Themes Cultures – Histories and Futures Curating on the Move SITUATED KNOWLEDGES – Art and Curating on the Move Workshop 04: Attunement with More-than-Human Worlds

Workshop 04: Attunement with More-than-Human Worlds

With Karmen Franinovic and Roman Kirschner (Design, ZHdK)

Date

Friday, 25 June 2021

Time

1:00 – 4:00pm CEST / 7:00 – 10:00pm HKT

Location

Zoom

Maximum number of Participants

20

Description

Since anthropologist Lucy Suchmann’s work on situated action, situated knowledge has been central to ethnographic approaches in design (Suchmann 1987). These approaches have since become increasingly location-sensitive, inclusive and emphatic, although focused dominantly on human needs and technology innovation. The shift from user-centred design to human-centred and, most recently to planet- or Earth-centred design, calls for ethnographic and design practices beyond the human. Following more-than-human approaches in anthropology and design (Galloway 2020, Tsing 2016, Escobar 2018) and grounded in fieldwork practices in the arts (Kuzmanovic and Gaffney 2019), this workshop proposes attunement as a situated technique for sensing and empathising across scales and beyond the human. After an introduction and discussion of the key concepts (texts will be provided beforehand), participants will engage in outdoor attunement exercises. The workshop will provide participants with embodied insights of how attunement to more-than-human worlds changes us and shapes our situated knowledges.

About the Speakers

Karmen Franinovic is Professor for Interaction Design at the ZHdK. She heads the subject area Interaction Design, leading its strategy processes as well as educational and research contents. Karmen conducts projects at Institute for Design Research and teaches in the BA and MA programs. Currently, she is responsible for Doctoral Program development and heads the Enactive Environments Lab.

Roman Kirschner, studies of philosophy, art history and audiovisual art. PhD on „Towards a paradigm of material activity in the plastic arts“ at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Project lead of the arts-based research project „Liquid Things“ at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. His works have been exhibited internationally in e.g. Arko Art Center Seoul (ROK), National Art Museum of China, Beijing (CN), Kunsthalle und Künstlerhaus Wien, Cornerhouse Manchester (UK), Tokyo Museum of Photography (JP), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts San Francisco (USA), Lunds Konsthall (SWE).

The focus of his work is on ideas of process-based sculpture; transitive and transformative materials in contemporary art; ecologies and social metabolism; and the mutual influence of material, imagination and epistemology.