Until September 15 you can still sign up for participation, it’s an innovative conference running October 15/16 at Ex-Rotaprint in Berlin: “Politics for Tomorrow” is aimed at people from politics, administration, education, municipalities, foundations and civil society organizations. We look forward to a variety of perspectives and an exciting exchange. If you wish to participate, the registration form is available via Get Involved on the website menu. The event will be held in German and English with bilingiual interpretation.

Planning to go at least one day, since it’s overlapping with the Politics for Tomorrow Conference…

“In a growing state of omnipresent connectivity, it seems that anything can be potentially connected – anytime, anywhere. We are embedded in a myriad of mundane socio-technical alliances, as humans and non-humans ceaselessly correspond and perform. Therefore, the urgency arises to raise the question: What relationships do we enter in to with our fellow agents, what new positions
do we find ourselves in?

From utopian to dystopian visions and realities: We invite perspectives on the role of design in all of this, on new forms of negotiation with and through things, and on what new analytical frameworks this calls for as we further embark in to these technically mediated futures.

The conference will take place on 16. and 17. of October at the University of Applied Sciences. Potsdam. More information on fees and accomodations will follow:

http://www.dgtf.de/tagungen/english

Sehr gespannt auf den Input im HKW am 18./19. September!

Kann Gestaltung Gesellschaft verändern? Wie können wir in die sich stets fortschreitende Modernisierung emanzipative Ideen einschreiben? Hat sich der Anspruch des Bauhauses und der klassischen Avantgarden, durch Gestaltung Gesellschaft positiv zu verändern, eingelöst? Wie können wir uns heute in neuer Weise vorstellen, Wandel und Zukunft zu gestalten? Was sind gezielte, aber doch ergebnisoffene Arbeitsformen? Welche Rolle spielt Co-Produktion? Wie kann man sein eigenes Dasein gestalten? Welche Rolle kommt dem Gestalter zu? Oder hätte heute eher die Abwesenheit von Gestaltung ein befreiendes Moment?

As the title already assumes there where three topics and their speakers of which for the the third part, discipline, was the most interesting. I was surprised how intensely theoreticised the talks were that dealt mostly with product semantics and the research tradition of the HfG Offenbach, where it was developed. My favourite talk however was given by Gui Bonsiepe, who questioned the efforts of design to step into the traditional academic approach towards becoming a discipline and reminded the auditorium that already in times of the first methodology conferences back at HfG Ulm they had come to the conclusion that design has to be practical.

>>RE/SET

Due to my autumn flu I unfortunately missed the yearly conference in Dessau which always takes place on the stage in the Bauhaus building. This years topic “space” was investigating our relationship with borders, nearness and distance and atmosphere of the surrounding environment to name just a few.

>> dimensions-of