Yana Boeva
July 9, 2018 | Report-Backs
A concise summary of the Critical by Design? conference, organized by the Institute of Experimental Design and Media Cultures in Basel, Switzerland, could be that the relationship of design and critique is ambivalent. The conference concluded a three-year research project looking at the potentials and limitations of critical design as a practice as well as the relationship between design and critique. In an effort to understand how critical and speculative design approaches could help confront and resolve socio-technical issues, over two days twelve invited speakers, the research team of the project, and around fifty participants discussed multiple concepts of critique and criticism, the role of critical theory regardless of its disciplinary setting, and the prospects it brings for design practice.
Organized in six thematic groups, the talks and discussions revolved around theoretical and practical ways of framing the criticality of design and challenging contemporary paradigms, critical interfaces and material epistemologies, critical design practices such as critical making and civic engagement, and the contradiction of designing (for) the future. Alongside design educators and design researchers, the research team had invited scholars from disciplinary fields related to STS: human-computer interaction (HCI), philosophy of technology, and the humanities.
Much of the criticism, however, was self-directed towards critical design and the established understanding as a practice created by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby in the early 2000s. As Dunne and Raby explain, critical design is a label for any activity that challenges restricted preconceptions of what role design should play in everyday life, yet it is not a method (see Critical Design FAQ 2007). However, the conference and the related research project would not have been initiated if there was agreement about critical design’s contribution to existing social, political, and technological problems. Instead, Dunne and Raby’s concept offers a nucleus from which to emancipate critical design, and even design in general, in order to extend beyond what it seems not to be—critical in and of itself.
Drawing on comparative literature methods of interpretation, for example, HCI scholar Jeffrey Bardzell proposed rhymes as synchronous elements between different design epistemologies and critical epistemologies to reveal a repertoire of surprising similarities. Pointing to their similarities weakens the dominant design problem framing without saying that criticality belongs to humanities and social theory only. Instead, Bardzell suggested that successful critiques are the ones that help others perceive and experience for themselves regardless of where they originate. Only then “critical design is a design that can be justifiably deemed critical” (presentation slides), he concluded.
In pointing towards the future, feminist scholar Shaowen Bardzell reminded that design practice and products could be applied to challenge cultural norms of care and maintenance of a body. Through her research project on the Formoonsa menstruation cup in Taiwan, she argued that contemporary feminist utopianism stands for a critical design practice that addresses actual problems with future societal implications, and not just describes possible and probable scenarios for an annual design exhibition. The question that came up after her’s and others’ presentations was, whether design and critical need to tackle critical, social issues. For some of the presenters, design needs to move not only beyond the object but beyond aesthetics, yet remaining conscious of their role as communication tools.
Shaowen Bardzell and Alice Twemlow discussing contemporary forms of critique with moderators Michaela Buesse and Meike Hardt. Photo by the author.
Design aesthetics as communication tools framed the argument of Carl DiSalvo. In discussing several participatory civic design projects in urban Atlanta that challenge the dominant smartness mandate, he proposed that activist practice, not the objects employed in that, is implicitly critical. Many of the mundane digital technologies such as spreadsheets or online data used by his research collaborators and the local citizens in these projects are not critical by themselves. What becomes critical is what these objects enable other people to accomplish with them. But what is the role of the research institute as an accomplice, and the contribution of the design researchers to activist community groups asked someone in the audience? Aware of the power asymmetry that comes with the privileged position of being situated at a funded research institute, DiSalvo answered that their role as institution-based designers is in the redistribution of their resources in the service of the public and in bringing in their visual communication means to amplify activist work.
A few times questions of politics were raised whether it was the politics of the body (Shaowen Bardzell, Matt Ward), the politics of boundary demarcation (Jeffrey Bardzell; Carl DiSalvo, Anja Groten), or urban and geopolitics (Anne-Marie Willis, Alice Twemlow), and these share “seams” (Vertesi, 2014). One particularly and surprising account of critical design came in the articulation as care, community, and collectivity by design educator Matt Ward. In his personal account narrated around four losses, Ward reflected that the care and maintenance of relationships, bodies, collective actions, and infrastructure, have become relevant for his understanding of design.
In using the ‘train’ from Dunne and Raby’s United Micro Kingdoms (2013) as a metaphor, he encouraged to think of the invisible people and practices that make trains work as a collective. It is this form of caring collective that design needs to acknowledge internally and externally by letting others in if it wants to move beyond its heteronormative, Western, innovation-driven dominance. While scholars in STS have been highlighting the importance of care and maintenance, the perspective in the sense of collective, not individual action is mostly absent from design debates. The methods and approaches applied to accomplish might be different, but the results have much in common.
For example, while Shaowen Bardzell’s Formoonsa cup example asked to embrace feminist utopianism to implement sociocultural changes, Ward defended his right to be “theoretically sloppy” yet following theorist Mark Fisher (2009) to argue that the way to subvert patriarchal capitalism is when speculative design projects leave the galleries and biennales. How? For example, as one of his students did by joining a trade union action against multinational commodity trading and mining corporation Glencore pic as design research that leads them to the annual board meeting to force a crucial vote against the corporation’s harmful practice. In a way, it recalls what DiSalvo and others’ suggested about embracing the language and aesthetics of those designers criticizes.
Many of these evocative examples, however, were drawn from the Global North with its imperative epistemologies. If design wants to be critical and to contribute to pressing social problems, it needs to open up its margins. In other words, what is critical about critical design if it excludes the critical positions from scholars and activists in the Global South that speak to a different making of worlds? This perhaps was the most momentous topic of discussion missed by many of us in the audience. It was only in one of the final presentations by design philosopher Anne-Marie Willis that brought it up slightly. Based in Tasmania and drawing on educational practice in Australasia and Egypt, her visually compelling presentation reminded that the growing autonomy of contemporary digital technology and the crises of climate change and waste are carried out on the backs of many silent individuals. Yet, neither critical design nor conventional design practice can prevent these crises. Instead, quoting her collaborator Tony Fry, she proposes moving from criticism to embracing critical as a global political imperative and connecting it to our own conditions to emphasize the significance of the Global South and the unsustainability of the human condition.
Yana Boeva is a PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies at York University, Toronto. Her research examines the promises of digital fabrication and maker culture towards de-professionalization of design practice and concepts of expertise.
Published: 07/09/2018