The Master’s in Design for Emergent Futures aims for students to imagine and explore what the world can look like in the months, years and billions of seconds ahead. Through a lens focused on innovation, sustainability and digital fabrication, we are trying to redefine the parameters of what we see as design nowadays. The program pursues to “align students’ purpose with their skills, interests and capabilities in order to provide all the necessary means to become agents of change” (Tomas Diez, Making Sense & Meaning Introduction)
During the Making Sense and Meaning course, we are exposed to wicked problems and radical ideas, from Decentralised Organisations to Non-western Indegenous practices. We explore the causes for and consequences of technological progress, how war & colonialism heavily influenced our design choices, and how the globalised world operates through cheap things. We interrogate ourselves on our present to be able to understand what futures we would like to achieve.
It is important to note that we are encouraged to speak in terms of multiple “futures” and not a single future, as the times ahead are not set in stone. Instead, they are entirely dependent on the efforts we make today. Through our actions, thoughts and fights we commit to right now, we are opening the possibility of new futures. We are either digging the debts, or building the interests of what comes ahead.
With every project we work on, we should question what alternate futures we are creating as a byproduct. In my vision of the world, I see a space where people have access to information freely, are empowered to take action on important topics, and we are not overwhelmed by the idea of species extinction. In order to achieve these goals, I approach the topics from an artistic, technological and collaborative perspective.
In this report, I will begin by defining what design means to me by comparing my conflicted feelings towards being labelled as a designer or as an artist. Then, we will explore how design can help me achieve my purpose through the empowering feeling of aligning my values with my practice. Finally, we will conclude by understanding how it can be used to transform the world I live in.
I will discuss the topics of interdisciplinarity, interactivity, intersectionality, art with purpose, and the intertwining of many of our global issues. I would like to open the inquiry of what our priorities are in a western neoliberal society: individualism, scarcity, profit and consumption amongst others. Why do we have a planetary approach to material extraction, supply chains, and travel (through globalisation) yet no plans for planetary wellbeing? I would like to challenge these notions, and discuss potential alternatives.
Sometimes, we are in denial of the fact that humans have full responsibility for the climate emergency we are facing, because we do not want to admit that we have designed the systems that allowed us to get to this point. All the things - for better or for worse - are a result of design choices made by the generations that came before us.
However, it does not all have to be bad news. By questioning how we got to the current state of the world, we can then understand what shifts are needed in order to live in a world where we can sustain human life without harming planetary wellbeing.