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CURRENT EXHIBITION ::::
CONFLICT RESOLUTION -
Teddy Cruz and Pedro Reyes
Postelection Celebration and Discussion:
Design Strategies and Conflict Resolution
November 19, 7:30pm, SFAI Cafe
Can the election of new leadership in the United States really make a difference for a world in conflict?
Can design(ers) really make a difference in a world of conflict?
In conjunction with the exhibition Conflict Resolution - work generated through the continuing collaboration between architect Teddy Cruz and artist Pedro Reyes - SFAI’s Design and Technology department’s Fall Salon is a postelection celebration and discussion.
In the spirit of the theme of fundamental change for reengaging the world promised by the results of the presidential election, the Fall 2008 Design and Technology Salon presents an interactive panel discussion on how strategies of design can foster conflict resolution and, in the process, bring a new visual dimension to political and social action. Many social theorists have researched the objectives, motives, and consequences of conflict resolution, but they have ignored the significance and potential of design activity to the process. Design has often been narrowly defined as a marginal urban practice enabling the aesthetic appeal of consumer goods, structures, and environments in public and private space. In the current debate, design is more and more interpreted as an important part of the process by which people make political, economic, and social choices<by which they actively participate in the formation of personal and collective identities. The panel and audience will explore an idea of design through which it is not simply seen as mediating conflict by dressing up diversionary commodities; rather, design will be repositioned and construed not only as the product of, but as causally efficacious in, conflict resolution.
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Panelists:
Amy Franceschini works with notions of community, sustainable environments, and a perceived conflict between humans and nature. She founded Futurefarmers in 1995 and Free Soil in 2004. Her solo and collaborative works have been included in such venues as ZKM, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the MoMA, and SFMOMA. She is the recipient of the Artadia Award, the Eureka Fellowship, and SFMOMA SECA.
Warren Sack is a software designer and media theorist whose work explores theories and designs for online public space and public discussion. His field of expertise is social computing. As a field of research, social computing explores two issues: (1) How can the insights of social, critical, cultural, and media theory be incorporated into and used to critique and evaluate software? (2) How can new media be designed to address outstanding social and political issues? Sack is associate professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz.
John Bela is a director of Rebar, an art and design collective\ based in San Francisco, best known for its Park(ing) project. Park(ing) is an investigation into reprogramming a typical unit of private vehicular space by leasing a metered parking spot for public recreational activity. Rebar’s projects are intended to engage social, ecological, and cultural processes as they unfold materially in space and time.
The Fall 2008 Design and Technology Salon is supported by the Student Affairs Office.
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