Assistant Professor Christensen sharing paper at Swiss Design Network's conference "Common Good: Framing Design Through Pluralism and Social Values"
Assistant Professor Christensen will be sharing her paper "Collectivizing the White Cube: Design Gallery as Commons" at Swiss Design Network's conference "Common Good: Framing Design Through Pluralism and Social Values" (March 25–26, 2021).
Paper Abstract
How can the design gallery be collectivized? How can the gallery be activated and reclaimed as a common space (both shared and everyday) contributing to the current and future common good through processes of co-design, co-curation, and co-authorship—with the goal of common ownership? This paper explores three specific case study strategies for collectivizing the gallery space: 1) the 2019–2020 exhibition “Making Common,” curated by Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) AICAD Post Graduate Teaching Fellow Elaine Lopez; 2) the 2015 re-envisioning of the graphic design gallery at the Rhode Island School of Design as a “design commons”; and 3) Studio Moniker’s Conditional Design manifesto for collaborative artistic co-processes. Julie Ault’s framework of viewing exhibition-making as a political “process of inclusion and exclusion” is applied to analysis of practices of co-authorship, co-design, and collective memory.
Paper Keywords: Commons, collective, co-design, gallery
Christensen will be presenting as part of the session "Making the Design Commons – Methods, Tactics and Processes"
Session Abstract: Making the Design Commons—Methods, Tactics, and Processes
What methods, tactics, and processes can we use to mediate the interaction between design, (cultural) industries, and the civic to actively reshape our visual and material world based on common good principles? To answer these questions, this panel introduces three different approaches from the fields of communication and product design. The presenters share interests in collaborative creation and new formats of design mediation.
Martina Fineder, University of Wuppertal, and Luise Reitstätter, University of Vienna, in "Walking by the Commons: Developing Design Patterns for Future Cultures of Consumption and Production in Exhibition Interview Walks," introduce the experimental method of the exhibition interview walk and explains how it was used to create “Design Patterns for Future Commons” in the sphere of product design.
Elena Caratti and Giovanni Baule in "The Design of Social Independent Magazines. Multiple Translations for a New Design Sensitivity" present independent social magazines as a territory of multiple translation processes and catalysts for social change as well as spreaders of positive practices for the common good.
Ellen Christensen in ""Collectivizing the White Cube: Design Gallery as Commons" shares three case study strategies (subject matter, flexible modes of display, and structural logic) for collectivizing the gallery space in relation to Julie Ault’s framework of exhibition-making as political act.
Session Keywords: Openness, collaborative work, co-design, design methods, design processes, cultural spaces, mediation