“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 use radical imagination, envision a world otherwise, including wider forms of assembly, and care.

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 asks us to imagine a new constitution that considers all things and their properties, relations, abilities, and groupings. This new formation of an open-ended, entangled and ever-expanding assembly based on 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 Open Project seeks to experiment with different forms and spaces of assembly and imagining a world “otherwise” (Lola Olufemi). It focuses on articulating spatial conditions and considering the expansion of rights beyond humans, to include other beings, objects and things. Design is used here as an agent and agency to uncover the potentiality of underused and interstitial public spaces, activating them through various interventions to empower public imagination.

Students are asked to identify and define their agency as designers, imagine and enact all sorts and forms of assemblies. They can use diverse art and design mediums and formats to research, engage with publics, tell stories, and develop design 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 course includes in-class lectures, workshops and independent work. At the end of the semester, the student projects will be presented in a group exhibition and publication.  

This iteration of the Open Project includes a guest lecture series and conversations with Anna Puigjaner (MAIO), Elke Krasny, Emanuele Coccia, Ethel Baraona-Pohl (DPR-Barcelona), Gabriel Kozlowski, Olga Subiros, and Tatiana Bilbao.