MDes Open Project: Forms of Assembly: All Things Considered

“When bodies congregate, move, and speak together, they lay claim to a certain space as public space.” — Judith Butler.

In the public space, we pass by, come together, or not, and continuously inform and form one another. It is a space of appearance, disagreement, liberation, and encounter critical for participatory democracy, freedom, and a just society.

Climate change, global migration, war, threats associated with artificial intelligence, dwindling democracies, and heightened polarization are among the most formidable challenges of our time. These conditions give rise to policies, practices, and spaces of isolation, exclusion, and violence that impact our daily lives everywhere, urging us to envision and enact the formation of a wider assembly.

In “We Have Never Been Modern”, Bruno Latour expands the notion of the assembly beyond the human into a “Parliament of Things” that includes the invisible, unthinkable, unrepresentable nonhuman, objects and semi-objects. He calls for a new constitution that considers all things and their properties, relations, abilities, and groupings. This newly imagined formation of an open ended and ever-expanding assembly of reciprocity and care is not only just, but critical for earthly survival in the time of the Anthropocene.

At the intersection of art, design, activism, theory, and practice, this GSD Open Project seeks to experiment in forms and spaces of assembly and care, imagining otherwise (Lola Olufemi) how all bodies matter and all things are considered as an ever-expanding, entangled collective. It focuses on the articulation of spatial equity and considering the expansion of rights to more than humans, subjects, and things. Design is used here as an agent and agency to activate the potentiality of underused and interstitial public spaces and use various interventions to activate the space of appearance and empower the public(s) imagination.

Students can use a variety of art and design mediums and formats to research, engage with publics, tell stories, and develop strategies throughout the semester. Projects may include performances, exhibitions, large-scale installations, films, publications, symposiums, websites, the creation of critical architectural elements and narratives, or policy recommendations.

The Open Project includes a lecture series, in-class workshops and independent works, where students are asked to identify and define their agency as designers and members of an assembly, where all things are considered. At the end of the semester, we will assemble the projects in a group exhibition and publication.