The Politics of Design
24-25 June 2010
The University of Manchester
Keynote Speakers
Andrew Barry (Oxford University)
'Designing Politics'
Alejandro Zaera-Polo (FOA, London and Princeton University)
'The Politics of the Envelope’
Politics of Design Footage
Introduction and welcome (Simon Guy and Albena Yaneva)
Andrew Barry (Oxford University) "Designing Politics"
Alejandro Zaera-Polo (FOA, London and Princeton University) "The Politics of the Envelope"
Workshop Theme
In the last decade numerous STS trained scholars engaged in a venture of unpacking design practices. Yet, to study the practical course of design means to be simultaneously involved in the subject of politics and in the particular sort of politics that is centred on objects (Latour & Weibel, Making Things Public). Recent studies in political philosophy and STS have argued that politics is not limited anymore to citizens, elections, votes, petitions, ideologies and particular institutionalised conflicts (DeVries, What is Political in Sub-politics?), and have reformulated the question of politics into one of cosmopolitics (Stengers, Cosmopolitics; Latour, Politics of Nature) and ontological politics (Mol, Actor Network Theory and After). The “political” is not defined as a way of codifying particular forms of contestation but as opening up new sites and objects of contestation (Barry, Political Machines). For more information follow the workshop theme page.
Website
Please also see the Politics of Design International Workshop website.