Critical Daily    Critical practice in graphic design

Multi Multi is a nomadic dialog and educational platform, organized by the Research Institute for Botanical Linguistics, a collaboration of international designers with an interdisciplinary design and research approach.

Multi Multi´s aim is to trigger and broaden discussions on post-humanism in relation to design practice and on design strategies that work towards a more sustainable world within the design and design research community in Slovakia and abroad.

The design field in the western world has changed within the last decades, putting it more into social and systemic contexts and demanding more responsibility for future developments. Within the design research discourse of criticality in design, new concepts on design in relation to post-humanism have emerged as a response to the Anthropocene and its stated influence on the current ecological crisis.

As Laura Fornalo states, design has been dominated by a human-centered and user-centered approach since the mid-1980s, where only the human perspective is central in design processes. Emerging relationships with the natural and technical world call this binary understanding of human and non-human into question. (Fornalo, 2017). Human-centered approaches tend to result in short-term band-aids for one species and profit-driven systems. Yet, to generate questions and solutions for heterogeneous living systems, which strive for sustainability are needed. Current posthuman concepts try to overcome the human-centered perspective, to undermine binary categories and to expand our understanding of the multiple agencies, dependencies, entanglements, and relations, that make up our world.

What does it mean to design for heterogeneous living systems? How to include multiple agencies in design thinking and design processes? Is it possible to overcome the human-centered perspectives in designing at all? Is working towards a problem-solving design approach the right answer or do we need to first and foremost create awareness for the diversity of human and non-human systems?

Through dialogues, lectures and reading groups design methodologies oriented on the concept of post-humanism, are explored and questioned. The platform follows research and learning through a conversational approach and is primarily experimental and non-hierarchical. The format currently consists of 12 online sessions. A two-day workshop planned to take place in Bratislava had to be moved online due to COVID-19 pandemic government measures.

Experts from Slovakia and international experts from diverse fields such as design, design research, architecture, or ecology were invited to share their projects, concepts and ideas. Participants are primarily designers, design researchers and design students from Slovakia and abroad.

Literature
Forlano, L. (2017). “Posthumanism and Design.” She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. Special Issue on Transforming Design Matters.

Projekt z verejných zdrojov podporil Fond na podporu umenia.
Podporil aj Displaay 
Mediálny partner Slovenské centrum dizajnu