Bianca Elzenbaumer

"Designing economic cultures: Investigating the relation between socio-economic precariousness and collaborative design practices".

My research is an attempt to understand, articulate and develop the wide range of organisational strategies critical design practitioners can adopt to deal with socioeconomic precariousness and market constraints.

The intention is to produce a broad-ranging analysis of the ways in which small design practices operate in order to meaningfully contribute to the creation of a more just and heterogeneous society when they are themselves facing precarious conditions of labour with profound anxieties about finding work, unpredictable patterns of work and poor pay.

By studying selected practices and projects, the research will focus on how designers harness the potentials of collaboration, such as mutual
support, sharing of resources and skills, in order to lessen the precarious conditions of labour and thus be in a better position to
develop particular social and environmental values through their projects. The practice-based interventions within the research aim to explore and expand conceivable modes of collaborative practice, generating a variety of possibilities for designers seeking to avoid the choice between financial stability and the production of critically-engaged work.

By combining theoretical and practical research on the relation between socioeconomic precariousness and cooperative work settings, this study will contribute to the understanding and advancement of politically-engaged design practices.

Key questions to be addressed are:

• How designers can avoid the conventional choice between financial stability and meaningful work?
• What work settings can positively affect a designer’s ability to address unconventional environmental, political and social issues?
• What alternative economic values and strategies can be adopted?
• What can critically-engaged designers learn from the experiences of self-organised citizens and workers in other fields?
• How could the design community – and the wide range of people connected to it - benefit from creative methods of achieving socio-economic security?

Background:

Since 2005, Bianca is working together with Fabio Franz as Brave New Alps. In 2010 they both graduated from the MA in Communication Art & Design at the Royal College of Art. In 2007 Bianca gained a Postgraduate Certificate in International Peacekeeping and Conflict Management from the Faculty of Educational Science of the University of Bologna. In 2006, Brave New Alps graduated from the Faculty of Design and Art of the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy.

To get a sense for the design projects and activities they engage in visit
www.brave-new-alps.com

Email: bravenewalps@gmail.com