Interrogative Design: Cultural Prosthetics

Catalog description

The course is open to students interested in pursuing artistic, design and research projects that interrogate, and proactively respond to the existential, communicative and survival needs of the estranged, marginalized and excluded persons and social groups, while addressing the unacceptability of conditions that produce such needs. In the words of art theorist Rosalyn Deutsche, the ‘utopia’ of interrogative design is ‘based on the hope that its very function will render it obsolete'. The course will consist of readings, discussions, and presentations related to the fields and methods of interrogative, critical and speculative design, 'cultural prosthetics', 'scandalizing functionalism', forensic design, monument participatory animation, and, most importantly, on the ideation, experimentation, development, and presentation of students’ original projects. After a short introductory assignment, the students -individually or in teams- will work on a selected by them project to be advanced and discussed in class during the semester, presented at the midterm and at the final review, with the response and input from guest critics.