SuperStudio: Designed Listening

The Green New Deal asks us to rework the future. It prompts us to explore novel relationships between labor, carbon, and justice to guide us into a carbon free existence, while demanding “the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal mobilization at the local level” (H.Res. 109 4F). Underpinning this statement is the understanding that the future thus far has been written by those with power and privilege —typically heteronormative, affluent, white males—and that to step into a just alternative future, we need to broaden who is invited to envision, discuss, design, and construct these futures.

Many conversations around the Green New Deal in the design community have focused on potential partnerships, sites, and projects, giving less attention to how this work gets carried out in a democratic manner and the agency of design in this work. In response, this studio investigates new possibilities for participation in constructing the collective futures that the GND imagines. In doing so it is centered around two questions: What is the role of designers in the process of co-creating collective futures? And whose future(s) are being centered?

The central goal for this studio is to explore methods by which we design how we listen. To do so, we will focus on three particular methods, which correlate to the three phases of the studio: a GAME for listening, a PROCESS for speculating, and an INSTALLATION for interacting and recording.