Happy New Year of the Dragon!
—Dragon dance London Feb 2024
Dragons are considered lucky creatures with control over weather and water in South East Asian cultures. Coincidentally (or not) DesignInquiry is planning three inquiries this year—in Maine, Poland, and Pennsylvania—that will be exploring the themes of water, climate, and repair. So Happy Lunar New Year of the Dragon!
Save the dates:
DI Vinalhaven - June 23 – 29, 2024
DI Warsaw - July 28 – Aug 2, 2024
DI Fallingwater - November 7 – 14, 2024
Once we have our venues and capacity confirmed, we’ll send out calls for participation.
The year of the rabbit
Last year DesignInquiry gatherings happened in Vinalhaven, ME and London, UK.
Around/Work
Around/Work (June 18–24, 2023) brought 21 inquirers to Vinalhaven, ME to radically reimagine work with projects that respond to or frame the work that brings you joy, pleasure, and sustenance. Through the week, inquirers explored some of the following:
Participatory objects: creating devices designed to inspire consideration and thought; input and output; making “computers” that are clear rather than opaque
Mapping can overturn surety; mapping as creative inquiry; mapping as a new way of seeing; mapping as transformation; mapping as invitation; the hubris of mapping
Inefficient maps and counter-mapping
Showing the maker of the map
Digital drawing and mark-making; each mark in a painting is made in time
Islands and alternative scales of time; alternative perspectives; what’s at stake in mapping?
If I weren’t wrung I’d be wringing; teaching as exhaling; granularity of care
What are your blocks and bolsters?
The arc is like a rabbit’s jump
Paratext: to experience the edges
Becoming a truck
Myth and performance as activities around design
Work/Around
Work/Around (September 17–23, 2023) was the first ever DesignInquiry gathering in London, UK, bringing together 23 makers and thinkers and a shiny new Risograph (kindly loaned by Daniel Bridgeman) in the “meanwhile space” of a partly-deserted 1960s corporate skyscraper on the banks of the River Thames. The event was billed as part of the London Design Festival (LDF), so guest visitors joined in the proceedings on a daily basis. Specially-invited “activators” led workshops for the participants, the sequence falling into place serendipitously, with an introduction to the culture of the Risograph on the Monday (Jessica Williams); a viewing of the film Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert (from the book of the same title) with Hamja Ahsan followed by a “nation building” exercise creating constitution of the Republic of WorkAround. Hamja also brought a large selection of his amazing zine collection (www.instagram.com/diyzinebank) to share, which was a well-used reference for participants and guests — we added a few DI books to the spread; a “visual detox” session followed on the Wednesday (Tim Balaam of Hyperkit); a study of the climate crisis through the lens of the “Blue Dot Flag” with Tijs Bonekamp; and a compelling presentation and workshop exploring how designers perform, build trust and say “thank you” on the final day (Marcin Nowicki).
How does one “workaround” the limitations of production, color, format, etc? The loan of a Riso offered a unique, virtually limitless platform for participants to experiment and play. A wide span of expertise/newness to the machine presented a constant exchange of collaboration between participants. Outcomes of the event include a publication-in-progress, which exploits the print-on-demand and mixed format possibilities of the Riso, and was shared at the follow-up symposium “Data Poverty and the Workaround” at University of the Arts London (UAL) Chelsea College of Arts on 17 November 2023. Check out the Work/Around images on our Instagram feed.
Join us
DesignInquiry invites you to participate from afar: Join us on our Discord server to contribute to the melee (ideas, critique, resources, articles, images, video, writing, etc.) and add your address to DI’s snail mail database to sometimes receive happy mail.
(If you are new to Discord, here’s a beginner’s guide).
DesignInquiry is a non-profit educational organization devoted to researching design issues in intensive team-based gatherings. An alternative to the design conference, it brings together practitioners from disparate fields to generate new work and ideas around a single topic.
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