Towards sharing common futures
From 5 to 7 February 2020, designers, researchers, philosophers and artists will reflect and work together on how to stimulate and cultivate diversity and critical thinking while catalysing the positive resources needed to address the impending environmental, social and cultural catastrophe.
The loss of reference points that characterizes our contemporary society makes it necessary to examine more open, dynamic, fluid and changing social forms and structures. These new protean entities naturally include the foreign, and could easily project us into a society of living together. How can we facilitate these new typologies of links that acknowledge diversity? How can design contribute to the development of new narratives capable of challenging the dominant culture, knowledge and epistemology produced by the West and support critical “border thinking”? How can it strengthen the construction of a decolonised common future? “Towards sharing common futures” is intended to be more than a symposium: a convivial event that highlights the role of design as an intellectual, creative and humanistic process, capable both of fuelling reflection and of cogenerating fluid actions and initiatives. During the conference the question of migration will be largely debated. But how can we approach this subject when we find out that « migrant literature » officially doesn’t exist? Issues concerning Design and Migration are even rarest, so I’ve taken the liberty to research in neighbour disciplines like anthropology where the question of migration has been studied and tackled on the field for quite a long time now. I had the chance to meet the indian-american anthropologist Arjun Appadurai, one of the major theorist in globalization studies and head of the External Expert Advisory Board of the project 4Cs. He redefines anthropology as a discipline dealing with the relations between « imagined lives and the webs of cosmopolitanism within which they unfold »1 and asserts that it should refer to new global ethnoscapes as « the most critical building blocks ». In this concern he argues that fiction constitutes the « transnational journey of ideas » and cultural transfer allowing a community to shape its conscience of unity and its collectively shared knowledge.
1 Arjun Appadurai, « Après le colonialisme. Les conséquences culturelles de la globalisation,», Paris, Payot, 2001.
The complete publication "Towards sharing common futures" is available at Corraini Edizioni and the digital version is available here.
The book explores the role of design as an intellectual, creative and humanistic process and highlights the importance of proposing alternative inclusive education models leading to the co-creation of future plural societies. It contains humble but disruptive ideas showing how designers are becoming today the co-creators of convivial and complex ecosystems where new forms of interdependent and heterogeneous collaborations can develop and flourish through horizontal and systemic models involving the social body in theory as well as in practice. What these inclusive models have in common is their ability to stimulate and cultivate diversity, social cohesion and critical thinking, catalyse the positive resources needed to address the impending environmental, social and cultural catastrophe and possibly transform them into resilient concrete actions.
The present selection of texts from engaged design studios, thinkers, architects, activists, artists and philosophers shows their active commitment in theoretical and applied research practices but also in concrete and conflictual everyday realities. It gathers the ideas, actions and perpectives of ether oclite profiles, all of them involved in the perspective of more sustainable futures and particularly in the framework of past and present migrations.
Foreword by Anna Bernagozzi
All picture credits: Anna Bernagozzi
Marc Mézard. The emergency of shifting our perception on migration.
Marc Mézard. The emergency of shifting our perception on migration.
Dach & Zéphir. Creolized design: design as a tool for mediating and transmitting world's cultural diversities.
Dach & Zéphir. Creolized design: design as a tool for mediating and transmitting world's cultural diversities.
Elizabeth Hale. Docu-design: questioning the role and impact of design on the ground in complex geopolitical situations.
Elizabeth Hale. Docu-design: questioning the role and impact of design on the ground in complex geopolitical situations.
La troupe of Good Chance Theatre Paris. From home to here.
La troupe of Good Chance Theatre Paris. From home to here.
La troupe of Good Chance Theatre Paris. From home to here.
La troupe of Good Chance Theatre Paris. From home to here.
Patrick Degeorge. Anthropocene and memory.
Patrick Degeorge. Anthropocene and memory.
Lauren Alexander and Ghalia Elsrakbi. Memory Archive.
Lauren Alexander and Ghalia Elsrakbi. Memory Archive.
Memory and cultural heritage. Panel discussion.
Memory and cultural heritage. Panel discussion.
Fabrizio Uretinni. Talking Hands: Overcoming employment and social exclusion through arts-based activities in Italy.
Alexis Nuselovici (NOUSS). How to understand the concept of "nowhere" in the condition of exile.
Alexis Nuselovici (NOUSS). How to understand the concept of "nowhere" in the condition of exile.
