Maxime Benvenuto is a researcher and educator based between the Netherlands and France focusing on design discourse issues that dwell at the borders of design history, theory, historiography, and practice.
He teaches and lectures at the Royal Academy of Arts in the MA Industrial Design, at the Design Academy Eindhoven in the BA program and MA Social Design, and at the University Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne in the BA Design, Arts, and Media. His classes and lectures are aimed at understanding and challenging the discursive status quo of the field, not only through a critical approach, but also propositional: critique through options. For the past four years, he has been a member of the research seminar “Towards a Critical Theory of Design” led by Pr. Catherine Chomarat-Ruiz at the Sorbonne.
As a design practitioner, his social design and design research works led him to work on issues related to journalism and information, human rights, and propaganda. Such works have been exhibited at the Design Biennial of Ljubljana (SL), the Milano Design Week (IT), the SFSU Design Gallery in San Francisco (US), the Van Abbemuseum (NL), or MU Artspace (NL).
He is currently developing his research as a PhD candidate at the Sorbonne. His research project explores questions related to the ‘living-death’ in and of design discourses and unpacks the mechanisms that are at play in the imaginary of the design field. Through it, he scrutinises how these mechanisms are enduring and being reproduced through and beyond the transformations that occurred in the field since the 1990s. By unpacking these through colonial and class lenses, he explores alternative genealogies of practices and knowledge that have been neglected or ignored in the design field.
Some of his recent publications include titles such as “Histo-Recall” with Onomatopée (NL), “Unpinning Design History” with the Sorbonne University (FR), or “Eclipsing the Magics of the Project and Dwelling in its Shadows” with Foundation We Are (NL). He has also been working on organizing and moderating various public talks and panel discussions for the Dutch Design Week (NL) (“Methods of New Materialism”), the Paris Design Week (FR) (“La Terre (Earthly stories)”, “Le Feu (Our World is Burning)”, “Beautiful Freaks and Gentle Matters”), and the Design Academy Eindhoven (NL) (“Design & Mental Health Seminar”).