Teaching Design – Infrequent Newsletter #11
On:Collective Access
Dear design teachers/learners and bibliography-lovers,
thanks for subscribing (or staying subscribed) to this mailing list and following the research project!
This newsletter edition #11 is curated in collaboration with Ren Loren Britton. Lisa and Ren met on a sleepy morning in Neukölln connected by colleagues in common. We talked about how anti-discrimination work in teaching contexts can make possibilities, we lamented over the patriarchy and talked about finding possibilities for our work.
Ren is an artist-designer and has a practice that relates to trans*feminist technoscience and disability justice as world building practices. They are interested in shifting terms so that crips & trans*queers feel like they have an abundant hir-his-her-story to pull from, a kind of possibility generator for worlds and connections to open. Soon they will be at PACT Zollverein in Essen for the month of September working on a project called Indexing and Prototyping Trans*Crip Tech and this October they will be in an exhibition in Berlin called The Desire for Being Many at Neun Kelche.
The theme of this newsletter emerges from the context of Ren’s pedagogical and research practice and is titled On:Collective Access. Their work and this collection of resources focuses on building connections between the contexts of Disability Justice, practices of accessibility – Anti-Colonial & Indigenous ways of knowing & Trans*feminist Technoscience.
As usual, only a selection of resources that we selected together are shared in this newsletter. There are more to explore in the bibliography.
Lots of embodied resistance & pervasive warmth,
Ren and Lisa
Design Activities
This warm up is from the exercise Passing On – from the reuse project from many colleagues working on CC2r – a resource shared below. Here it is re-shared by Ren & Lisa, another re-user coming into continual process of our interwovenesses. And gratitude is shared towards all the reusers past, present and future.
This warm up[1], is best to be done together with one or more others.
Take enough paper and one pen for each one to draw a small symbol, sketch, illustration, schema. Try to limit the size of your paper, A6 is advised as the maximum size. Each one is invited to make a drawing which answers, illustrates, contradicts, accompanies one of the following questions.
How do you feel about re-using? How do you imagine commitment to work? When do you shift from being part of the audience to being a re-user? What is your relationship to the material you wish to re-use or the practice you want to commit with CC2r?
You can collectively choose to answer all the same question or not. Make sure you have left at least 1 cm at the bottom of the paper. Try to not take more than 5 min to make this drawing. When you are satisfied, pass on your drawing to one of the person sitting close to you. Each one is now invited to engage with a drawing that is not their, by writing at the bottom of the paper, one or words to accompany, define, make resonate what they see without asking any precision to the the drawer.
Take some time to discuss the resulting visual dialog. You can repeat this warm up at a different moment of your collective work.
[1] Passing On is an adaptation of Symbol Pil at Every Meal, an exercise taken from the grimoire of the research group Futurology of Cooperation. This futurology exercise was published under a CC4r license. Its reshaping into Passing On has been made by Lito Walkey & Sarah Magnan, during the Revisit Reuse (of CC4r towards CC2r) session of 2024.
Added to the bibliography
Disability Justice, practices of accessibility
Sins Invalid (2019). Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement is Our People – A Disability Justice Primer (2nd ed.)
The work of SINS INVALID is plural, often cited for coining the term, Disability Justice, their collective’s work from BIPOC community produces the world-shifting paradigm that re-centers disabled people and our accomplices as agential. This resource is a starting point for what Disability Justice is – connecting its historical genealogy and legacy, and the frameworks and values it builds upon. This primer speaks about the context of ableism within a matrix of domination – and its inseparability from racism, anti-queer sentiment and more – speaking about historical political developments, environmental crisis and practices of accessible connection. There are practices that are part of their work that are entirely practical like the page Access Suggestions for Public Events – and there are ways to learn from this resource that have to do with the web design of their page itself like how languaging is approached, what the layout looks like, what typography is chosen and how high-contrast color is used throughout the site. SINS INVALID’s practice is an ongoing love letter to access making and disability community.
