Spore hosts: PLANETARY DESIGN: Reclaiming Futures

From smart mines to global logistics corridors and from biomimicry to geoengineering, design is increasingly harnessed to govern not just life, but the planetary environment as well as global and local populations. At the same time, design is seen as capable of addressing intractable problems and building participatory mechanisms and alternative paths forward. A growing number of activists and intellectuals today invest hope in design to foster possibilities for building more just, inclusive, and sustainable futures.  

 

The programming emerges from commissioned projects produced over the last year that explore locally -specific designed realities across different parts of the world, spanning the South/North and urban/rural divide, and that inform of broader planetary conditions. Straddling the poetic and pragmatic, the critical and the speculative, the commissions at once reckon with inherited and continuing injustices while looking ahead to propose futures that are grounded and practicable.  

 

The public program at Spore will follow a conference exploring similar questions that will take place at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry on October 23-25, 2024. The conference and program together mark the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

 

Unless specified, all interventions will be in English. No registration is needed unless stated and link included.

 

Workshops

 

12:30 - 17:30 Warung Tactics by Designing with the Planet @ Warung Space

 

"Warung" is a concept in Indonesian for small shops. It is often located in the front of a home, run by family members or kin. Warung means being self-organised, modest, and homey. With kin from Jakarta, Berlin, and São Paulo, the Designing with the Planet team builds a Warung, to share our tactics for riparian struggles around urban waters and rivers.

 

During the day, we will invite you to interact with the counter-mapping site groundatlas.org/Sara Cura (Ana Luiza Nobre and David Sperling) and the audiovisual installation “bit.cosmo.ORI: Southern Confluences” (Lucio Teles), to watch the embroidered panel “Herbarium of healing plants” (Solange Lisboa & embroiderers of Bixiga) and the films “The Pidada Intimacy: Lenses” (Endira Julianda & Arsya Ardiansyah) and “Narcisa do Bixiga” (Carla Lombardo & Ж), and and to download recipes of our tactics at riparianstruggles.org, to translate and circulate them to other watery sites of struggle across the planet.

 

 

12:30 - 17:30 Learning to take the thread for a walk. First steps // Lerne, den Faden auf einen Spaziergang mitzunehmen. Erste Schritte // Aprendendo a levar a linha para passear. Primeiros passos by Designing with the Planet @ Warung Space  

 

“When I say, all lives matter, I am not talking just about human life, but also about animal, plant, and mineral life.” This quote from the Brazilian quilombola and philosopher Nego Bispo will guide the thread's stroll through our workshop. The line’s paths and meanders are endless, all delusions and dreams will be welcomed. We will work with free embroidery, an artistic technique with a wide range of possibilities, which vary according to the fabric, the thread, and the desired effects, allowing you to create new “stitches,” new colors and textures. From beginners to embroidery nerds, everyone is welcome to "Take the thread for a walk".

 

 

13:00 - 14:45 unsere gewässer nuestras aguas our waterbodies: Let's parade! by Designing with the Planet @ Warung Space and Outdoors
In German, English, Spanish and Portuguese // Auf Deutsch, Englisch, Spanisch und Portugiesisch

 

We will create fantastical maps of places we discover in the neighborhood. We will tell stories about rivers, lakes, and the sea, explore our connection to different bodies of water, and create images about the different languages we speak. In a final parade, we will display our flags and banners and invite participants to a water procession around the block.
Age group: 6-12 years

 

Wir entwerfen fantastische Karten von Orten, die wir der Nachbarschaft entdecken. Wir erzählen Geschichten über Flüsse, Seen und das Meer, erkunden unsere Verbindung zu unterschiedlichen Gewässern und entwerfen Bilder über die verschiedenen Sprachen, die wir sprechen. In einer abschließenden Parade zeigen wir unsere Fahnen und Banner und laden zu einer Wasserprozession um den Block ein.
Alter: 6-12 Jahre

 

Spaces for this workshop are limited. If your child is interested in participating, please register here.

 

 

13:00 - 14:45 Kgotla Cosmotechnics by Rural Futurisms @ Workshop Space

The Kgotla Cosmotechnics workshop is a space for reimagining and negotiating the values and processes behind the material. Using clay as a responsive medium, we will explore cosmotechnics through iterative observation and dialogue, inspired by the kgotla as a site of communal resolution and future-shaping.

 

Spaces for this workshop are limited. If you’re interested in participating, please register here.

 

 

15:00 - 17:00  Labtek “cozy lab” by Designing with the Planet @ Warung Space

 

"cozy lab" is a workshop in which participants can learn how to do modest lab tests to find out about the environmental quality of their surroundings. In the workshop, we will collect leaves from trees around the venue and introduce simple lab methods to find out their salinity level, which can be an indication of contamination and help gauge the degree of toxicity. Through “cosy lab”, we connect sensing and evidencing pollution in a quite doable, user-friendly way. We invite you to examine evidence from water and river species at the Etalase/shop windows, to look at photos from our struggles in Rencengan/sachet strips format, and to carry out experiments and chat with us at the Meja nongkrong/Bar tables.

 

Spaces for this workshop are limited. If you’re interested in participating, please register here.

