Event overview
In times when human activities violently constrict the lives of others, how can designers cultivate acts of withdrawal, foreclosure and leaving be?
The Design Societies Research Unit (DSRU) would like to invite you to the Design and Grace seminar, featuring Erik Sandelin, and taking place on March 5th 2025 at the Department of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London.
In times when human activities violently constrict the lives of others, how can designers cultivate creative acts of withdrawal, foreclosure and leaving be? Erik Sandelin employs 'grace' – actively not doing what you are able to do – to decouple action from force and passivity from resignation in design. This understanding of grace informs a series of design experiments that variously draw on and explore design withdrawal alongside the work of Michel Serres, Patricia MacCormack, Simone Weil and Critical Animal Studies.
The event is organised into two parts.
1. Between 11am and 1pm Erik will lead a Doctoral Masterclass with MPhil/PhD students where we will discuss how his work involves theoretically driven practice-based research.
2. From 4pm to 6pm, Erik will present his work in a seminar format, followed by discussion led by Alex Wilkie and chaired by Sarah Pennington.
Design and Grace is the first event in the new Lures for Feeling seminar series that explores the climate crisis as an aesthetic event marked by an irretrievable loss of feeling and being, challenging design and knowledge practices to address cosmopolitical futures. The series invites scholars and practitioners to engage with more-than-human aesthetics, fostering sensitivity to climatic possibilities and liveable futures where nonhuman others play an active role. By questioning assumptions and unsettling design practices, the series seeks to imagine transformative, yet modest, roles for design in hopeful, ethico-political world-making.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 5 Mar 2025 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
