Design Experiments in Civics

Often when we talk about or do critical and speculative design the work is future oriented, looking towards technologies or conditions that are yet to come. While such work is important and compelling, there is also an opportunity to turn the critical and speculative impulse towards our contemporary moment, to consider how design might participate in alternate forms of living now or in the near present. I call this kind of work "design experiments in civics" because it uses design processes and products as a mode of inquiry into how we might differently structure our collective lives. What's more, given the pressing issues we are facing in 2019 there is an urgency to design that looks to address how we might live in the turbulent times. One move to make is to shift from thinking that design might solve the issues of climate-change or democracy or capitalism, and instead look to design as a way to contribute to different configurations of resources and action, through creativity and resourcefulness. In this talk I will share examples from my own work as well as the work of other artists and designers doing these "design experiments in civics." From these projects, I will draw out a set of themes for critical practices aimed at exploring and ¬enabling alternate forms of living and speculating on more diverse forms of togetherness in the contemporary moment and near-present. In particular, for the TEI audience I will address the ways in which explorations of materialities and interactions can express and support alternative collective practices and consider what the unique contributions of this research community might be to broad field of "design experiments in civics."