CfP: "Making and Unmaking the Environment" - Design History Society annual conference 2017
7–9 SEPTEMBER 2017. UNIVERSITY OF OSLO.
Design
and designers hold an ambiguous place in environmental discourse. They
are alternatively being blamed for causing environmental problems, and
hailed as possessing some of the competences that could help solving
those problems. Despite this long-standing centrality of design to
environmental discourse, and vice versa, these interrelations remain
underexplored in design historical scholarship.
Half a century
ago, Leo Marx coined the phrase ‘the machine in the garden’ to describe a
trope he identified as a prominent feature of 19th and early 20th
century American literature, in which the pastoral ideal is seen as
disturbed by the invasion of modern technology. Marx subsequently
shifted perspective from this fascination with ‘the technological
sublime’ to a deep concern for the environmental ramifications of
technological progress. The question of how we as society deal with the
allegorical machine in the proverbial garden is more relevant than ever.
Design
is both making and unmaking the environment. Conversely, it might be
argued that the environment is both making and unmaking design. This
conference seeks to explore how these processes unfold, across
timescapes and landscapes, thus opening a new agenda for the field of
design history. Design thinkers from John Ruskin and William Morris to
Richard Buckminster Fuller and Victor Papanek and beyond have grappled
with the intricate and paradoxical relations between the natural
environment and the designed environment. From Ghandi's India to
Castro's Cuba, design policy has been enmeshed in concerns for its
environmental ramifications. From prehistoric stone implements to
contemporary nanotechnology, design has been key to shaping our
environment.
In the anthropocene, we can no longer talk about
design (and) culture without also talking about design (and) nature. The
conference theme is intended to stimulate new directions in design
historical discourses that take seriously design’s complex
interrelations with nature and the environment. Not only does design
feature prominently in the making and unmaking of the environment;
studying the history of these processes will also help reveal how the
idea of the environment itself has been articulated over time. Engaging
with issues of environmental controversies and sustainable development
can move design history beyond its conventional societal significance,
and may thus enable more resilient futures.
Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:
- Design and consumption
- Repairing, fixing, mending
- Design in nature
- Design of nature
- Histories of sustainable design
- Histories of unsustainable design
- Environmentalist movements and design
- Design movements and the environment
- Durability and ephemerality
- Impacts of materials and manufacturing
- Imaging nature(s)
- Greenwashing & greenwishing
- Designs on the Anthropocene
- Politics and policies of sustainable design
- Design and alternative energy
- Designing doom and gloom
- Designing technofixes
- Appropriate technology
- Eco-modernism vs. green conservatism
- Eco-fiction/Eco-topias
- Deep ecology as design philosophy
- Traditional design for resilient futures
- Visual culture of the environmental crisis
- Waste and afterlives
- Silent springs and atomic winters
- Social sustainability
- Ecology and systems design
- Navigating spaceship earth
- Earthships and biodomes
Special anniversary strand: Making and Unmaking Design History
2017
marks the 40th anniversary of the first Design History Society Annual
Conference, held in Brighton in 1977, as well as the 30th anniversary of
the Journal of Design History. In celebration of this landmark, we
invite proposals for papers addressing the historiography of design and
the history of the discipline, with the aim to curate a special
anniversary strand on the making and unmaking of design history.
We
are inviting proposals for individual papers of 20 minutes, or
proposals for thematically coherent panels of three papers. Panel
proposals must include abstracts for all three papers in addition to a
short description of the panel theme.
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Simon Sadler – University of California, Davis
Jennifer Gabrys – Goldsmiths, University of London
Peder Anker – New York University & University of Oslo
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 20 January 2017
Please submit your proposals in the form of anonymous MS Word documents to:
Contact Email: dhs-2017@ifikk.uio.no