Tutors
Alice Twemlow, Maura Biava, Suzette Bousema, Lua Vollard
For whom?
Open to Open to Bachelor 2/3/4 and Masters students from KABK and Leiden University
When
Teaching period February 20-15 May 2019
Classes Wednesdays, 10:00-17:00
Study load
6 ECs (70 Contact hours 70, 9 independent study hours)
About this course
A select group of students from KABK and Leiden University will collaborate on a multi-media project that explores the relationship between geological time and design. Using methods drawn from archaeology, material culture studies and critical design, and informed by key texts and guest lectures, the working group will conduct research and speculate through ceramics, writing and image-making on what are the designed entities of our age that will become signals in the earth’s geological strata—the fossils of the future. Outcomes of the course include written texts, images, designed objects and a collaboratively produced publication. The course will make use of the KABK ceramics workshop. In addition, the programme includes excursions to the Muzee Scheveningen, Den Haag beach clean up, Stroom and the European Ceramic Workscentre (EKWC) in Oisterwijk.
The course is suited to anyone interested in the implications of design in relation to climate change, sustainability, deep time, hyperobjects and the environment.
There are no admission requirements for this elective course.
Location PB.111/ Photography studio
Feb 20, 10:00-17:00
Alice Twemlow introduction lecture, “Future Fossils: A Design Archaeology of the Here and Now”
Adam Nocek introduction lecture, "Post-Communicative Design, or the Decolonization of Geo-communication"
Visit to Museon to see plastiglomerate with Friso Visser, Deputy Director / Education & Exhibitions
March 6, 10:00-17:00
Visit with Corien Bakker, archaeologist, Municipal Archaeology Department, Den Haag
Ceramics workshop with Maura Biava, KABK
March 13, 10:00-17:00
Guest lecture and workshop: Lua Vollard, curator, Stroom
March 20, 10:00-17:00
Research techniques and writing workshop with Alice Twemlow
March 27, 11:00-17:00
Visit to Muzee Scheveningen with Justa van den Bulk, curator
Beach Clean up Suzette Bousema
Image-making workshop with Suzette Bousema, KABK
April 3, 14:00-17:00
Proposals for exhibits and group discussion
April 10, 14:00-17:00
Ceramics workshop with Maura Biava
April 17, 14:00-17:00
Individual meetings with Alice Twemlow
April 24, 10:00-17:00
Visit EKCW to make casts
May 8, 10:00-17:00
Finalise and edit content for final presentations and publication
Guest lecture and workshop: Krijn Christiaansen, KCCM
May 15, 10:00-17:00
Final presentations by students
The course will be taught via a combination of lectures, guided discussion of key texts, site visits, group workshopping of writing and design concepts, hands-on making workshops and individual tutorials.
Participating students can expect to:
• gain a fuller understanding of the issues surrounding design and the Anthropocene through the close reading of key texts and engaging in lectures and discussion-based seminars;
• refine research and analytical skills and improve/learn new research methods distilled from the humanities, archaeology, future studies and speculative design;
• improve/learn writing and editing skills;
• improve/learn making skills through a variety of materials and techniques.
Students will be assessed based on their understanding of and contribution to discussions about the key texts, their active engagement with the visiting lecturers and their production of required outcomes, which include written texts, images, designed objects and an exhibition. They will be assessed on their individual work and their contributions to the collaborative project.
Recommended sources:
The Responsible Object: A History of Design Ideology for the Future, ed. Marjanne van Helvert, (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2016)
Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Experimental Futures), Donna Harraway, (Durham and London: Duke University Press Books, 2016)
Dark Ecology: For a Logic of Future Coexistence, Timothy Morton, (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016)
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene, eds., Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan, Heather Anne Swanson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017)
Are We Human? Notes on an Archaeology of Design, Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, (Lars Müller, 2017)
Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability, Eyal Weizman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017)