 

 

15:30 - 17:00 Lines of Displacement: Countermapping Workshop by Yelta Köm @ Workshop Space

 

Building on the work Lines of Displacement by Agit Özdemir and Yelta Köm, this workshop explores mapping techniques, data gathering, and counter-mapping strategies. Köm will discuss the power of maps in today's world, presenting his works and other significant examples.

Yelta Köm is an artist, architect, and researcher who engages with social and political issues through spatial and collaborative interventions. Agit Özdemir, a geomatics engineer and ecologist, actively participates in ecological and urban rights movements using his mapping and data skills. Köm and Agit are members of Arazi, a research assembly consisting of researchers that are working together in different spatial scales focusing on the Southeast region of Turkey.

Spaces for this workshop are limited. If you’re interested in participating, please register here.

 

 

Film Screenings and Performances

 

 

13:30 - 15:00 Collective Video Performance by Re-Imagi(nations) @ Auditorium

 

In this experimental video work, Re-imagi(nations) reflects on the symbolic ritual power of objects. Sometimes, they are talismans, offering protection and reincarnation. At other times, they ground us, allow us to become situated and remember those who came before us and are still a part of us. They allow us to mourn and provide a compass that measures time, space, and direction.

 

 

16:30 - 17:30 We Belong Here! by Occupations as Practices of South Design @ Auditorium

 

Join us for a screening of We Belong Here! - a short film created with Cape Town pavement occupiers. Their reclaiming of the city center challenges designed dispossession and invites the imagining of alternatives. The film is followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

 

 

17:30 - 18:30 Sharing tactics across “Riparian Zones of Struggle” by Designing with the Planet @ Warung Space

 

During this live performance, members from Labtek Apung Jakarta, Atlas do Chão/Salve Saracura São Paulo, and the urban lab Planetary Tactics for Cohabitation will circulate stories, objects, and tactics to invite visitors to engage with their riparian struggles.

 

18:30 - 20:00 Hayek in Tehran by Bahar Noorizadeh with Meytham Al Mahdi @ Auditorium
In Arabic, English, Farsi   

 

The video lecture Hayek in Tehran looks at the specters of neoliberalism in post-revolutionary Iran, from political provisions and the system of governance to social life and practice at large. It delves into Iran’s economic trajectory, the slow and steady push towards privatization and the struggles and movements that emerged in response to it. The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Meytham Al Mahdi.

 

Bahar Noorizadeh is a writer, artist and filmmaker. She is the founder and organizer of Weird Economies, a platform dedicated to radical economic imaginaries. Meytham Al Mahdi is an Arab-Iranian exiled labor activist who was a labor organizer in the National Steel Co. in Ahwaz between 2016 to 2018 and led one of the longest industrial strikes in Iran’s history.

 

 

Video Station @ Mezzanine

 

12:00 - 14:00 Grounding Speculative Visions of the Great Green Wall in Sudan

Responding to the technocratic implementation of the Great Green Wall project in Gadarif state, Sudan, this co-created speculative design interface highlights the knowledge and preferences of communities on the ground to better align development interventions with locally desired impacts.

 

14:00 - 16:00 Lines of Displacement by Agit Özdemir and Yelta Köm

Lines of Displacement examines the relationship between nature, culture, and displacement along the Tigris River, as visible in the impacts of the Ilısu Dam on the town of Hasankeyf. Through digital mapping and field research, the project highlights the ecological devastation, cultural loss, and social disruption caused by state-led dam projects.

Yelta Köm is an artist, architect, and researcher who engages with social and political issues through spatial and collaborative interventions. Agit Özdemir, a geomatics engineer and ecologist, actively participates in ecological and urban rights movements using his mapping and data skills. Köm and Agit are members of Arazi Assembly, a collective examining how infrastructure operates as an agency to restructure and colonize territories in southeastern Turkey.

 

16:00 - 18:00 Selected Works from Against Catastrophe

 

Against Catastrophe is a multimodal project that interrogates the salience of catastrophic thinking in our present moment and showcases the anti-catastrophic practices being developed to broaden epistemic horizons and envision alternative futures. Over the last year, the project has commissioned seven works by artists, architects, and designers that will be presented in three online exhibition dispatches at https://againstcatastrophe.net.  

 

 

Communal Cooking @ Outdoor Kitchen

 

12:30 - 15:00 Caribe Mutuo

 

Food and cooking have an extraordinary potency to bring people together. Sharing a sancocho, una cocinada, nourishes conviviality and dialogue, co-moving by way of territorial care, mutual-aid, and culture. Through cooking together, we weave complicities, affects, memories and knowledge, assembling us closer to the everyday life of the territories we inhabit and to the care of where our food comes from. Cooking is thus a key articulator in processes of communality, where each recipe, each mode of encounter, and each rehearsal strengthens socio-ecological bonds and co-moves us.

 

Caribe Mutuo is a convivial project for dialogue and collective action based on common cultural doings in the hydric territories of the Ciénaga del Guájaro, located in the Colombian Caribbean.

 

15:30 - 17:30 Re-imagi(nations)

 

Re-imagi(nations) is an ongoing arts and research project that questions narratives and forms of life experienced and invented by migrant communities in Morocco. It recognizes the speculative potential to imagine collective solutions to current pressing issues, such as social justice, radical ecology, education, urban mobility and Indigenous knowledge.