) design as a way to connect more closely to the context and its actors. By opening up space for participants to create with their own skills and habits as a starting point the intervention investigates how the identity of the individual can not only be substantively present but also how they themselves can express this formally. De Eendagspartij will take place a few weeks prior to the conference. However, PDC attendees will be able to engage with the ‘traces’ of the intervention at the exhibition space in Z33, Hasselt. Visitors will be invited to join De Eendagspartij and use the artifacts from the installation to promote the party and its open programme during a brief public manifestation. Project by Niek Kosten
Probology is an approach that uses probes to encourage subjective engagement, empathetic interpretation and a pervasive sense of uncertainty. Some of the probes that were designed and used for the PhD project Towards Togetherness are shown and put in practice again during this Situated Action. However, we will not reenact (parts of) the project. For example, soup will be served from a Lada Niva pan and consumed on an embroidered blanket, to probe for responses on the use of food during participatory practices. The probing will focus on an artistic approach towards participation and is engaged with the topic of decoloniality. The participants will be invited to express their opinion about current decolonization processes, or to share their experiences in creating a temporary feeling of togetherness. GoPro cameras support the probing action and enable participants to record themselves and each other. Fragments of the recordings, as probing results, will become part of the main outcome of this PhD: an interactive road-movie that questions aspects of decolonization and gift-giving during a road-trip in a Lada Niva from Belgium to the Nenets people in Arctic Russia (the Niva to Nenets project). Project by Rosanne Van Klaveren
Play-Workshop-Space is an installation that enables multiple activities to happen at Z33. These include presentations, workshops, talks and exhibition display. The underlying theme and goal of these activities is Play and the discussion, design and completion – with local children, parents, play specialists and designers – of two playgrounds in the city of Genk. This project takes up the threads of an unfinished initiative by Nils Norman that began in 2012 with the completion of two outdoor murals in Genk. Project by Nils Norman
The turn to participation within smart cities has so far struggled to address a human-exceptionalist notion of cities, where urban space is designed for, and inhabited by, humans only. Within the age of the Anthropocene – a term used to refer to a new geological era in which human activity is transforming earth systems, accelerating climate change and causing mass extinctions – a human-centred perspective is increasingly seen as untenable. This presents opportunities to not only develop innovative participatory approaches in more-than-human worlds, as a way to overcome problematic narratives of human privilege and exceptionalism, but also to question what participation could mean in our existing and future urban cohabitation. We invite people for a speculative participatory walk to grapple and play with early outcomes of an associated workshop for more-than-human worlds, bringing together insights from an interdisciplinary group of designers, practitioners, and researchers to explore what it means to co-imagine sustainable smart cities. The walk is intended as an embodied and social exploration of how we might work towards environmentally and socially just post-anthropocentric smart cities. By taking into account the situated politics of multispecies interdependency we aim to surface alternative visions of inclusive sustainable democratic participation. Project by Rachel Clarke, Sara Heitlinger, Marcus Foth, Carl DiSalvo, Ann Light and Laura Forlano
mijnKOOL is an artistic participatory research project in which photographer Kristof Vrancken and design studio SOCIAL MATTER examined the soil quality and composition in Genk by using red cabbage as a medium in an organic photographic process. Plants can play an important role in detecting soil structures and properties, for example, red cabbage works well as a bio-indicator. The participants created a photographic emulsion with their crop through anthotype process, which resulted in an image. Depending on the acidity and composition of the soil in which the cabbage grew, the colour quality of the print was differing from sample to sample. The use of red cabbage as a measuring instrument gives an understanding of the impact that soil properties may have on ecology and food-production. For the participatory design conference, I want to display the results of the project in an open atelier - lab format, as well as to launch a similar project in the public space of Hasselt. The participants of the conference are invited to join the experiments and think about future potentials of this methodology. Project by Kristof Vrancken
For the situated action we focus on Cirkel Sector Genk. A mobile design studio on a mission to shape the circular economy in Genk based on local resources and knowledge. The design projects that are being developed in the framework of the Cirkel Sector Lab involve both technical and social design challenges; they require innovative design solutions and they include actors with conflicting perspectives. These challenges are not often resolved in the timeframe of one project. To sustain the knowledge developed throughout the project we look towards scenarios to document, archive and share design projects by using a storytelling format. Project by Ben Hagenaars
Design-led activism seeks to create a counter-narrative to motivate social, institutional, environmental or economic change. At PDC 2018 we will perform design-led activism through the design and deployment of “Data Objects” (DO) for the cities of Hasselt and Genk. DO are functional objects whose form and function encode data. These everyday physical objects range from household devices to street furniture, wearable devices, educational materials, and interactive exhibits. DO are particularly appropriate for design activism by enabling people to physically access and make sense of information to assist open dialogue towards more informed and empathic choices. The DO presented at Z33 aim to support informed voter deliberation and decision making in the upcoming regional election by making relevant data available, usable, and understandable. Project by Victoria Gerrard and Ricardo Sosa
In order to meaningfully speculate on what a city could become, we need to first understand what a city currently is. Designing for a City of Lies is a project that sets out to answer this question, not through mapping what the city is, but what it is not. This is done by asking local citizens to tell lies about their city, and then feed these lies back to the city as designed urban interventions, prototyping new urban futures. Importantly, the project seeks to engage local citizens in new, more inclusive and playful ways throughout this process. The project took place in Hasselt, the smartest city in Belgium, across April 2017 - January 2018, and resulted in the collection of numerous lies and two designed interventions. Returning to Hasselt for PDC2018, the project invites conference participants to engage with lies as a viable data set for envisioning urban futures, pushing beyond the trite renderings of “smartness” so prevalent in current near futures. Project by Søren Rosenbak