Special Issue of Design Issues - Organizing provocation, conflict and appropriation: The role of the designer in making publics (Sep 2016)

Website: Design Issues
Deadline for intention to contribute: 1 September 2016

Because of the importance of the role and embodiment of the designer/artist in making publics, this special issue draws attention to reflexive practices in Art & Design, and questions how these practices can be embedded in the formations and operations of publics and design practices. More specifically, the special issue aims to explore the following questions: How do the designer/artist create and maintain publics? How do we accommodate differences in these agonistic spaces? What is the role of the designer/artist in these contexts? How can we understand the tension between artistic control in speculative design and empowerment in participatory design?

This issue will contain the best papers received and presented in the corresponding workshop in the Participatory Design Conference in Aarhus in August 2016 (PDC2016) entitled “Ting: Making publics through provocation, conflict and appropriation”, as well as other invited contributions.

We invite researchers, designers, activists, artists, who in their work are exploring utopian, speculative, and critical design projects as well as designing for and with social movements, alternative societies and relational economies, to contribute to the theme of ‘Organizing provocation, conflict and appropriation: The role of the designer in making publics’. Authors are invited to consider (but are not limited to) the following issues and questions for this special issue:

• Design as world making and as a way to create a public space;
• Agonistic public spaces versus consensual decision-making;
• The role of the author/designer/creator/artist in speculative and critical design in relation to participatory design;
• Politics of Participation
• Exclusion and inclusion in the design practice;
• Norms in speculative participatory design practices
• The tension between artistic control in speculative design and empowerment in participatory design
• The tension between empowerment and exploitation, between participation and precarious labor

GUEST EDITORS
Shaowen Bardzell, Indiana University
Tessy Cerratto Pargman, Stockholm University
Carl DiSalvo, Georgia Institute of Technology
Laura Forlano, Illinois Institute of Technology
Karin Hansson, Stockholm University (Managing Guest Editor)
Jaz Hee-jeong Choi, Queensland University of Technology
Somya Joshi, Stockholm University
Silvia Lindtner, School of Information, University of Michigan

TIMELINE
01.9.2016: Submission deadline for intentions to contribute (1500-2000 words)
01.10.2016: Notification of relevance sent to authors / selected contributions invited to continue
01.12.2016: Full papers submission deadline for those selected to continue (5000 + references)
01.02.2017: Notification of accept / reject / revisions to authors
01.06.2017: Final manuscript submission deadline
15.09.2017: Final selected manuscripts to production

BACKGROUND
See http://performingthecommon.se/ting/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/DesignIssues.pdf.

For more information, and submissions e-mail: ting@performingthecommon.se.