DesignInquiry Work/Around

The workaround, often developed over time, in collusion with others who are encountering the same obstacle, is usually unofficial, illegitimate, or even prohibited. A workaround is designed to get past the problem without eliminating it. What does that mean for the problem? If the workaround catches on, it eventually comes to the attention of the system’s designers, policymakers, manufacturers, gatekeepers, and the problem is sometimes addressed. But could this process be accelerated by celebrating the workaround? Could the workaround create spaces of play, invention and kindness? By drawing attention to the creativity in peoples’ improvised solutions, could we close the feedback loop and draw attention to the problem that systems are often designed to produce errors, unfairness and even injustice? DESIGNINQUIRY WORK/AROUND participants will explore creative responses to obstacles via making, discussion, exhibition and publishing. The obstacle could be a technical fault, a policy or an interface designed to exclude you (deliberately or not). Anyone is invited to observe, work, discuss, join WORK/AROUND throughout the week for an hour or two, a full day, or something in-between. WORK/AROUND findings are a result of the collaboration of the group and may take many forms including online publishing, publication in the peer-reviewed DesignInquiry journal, exhibition, or site-based interventions. DesignInquiry is a non-profit educational organization that explores pressing issues in design and culture. We are a collective of thinkers and makers devoted to extra-disciplinary exchange with a changing roster of designers, artists, scholars, teachers, architects, historians, critics, writers and other practitioners carrying out and sustaining our work. DesignInquiry spearheads intensive team-based gatherings, shares the diverse outcomes and publications, influences design research and teaching methods, and inspires professional designers to rethink what design can be and can do. Who This multi-disciplinary gathering serves as an open format publishing platform of 12 residents, DI framers and daily inquirers to engage in a week of obstacles, diversions and impositions to work around. We invite applicants from diverse disciplines interested in design: Fields of interest can be performance, installation, interaction, drawing, music, philosophy, geography, architecture, gastronomy, astronomy, walking, talking, etc.