A series of queer provocations to shift away from human-centered design practices towards frameworks rooted in mutuality.
Through queering design, this lecture seeks new orientations of deliberately resisting normativity and forging alternative pathways and ways of practicing and being that attempt to disrupt prescriptive design methods. Queering design presents an opportunity to move away from the paternalistic approach of “designing for” past collaboration-oriented but not capacity-building ways of “designing with” to “designing by”—building the confidence and fluency of others to benefit and build collective power. It also aims to evolve the dialogue about design in a more divergent and unusual direction.
This event was co-moderated with Floriane Fo Misslin (they/them), a researcher and sociologist exploring the design of research methods to study gender in design and fashion.
Sloan Leo Cowan (they/he) is a community designer, facilitator, and educator whose work is decidedly queer, unambiguously Black, and compassionately collective. Their practice embeds them in the dynamics, evolution, and beautifully fraught realities of finding, nurturing, and navigating community. Through facilitation, dialogic pedagogy, digital video, photography, and printing, Leo’s work both subtly and explicitly challenges binary understandings of race and gender, inviting the audience to confront and grapple with their own sense of belonging, values, and commitments. By manipulating and excavating layers of material and meaning, it creates a public exhibition of an intimate and profoundly personal, revelatory journey. Leo is the founder, CEO, and Lead Facilitator at FLOX Studio Inc., a community design and strategy studio that supports mission-driven organizations to animate the practice of their values.
This lecture was part of Design Educators* Unite!—a lecture series for design teachers, researchers, and students that shares feminist practices from within.
Feb 22 | 6 pm CET – special free event
Roundtable Discussion
Navigating the Past, Envisioning the Future: Unearthing Feminist and Decolonial Threads in Design Education
with Cherrypye (she/her) Creator, Educator & Researcher
Clara Meliande (she/her) Designer, Researcher & Educator
and Josefina Vidal (she/her) Designer & Researcher
Mar 21 | 6 pm CET
Lecture
Otherwise Realities: Communal Care, Decolonization, and The Design School
with Layla Gharib (she/her)
Designer, Researcher & Educator
Apr 11 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Queering Design: Moving Towards Emergent Practices
with Sloan Leo Cowan (they/he)
Community Designer, Facilitator & Educator
May 2 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Social Design Practices: From the Popular Neighborhoods to the Faculty of Design
with Giuliana Córdoba (she/none)
and Emilia Odriozola (she/her)
from the Student Movement Auge FADU
June 6 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Feminist Killjoy Design Pedagogy: On Emphasizing Joy
with Elizabeth Chin (she/her)
Anthropologist & Ethnographer
June 13 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Design and Other Ways of Knowing
Ramia Mazé (she/her)
Design Researcher
June 19 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Crip Spacetime and Utopias of Care
with Nina Mühlemann (they/none)
Artist & Disability Scholar
July 4 | 6 pm CEST
Lecture
Mocha Celis: We Dare to Build the World We Want to Live In
with Francisco Quiñones Cuartas (she/he)
and Virginia Silveira (she/her)
from Travesti-Trans Non-binary Popular High School Mocha Celis
