Speculative Design: Decolo­nising Design

The Decolonising Design platform was launched in June 2016 as a collective effort to respond to pressing ontological and epistemological issues within design theory, education, and praxis: With the platform, we want to invite a „thinking otherwise“ about design’s complicity with structural inequalities and marginalities, in a world much shaped by Western, Euro- and Anglocentric systems and institutions (academia being one of them). Instead of promoting a policy of diversity and multiperspectivity within the framework of the same quite resilient hegemonic institutions, we want to contribute not only to a radical structural redirection on the field’s own ontological designing, but also to acknowledge the complexities and uneasiness such an effort might entail.

In this public dialogue we want to contour these issues further, present the online platform as one possible vehicle for dialogue and critical inquiry, and engage in an open conversation about strategies for new ways of sensing and knowing.

This event is hosted by CLB Berlin in collaboration with IXDM’s Critical Media Lab.

Speculative Design Workshops

Prior to the public discussion, design researchers and co-initiators of the platform Luiza Prado de O. Martins and Pedro Oliveira (A Parede) will conduct two speculative design workshops in Berlin on September 5th & 9th. Situated in fictional scenarios the participants will work on ad-hoc design processes responding to political challenges raised by the workshops’ hosts in the context of de-colonial practice.

Monday, September 5th, 18.00–21.00
Auditory Governances: Sound Apparatuses and/as Violence

Friday, September 9th, 16.00–19.00
Unboxing Contraception: Body, Border, and Law