A Project mobilizing energies Against Catastrophe 

Against Catastrophe

© Tal Halpern

The aim of this project is to interrogate the concept of catastrophe – how it is defined, analyzed, and deployed – and anti-catastrophic practices in an attempt to envision alternatives to our present.

It does so through an edited volume, art and design commissions, and offline and online exhibitions that explore catastrophe and anti-catastrophe in practice around the globe. The focus throughout is on how novel thinking and practice in design, architecture, and technology can open possibilities for more equitably, democratically,  and sustainably surviving a catastrophic world, but also expanding epistemic horizons beyond such apocalyptic thinking.

Governing through Design is a collaborative research project that investigates how design impacts society. It uses history and ethnography to develop new narratives of how the practices and epistemologies of design reconceive global politics and everyday lifeworlds, and invest in pedagogies that seek to intervene in contemporary practices of design.

It is an interdisciplinary collective of researchers based at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design, the University of Basel, and Concordia University Montréal, with backgrounds in design history, urban studies, media studies, anthropology, sociology, political science, and science & technology studies.

The Speculative Life

The research group is unique in the Milieux Institute for Arts, Culture and Technology at Concordia University in our emphasis on fostering science and technology studies, a focus on ecology and environment, an interest in scale and networks, and finally, a commitment to futurity and imagination as critical to design, art, and scholarship.

This cluster of artists, designers and scholars presents a rare opportunity to develop the systemic study and creation of emerging technologies with a focus on social justice, difference, and imagination. It engages with multiple technical ecologies, from bio-media to urban planning, in order to foster creative ways to think about the future of the planetary scale transformations currently occurring as a result of human action and technical developments.