Thursday, 15 June

11:30 am – 1:00 pm
Guided Tour through the Exhibition ‘DAOULA / sheen: West African Wild Silk on Its Way’
// Tieranatomisches Theater Berlin / Laurence Douny

Number of participants is limited. Please register until 9 June 2023 here via e-mail on studyrooms@bauhaus-dessau.de

The exhibition ‘DAOULA | sheen’ focuses on the natural formation and the cultural history of wild silk obtained from caterpillars in West Africa, and on the many and complex ways in which this unique material is viewed by microbiologists, materials scientists, and architects in Germany.

1:00 – 2:30 pm
Lunch Break

2:30 – 6:00 pm
Hands-On Workshop ‘Textile Gestures: Mapping Tactile Practices with Architectural Yarns’
// Matters of Activity Zentrallabor, Berlin
Maxie Schneider with Maja Avnat

Number of participants is limited. Please register until 9 June 2023 here via e-mail on studyrooms@bauhaus-dessau.de

The Architectural Yarns research group in the Cluster of Excellence ‘Matters of Activity: Image Space’ is hosting a hands-on workshop about tactile knowledge in performative research. How do sensory and mechanical properties of a material interrelate and shift when processed manually? Which conscious and unconscious actions transform bulky matter into material?

The group will explore, verbalise, and map tactile perceptions and textile gestures with large-scale yarns made from natural fibres. Through the investigation of reconfigurable textile techniques using yarn samples, we will gain insight into the design and construction of fibre-based construction strategies, such as Architectural Yarns.

Followed by a get-together dinner at the klub, Bauhaus Building Dessau

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Friday, 16 June

No registration required.

10:00 – 10:15 am
Welcome to ‘Design Acts’
// Auditorium, Bauhaus Building
Regina Bittner, Stephan Pinkau & Vera Lauf

10:15 – 11:00 am
Keynote Lecture ‘Between Thinking and Making: On Performative Design’
// Auditorium, Bauhaus Building
Patricia Ribault

According to the French psychoanalyst and philosopher Daniel Sibony, the capacity of language to act is fueled by a certain embodied knowledge, a savoir-faire that can be compared to the immemorial mechanism of a machine that transmutes one into the other: “Between saying and doing, there is a gesture that manifests a desire”, and this gesture is translated through a specific process of ‘trans-doing’ or ‘trans-making’ (trans-faire). Applied to the design field, this moment – or this space – of in-betweenness is key to understanding what can be defined as ‘performative design’. We will follow this idea of trans-making in the light of other concepts, such as those of Gestaltung (design), formativity (Pareyson), or ecotechnics (Nancy), and see through practical examples how this kind of praxis can literally trans-form not only our Umwelt (environment) but also ourselves.

11:00 – 12:00 am
Roundtable ‘Co-Creation’
// Lab, Bauhaus Building, workshop wing
Rebekka Ladewig (moderation), Benno Brucksch, Elizabeth Hong, Louise Mazet

Contemporary design debates emphasize that design is not just a one-dimensional act of worldmaking; it is a reciprocal process of becoming, a process of co-creation. Thus, design is neither a process of single individuals nor an exterior act of giving form to materials regarded as both passive and endlessly available. Instead, it takes place in a complex and reciprocal network of relationships between human and non-human actors, materials, and resources. The actors involved in the process form, and are formed. At the same time, design practices are invariably embedded in the (re)production of ideals, norms, and power structures, the frequently inherent anthropocentrism of which has become problematic. How can design be (critically) debated in the spirit of a co-creation of the world, and how might new modes of design, preferably geared to considerate and responsible approaches, be made productive?

12:00 – 1:30 pm
Lunch Break

1:30 – 2:30 pm
Roundtable ‘Co-Production’
// Lab, Bauhaus Building, workshop wing
Åsa Ståhl (moderation), Mert Aytaç, Saloni Dilip Mhapsekar, Kristine Pace

Processual design may be understood as the production of situations in which (social) bodies are activated. But who or what is perceived as an active body, and can act as such? Integrated into networks of relationships between materials, technologies, and artefacts, questions about the activity of human bodies in design processes are being re-examined. Who or what collaborates in these processes, and how can active processes be established? Participatory approaches and collaborative practices will be discussed, in which social communities emerge and/or visibility is established for marginalised subjects and positions.

2:30 – 3:00 pm
Performative Situation ‘Reverberations’
// Bauhaus Building, workshop wing
Angelika Waniek and Participants of the COOP Design Research Master’s programme

How do you talk about something you have experienced, an event that connects us from that moment. Are we visible or ghosts? In the performative situation, reverberations and actions meet obstacles, are taken up, turned over, and thrown back. It is a sharing that allows access to processes that others experience in the situation connecting us.

3:00 – 3:30 pm
Coffee Break

3:30 – 4:30 pm
Lecture ‘Unveiling the Virtual: A Multisensory Exploration Beyond Sight and Sound’
// Lab, Bauhaus Building, workshop wing
Paula Strunden

While the metaverse is becoming one of the buzziest words in technology, gradually making its way into architectural practice and research, Paula Strunden puts forward an alternative road map for entering and understanding the history of virtual, augmented, and mixed reality. Instead of presenting a comprehensive historical overview of the technological advances over recent centuries, lesser-known examples from literature, film, theatre, and the multimedia arts are gathered that explore spatial perception from an embodied, embedded, and enacted perspective at the boundaries of our material and virtual worlds. Finally, Paula Strunden will present her ongoing performative extended reality explorations and open up the debate on whether virtual technologies have the potential to enhance intuitive and embodied design and decision-making processes in architecture.

4:30 – 5:30 pm
Roundtable ‘Embodied Knowledges’
// Lab, Bauhaus Building, workshop wing
Vivien Tauchmann (moderation), Estela Mendes Ribeiro, Andrea Palašti

In design research, there is an increasing focus on non-verbal forms of knowledge. Which role do body knowledge and techniques play in design processes? And how is knowledge manifested in bodies? Power structures, privileges, and discrimination are inscribed in the body and develop both within and through the body. The gendered or cultural body is not simply there; it does not exist independently of its representation. The round-table discussion sheds light on the relationship between body and representation, its meaning for a body-orientated design practice, and the possibility of the production of a resistant knowledge.

5:30 – 6:00 pm
Summary

6:00 – 7:00 pm
Performance ‘Self-As-Other-Training: Textiles’
// Auditorium, Bauhaus Building
Vivien Tauchmann & participants of the Bauhaus Study Rooms

Collective and performative training is an invitation to practice and critically reflect on global power relations through an experiential, bodily engagement. Through simple body movements, participants experience somatic insight into the monotony and exhaustion that workers along the textile chain face on a daily basis, with usual twelve-hour shifts lasting only a few minutes.

Followed by a get-together at the klub, Bauhaus Building, Dessau