Theater of the Oppressed
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Transdisciplinarity is transgression or it is not
Throughout the 20th century, there were many attempts to make design into a single and unified discipline, similar to (or even engulfing) architecture. These efforts failed as new design disciplines kept popping up and creating distinctive professions. The possibility of disciplinary unification under elusive labels like design studies became less and less realistic as designers […] - Dec 20, 2024 -
Systemic userism in service design
Abstract: Userism in service design manifests as a group of humans reduced to be users (and only users) of a given service. Userism prevents these people from cocreating, codesigning, and coproducing services. Transnational (often colonialist) digital services are a case in point; however, userism also appears in analog interfaces. The systemic aspect of userism refers […] - Nov 25, 2024 -
From the outset of their design education at UTFPR, Alanis Louise de Mello Zukowski and Maria Vitória Ribeiro Kosake were struck by a disconnect between their aspirations and the education they received. The design curriculum seemed narrowly focused on technical skills and market demands, leaving little room for critical reflection or social engagement. As they […] - May 9, 2024 -
Decolonizing Service Design Ethics and Aesthetics
Abstract: Service Design draws heavily from ancient Greek Ethics and Aesthetics, beginning with the foundational theater metaphor that separates frontstage from backstage. When Service Design engages with cultures that do not cultivate the Greek canon, the decolonization challenge comes to the fore. People who work to decolonize their cultures wonder whether Service Design will remain […] - Apr 15, 2024 -
Learning design as a human right: the beginnings of a design lab founded on critical pedagogy
Bizotto dos Santos, W.B., Mazzarotto, M.,and Van Amstel, F.(2023) Learning design as a human right: the beginnings of a design lab founded on critical pedagogy, in Derek Jones, Naz Borekci, Violeta Clemente, James Corazzo, Nicole Lotz, Liv Merete Nielsen, Lesley-Ann Noel (eds.), The 7th International Conference for Design Education Researchers, 29 November – 1 December 2023, […] - Mar 18, 2024 -
Bizotto dos Santos, W., Mazzarotto, M., & Van Amstel, F. (2024). Tomando um LADO: formação crítica e prática de liberdade no Laboratório de Design contra Opressões. Arcos Design, 17(1), 143–175. https://doi.org/10.12957/arcosdesign.2024.78425 - Jan 10, 2024 -
Dancing Algorhythms in the Theater of the Techno-Oppressed
Presentation in the College of the Arts Fall 2023 Research Lightning Round, University of Florida. Abstract: Algorhythms are computer instructions that display recurrent logic and rhythm. They are introduced in our everyday life through digital technologies to structure our activities. The Theater of the Techno-Oppressed is a research program aimed at exploring the role of […] - Dec 14, 2023 -
Wicked rituals of contemporary design thinking
Saito, Carmem; Van Amstel, Frederick M. C.; Serpa, Bibiana O; Angelon, Rafaela. Wicked rituals of contemporary design thinking. (2023). In: Mehl, Johanna and Höfler, Carolin (Eds). Attending [to] Futures. Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research, Practice. Hamburg: Adocs. p. 150-161. http://doi.org/10.53198/9783943253726 - Dec 11, 2023 -
Cascading oppression in design
Abstract: Oppression is not an isolated phenomenon that involves two persons: the oppressor and the oppressed. Oppression is a systemic contradiction that affects many persons, spreading through cascading effects and twisted positionalities. One oppression relation can affect another, generating the possibility for the same person to be both an oppressor and an oppressed in different […] - Sep 27, 2023 -
Image theater is the most popular and accessible Theater of the Oppressed technique. It consists of telling an oppression story through a static body image. The spect-actors stand in postures that, altogether, suggest an oppressive action. There is no voice, explanation or movement in the image, although that can be added later for further inquiries […] - Sep 20, 2023 -
Making work visible in the theater of service design
Capitalist service design is grounded on a theater metaphor that guides service designers to make work invisible, away from customer scrutiny and public accountability. In this way, service design contributes to hiding the extreme work exploitation that digital service workers undergo, generating a situation where workers can only reclaim their visibility through striking. If service […] - Feb 24, 2023 -
Ethics and aesthetics of the experience designed for the Other
Keynote addressed in the A & D Visitors Series, School of Art & Design, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, October 2022. This is a provocative talk on design ethics that might spark a debate with the audience. The presenter will show well-known design products and processes that promise to deliver unique experiences. His critique of these […] - Oct 9, 2022 -
Weaving design as a practice of freedom: Critical pedagogy in an insurgent network
Serpa, B.O., van Amstel, F.M., Mazzarotto, M., Carvalho, R.A., Gonzatto, R.F., Batista e Silva, S., and da Silva Menezes, Y. (2022) Weaving design as a practice of freedom: Critical pedagogy in an insurgent network, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June – 3 July, Bilbao, […] - Jun 21, 2022 -
Coming to terms with design wickedness: Reflections from a forum theatre on design thinking
Saito, C., Serpa, B.O., Angelon, R., and van Amstel, F. (2022) Coming to terms with design wickedness: Reflections from a forum theatre on design thinking, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June – 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.668 - Jun 21, 2022 -
Forum Theater provides a forum to test and rehearse actions and responses to oppressive situations in the form of an interactive play. What differentiates Forum Theatre from other interactive theatre techniques is precisely its political goal of human and social emancipation. By stimulating the spectator’s effective intervention, Forum Theatre seeks to provoke reflections about the forms of […] - Apr 17, 2022 -
