PennDesign and the Slought Foundation are pleased to announce "Designing for Collective Action," a panel and workshop with Krzysztof Wodiczko, Sergio Araya, Orkan Telhan and others on March 27, 2015 from 6-8pm.
The public domain is born each time that one individually or collectively exercises their civic rights in public by speaking up, resisting, seeking change or working towards transformative action. Historically, artists and designers have been instrumental in instigating, curating, or enabling such forms of collective action by mobilizing groups around shared interests. However, such collective actions run the risk today not of creating a sensation but rather of sensationalizing themselves, and in the process marginalizing greater awareness of the very issues at stake.
This conversation brings artists, designers, and scholars together to engage in a comparative analysis of recent collective actions in Santiago, Philadelphia, Istanbul, and beyond. Reflecting on the outcomes and shortcomings of these various actions, as well as individual experience and particular case studies, the conversation will interrogate what, fundamentally, it means to be engaged. How can artists and designers come together to create new public domains, both online and offline, through collective action?
This workshop is part of an ongoing series that seeks to construct a critical discourse and design environment in which to investigate how individuals and collectives can act during moments of exception, and amidst political distress and social unrest. Previous meetings such as "Workshop I: From Individual to Collective" and "Workshop II: Individual & Collective's Relation to Public Space," were respectively held in Santiago, Chile and Cambridge, Massachusetts. These gatherings have involved a variety of design activities that enable participants to identify critical ways they can support marginalized individuals and communities.
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