Clements, Leah; Hattrick, Alice and Rose Lizzy (2018). Access Docs for Artists.
Access Docs are documents that you can send as an artist/designer to a context you work with to make the work you’re doing actually accessible to you and your community. In my life and work I think about this as a rehearsal – interrupting assumptions of normative tempos and patterns of relationality in professional life – shifting when and how is right to do something – and opening spaces to discuss how to make work good and possible. In this resource, Access Docs for Artists, you are invited to consider what you could do to make any sort of educational format accessible - meaning that you can focus on producing what they refer to as »liberated zones« – spaces accessible across multiple needs & desires – making spaces that account for differences of amount of free time, money, childcare, transportation needs, availability of interpreters, wheelchair access, fragrance free, food needs and more. This resource prompts you to make an access rider for yourself, to share your needs and to invite us all into the ongoing project of unlearning ableism and making spaces more available for our collective access.
→ Find out more about the Access Docs here.
Eggermann Eva (2012 – ongoing). Crip Magazine.
Krüppel Zeitung (1979 – 1985).
Crip Magazine is a beloved project that works with terms of empowerment to consolidate a common context for crips and disabled folks via an irregularly published magazine. Charting a context pulling from diverse articles like The Disability and Mad Pride Parade Speech by Theresia Degener – Berlin, 13 July, 2013 in the issue from 2022 #5, The Fermented Issue. This article discusses the need the (and still now) to think about disability in a new and different light – beyond medical representations; to get rid of any feelings of inferiority – to understand the ableist German culture that is normalised all around and to resist internalizing this but rather understanding violently normalised continuities between NS times, before that and until today for disabled folks to get it out of our bodies and minds as though this has something to do with us; and lastly to celebrate difference – to open the space to celebrate ourselves as the cheeky and proud people that we are. The Crip Magazine as a collectively published archive of resistance and connection, connects across timespace to the Krüppel Zeitung (Crip Magazine) coming out of Bremen & published between 1979 – 1985 – to check out the Krüppel Zeitung we recommend visiting the Archiv Behindertenbewegung. Or another Beautiful Kripple Angel by Leroy Moore Jr. in Crip Magazine #4, The Vienna Edition – where a song is published that speaks towards loving all identities through melting and transformations. This resource connects back to a common crip context and magazine connecting practices of disability worlding as also necessary to remember how to empower ourselves and where we’ve come from and what is necessary to still resist.
Anti-Colonial & Indigenous ways of knowing
Rudy from Indigenous Action Media (2014). Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex. May 4, 2014.
This resource asks us to consider these key questions: What is your role as a designer when working with marginalized groups? What does it mean to become an accomplice to someone / a group – where you understand your own liberation as tied to theirs – rather than as an alley – for whom your liberation is not interwoven across differences? How is it possible to be an ally and design for a group you are not part of?
Accomplices Not Allies addresses the attention economy where certain issues become »sexy«, »fundable« and hip – as a way to interrupt who gets to say they are working on what projects. When professors, artists, designers and institutions hook onto an issue without a long term commitment to that issue because it is fundable right now – what kind of designerly practice does this enable and how can this kind of co-option of hip terms be refused. Many questions and few answers to tangle within this resource.
CC2r (ongoing). Collective Commitment to Reuse v1.0.
Authorial practice has always already been collective. Nothing emerges out of a vacuum, there is no creative genius, no master of a discipline and knowledge nor inspiration emerge in a void. What then? This resource – CC2r– Collective Commitment to Reuse – positions us all as reusers – working together in a knowledge community and making next to each other, all the time.
CC2r suggests commitments in three directions:
for reusing that follow practices of interdependency, solidarity & cultivating a collective ground from which to commit and act.
for sharing and reusing generously and continuously.
to refrain from sharing and reusing when it would mean harmful extraction.