Reaction to computer-mediated oppression can be rehearsed in a Theater of the Techno-Oppressed session. When using the image theater technique, it is possible to capture every attempt to react to oppression and compare their efficacy in still photos. In addition to the spect-actors who stage the play, two persons are required: a photographer and a […] - Mar 27, 2022 -
Wicked Problems, Wicked Designs (2021)
Wicked problems, Wicked designs is a remote forum theater held during the Attending [To] Futures conference in 2021 organized by the KISD School. Forum Theater is a technique developed by Augusto Boal to make structural oppression visible through acting while also rehearsing liberation from oppression. This play aimed at exposing and discussing the sexist, colonialist, […] - Nov 22, 2021 -
Design and Theater of the Oppressed
Summary: What does theater have to do with design? Theater of the Oppressed can provide great insights into recognizing and expanding the Designs of the Oppressed. Created by Augusto Boal in the 1970s, this form of theater became one of the most popular approaches for non-professional actors interested in doing politics through theater. The approach […] - Nov 3, 2021 -
This talk presents the activity of the Design & Oppression, woven by design professors, students, and professionals from all over Brazil from the perspective of one of its cofounders. The network discussed and experimented with several ways of recognizing how design reproduces oppression in our society. As of late 2021, the network is interested in […] - Oct 29, 2021 -
Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education (2021)
Instead of delivering an invited talk in the UTFPR’s Informatics student week of 2021, Rodrigo Fresse Gonzatto, Claudia Bordin Rodrigues, and Frederick van Amstel performed an invisible theater on artificial intelligence in higher education. In this kind of performance, actors stage the play without telling the audience that they are acting. They pretend to be […] - Oct 4, 2021 -
Relational design and the contradiction of oppression
Una charla en la sesión 8 de la Cátedra Diseño, Arte y Ciencia acogida pela Facultades de Artes y Diseño y de Ciencias Naturales e Ingeniería de la Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano (Colombia). Abstracto: El Diseño Relacional es una transformación profunda en la teoria y practica del diseño, en que se pierde el objeto para […] - Sep 21, 2021 -
Domesticated futures and monster aesthetics
So far, design has contributed mostly to domesticate futures for the colonized. Nevertheless, design can also serve decolonizing practices that bring back the contradictory nature of human futures. The domestication of the future is a colonialist strategy that reduces existential time to a desirable space of possibilities that can be designed, packaged, and sold to […] - May 18, 2021 -
As institutions or individuals, design bodies have been weaponized for war, colonization, racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of oppression. This talk reports on the Designing for Liberation research program that, since 2010, engages diverse design bodies with the fight against all forms of oppression. This program unleashes designing potentials that have been prevented or […] - Apr 8, 2021 -
The Invasion of the Gringo Design Thinker (2021)
On the World Theatre of the Oppressed Day on March 16, 2021, the Design & Oppression Network broadcasted a forum theater called The Invasion of the Gringo Design Thinker. The play proposes a debate about the relevance of foreign design thinking to Brazilian popular culture and its forms of expression. Following the remote forum theater method, […] - Mar 4, 2021 -
Design and Precarious Work in Digital Platforms (2020)
The Design & Oppression network produced a remote forum theater play on platform work and precarity in the USP design academic week of 2020. Young design students joined the forum to discuss the dystopian future of their profession while considering the dystopian present of other professions. Following the remote forum theater method, the spect-actors wore augmented reality […] - Dec 3, 2020 -
The Anthropophagic Studio: Towards a Critical Pedagogy for Interaction Design
Van Amstel, Frederick M.C and Gonzatto, Rodrigo Freese. (2020) The Anthropophagic Studio: Towards a Critical Pedagogy for Interaction Design. Digital Creativity, 31(4), p. 259-283. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2020.1802295 - Jul 25, 2020 -
Interaction design, like theater, depends on the performances of human actors to realize its aesthetic expression. Interaction designers create software code much like theater scripts, while users often ignore them and improvise. Drawing from the analogy of Computer as Theater proposed by Brenda Laurel and the Theater of the Oppressed developed by Augusto Boal, this […] - Oct 31, 2018 -
Designing oppressive and libertarian interactions with the conscious body
Gonzatto, R. F., & van Amstel, F. M. (2017, October). Designing oppressive and libertarian interactions with the conscious body. In Proceedings of the XVI Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-10). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 22, 10 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3160504.3160542 - Oct 31, 2017 -
Deixe_me is an interactive short movie produced by Erick Gustavo e Marta Heupa for their final work in Digital Design to address the contradiction between the need for self-presentation and the risk of cyberbullying in social media. Students began by investigating overexposure in social media. They were invited to discuss the topic with high school […] - Mar 31, 2016 -
This is a short animation movie produced by Marcos Balbinot for his final work in Digital Design to express his experience of going through depression. The movie conveys the prejudices people face with this mental condition in an attempt to reduce it. The movie has attracted more than 80.000 viewers and hundreds of comments on […] - Mar 31, 2016