Guiding us through the process of understanding ourselves as ›reusers in practice‹ – this is a role that we can step into that as is stated in the commitment relates to »building a web of generosity« and exercising entangled forms of authorship. This resource invites relational web making as fundamental to unmaking modes of colonial authorship and praxis.
Becker, Nanobah, dir. The 6th World. 2012. Short film.
Nanobah Becker is a Diné filmmaker from Turtle Island who lives and works in Tovaangar. In her work she builds upon practices coming from indigenous futurism which uses science fiction storytelling towards decolonizing narratives, worlds and possibilities. In Becker’s film an Indigenous astronaut is working on a mission where corn will be the primary source of food, oxygen and water on a long space mission. Through the arrogance of western scientific modes paradigms of extraction, measurement, seeing as the only way of knowing and isolation are enacted on the corn in the first half of the film. Throughout the film Becker guides the narrative towards re-understanding wholeness, interrelations and the complexity of life as being necessary for survival. This resource brings an indigenous world view to the fore and celebrates and recognizes wholeness as an anti-colonial mode of recognition.
Trans*feminist technosciences
Constant (2022). SPLINT Cards.
The SPLINT (Speculative Libre Intersectional Technologies) Cards invite practices of questioning terms of invention and inviting conversation for designers, speculators and fabulators of alternative technoscientific presents and futures. Taking rocks as animate, freedom as related to dependency, learning with storms, trans*feminism and realities of stuckness; the card deck opens with four containers: »quotes«, »an associate, hopefully«, »the situation« and »knowledge from«. Within the combination of these containers dreaming is invited to investigate discriminations and structural problems inherent in technology – and to consider how we can all be actors contributing to an open, experimental & equitable digital art field. This resource offers a plurality of »how« and »what to do« when confronted with limits to tech-dreaming, refusing these limits imposed by oppressive Big Tech.
→ Download a PDF to print your own SPLINT Cards and learn more about the project here.
Shirley, Danielle Braithwaite. BLACKTRANSARCHIVE.COM
Danielle Braithwaite Shirley’s Black Trans Archive is a project that holds space for remembering those of us who are here because of those of us that are not. A space that is Pro Black & Pro Trans – the site, describing the project, reads: »This interactive archive was made to store and centre black trans people, to preserve our experiences, our thoughts, our feelings, our lives to remember us even when we are at risk of being erased. Your own identity will determine how you can interact with the archive as well as what you will be able to access, be honest with the archive …. In entering this space you are agreeing to centre the Black Trans experience.« This project offers an online (and when installed in an exhibition) space to center Black Trans* experience and through this a portal to our thriving and community building. Thank you Danielle Braithwaite Shirley for your work and worlding. <3
Cowan T. L. and Rault, Jas (2024). Heavy Processing. Goleta, punctum books.
Asking for an extension is a practice of access intimacy (Mingus) and of Heavy Processing (Cowan & Rault). Asking for an extension speaks to how deadlines, performing »on time« and putting time in linear form is often neither desirable nor possible for queer, crip, trans*, marginalised bodyminds. Granting extensions and working with shifting needs is a practice of access and of processing as product that Heavy Processing celebrates. Understanding the process is the product and attending to the interrelations that are set up while making the thing invites relational ways of developing projects that is a kind of making that lesbian worlding celebrates and invites.
ongoing Open Call
We invite contributions from you; design educators, students, alumni, researchers, pedagoges, enthusiasts and others to submit and share the sources which are reference points and/or inspiration to your practice! Your contribution will be published in our infrequent newsletter and in our text-based bibliography.
→ Find out how to contribute here.
Info
Teaching Design started as a collectively gathered bibliography focusing on design education from intersectional feminist and decolonial perspectives. Since its launch in September 2019, it has expanded into conversational formats, workshops, a temporary library and a space for reflections, which all has led to the platform in its current form.
Currently the bibliography as well as this newsletter is curated and edited by Lisa Baumgarten unless mentioned otherwise.