Intento 2.0: The Decolonization of Design

Hey amigxs! We are happy and excited to invite you all to Intento 2.0: The decolonization of Design.

This year, S.U.R is bringing Contranarrativas collective to host a 3-day seminar and a panel discussion that will revolve around imaginaries and reflections on how to think sustainability through Design in a critical, just, and caring way. Together, we will explore the possibility of developing an open, porous, inclusive, experimental and decolonized space of reflection for the co-construction of knowledge and existence, from a non-Western perspective.

✺ Seminar

The 3-day seminar will be centered around three axes – Extractive practices, fictions of sustainability, and the illusion of contemporaneity.

Session 1. Decolonization and decanonization of Design

Design is not neutral, innocent, ahistorical, or apolitical. It has historically been crossed by Western-centric canonical thought, the civilizational model of modernity, and the accumulation pattern of the neoliberal system that sustains the illusion of contemporaneity. Why is it relevant to question these notions, and how can we create counternarratives?

Session 2. This was designed on stolen land

There is no anticolonial or antiracist notion of environmental sustainability when it is based on the concept of natural resources, which does not confront the structural causes that produce climate emergency. How can we think of a sustainable Design perspective that does not legitimize the anthropocentric and extractivist paradigm central to the so-called development of the North?

Session 3. Sustainability for whom?

Sustainability is often thought of from a totalizing and universalist perspective, but it rarely questions specificities or non-Western ways of approaching it. What are the limits of the narrative of “environmental sustainability” in Design, in a reparative, redistributive, and restorative way?

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The seminar will be held in English.
26-28 November, 17-20
Aalto University

Registrations are now open clicking HERE. Each session is independent so you may come to as many as you want, but due to the nature of the seminar we have limited spots, so be sure to only register if you can participate :)

✺ Panel discussion: Decolonization of Design: fictions of sustainability?

Sustainability is often thought of from a totalizing and universalist notion, but it doesn’t address specificities or non-Western ways of approaching it.

A group of diverse guests will join us to talk about how these notions affect the ways we design, exploring together how to bring new perspectives and counternarratives to our field.

The panel discussion will be held in English.
29th of November
17-19 hs
Aalto University, Väre Building, Room F101

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Fabián Villegas is a writer, journalist, spoken word artist, scholar and researcher in South epistemologies, anticolonial thoughts and racial studies. He is also the co-founder of Contranarrativas, a collaborative project that seeks to create horizontal knowledge production spaces to stimulate the visibility, dissemination and production of epistemologies, decolonial narratives and peripheral aesthetics of the Global South.

Julia Valle Noronha is a designer-researcher-educator that understands fashion as a major force in driving change towards more responsible futures. Her research interest explores this potential especially from the perspectives of fashion design and wearing practices. Brazilian born and raised, Julia approaches the field from an outlook that praises diversity and holds being with the earth at its core.

Nils Ehrenberg is a postdoctoral researcher at the Aalto University Department of Design. Ehrenberg has worked with design research for 10 years in Sweden, Portugal, and Finland. Ehrenberg’s research has explored civic participation, smart home technologies and housing, as well as learning analytics and tools. In his research Ehrenberg reflects on how design and technology re-shape both our social relationships and our relationship to the world around us.

Manuel Díaz Tufinio is a Mexican industrial designer and researcher working on intersections between history, design and botany. He is currently studying a MA in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University. Manuel has worked as a designer and in R&D team at EWE Studio, txt.ure, Archivo Diseño y Arquitectura Museum, and as a lecturer at CENTRO University.

See you very soon!!

✺ Glossary - some concepts to start thinking Sustainability, by Fabián Villegas from Contranarrativas

Anthropocentrism: a philosophical theory in which the human being and his interests are conceived as the center of everything, so there is a subordination of the "other" (living beings, environment, etc.) to the needs and well-being of the human being.

Colonialism: the political and economic system by which a foreign State dominates and exploits another foreign State. That territory is called a colony. Generally, military force is used to which the invaded country cannot oppose and the colonizer, invader or conqueror imposes military, political, economic, social, cultural and religious control, normally by appointing people from the conquering country.

Contemporaneity: the quality of relating to the present time.

Decanonization: cultural and political operation that implies the dismantling of hegemonic structures and hierarchies of cultural, aesthetic and knowledge production, through the visibility and historical recovery of other experiences not centered in the Western genealogies.

Extractivism: a model of development and accumulation by dispossession based on the appropriation and overexploitation of natural resources. Historically developed in the global South and its ethnoterritorialities, to satisfy the demands of capitalist accumulation of the Global North.

Global South: the Global South is a geographical, geopolitical, historical and developmental concept that refers to various countries around the world that are sometimes described as “developing,” “less developed” or “underdeveloped”.

Globalectics: exercise of political and cultural imagination, justice of knowledge that implies a multilogue between local and global experiences, north and south positionalities, multiple genealogies of knowledge around a cultural and social phenomenon.

Sustainability: a model of habitability and development based on the management of resources to satisfy current needs, without putting the needs of the future at risk, in the face of ecological, distributive, environmental, socio-environmental and climatic risks.

Territorial Colonialism: political, economic, and extractive regime in which a State or national and transnational private interests control and exploit territories, ethnoterritorialities, and territories ancestrally inhabited by indigenous peoples.

Territory: fragment of the earth's surface or the part of the natural environment that makes up an ecosystem, a political-legal-administrative entity, a cultural ecosystem, or a social and comunal tissue.

With the support of

Intento: A decolonial attempt

︎︎︎
Intento was physically accesible from the 18th of October to the 1st of November 2023 at Aalto University’s Väre Lobby. This is now an archival page.

Intento is an experiment and a living archive, based on different research initiatives engaging with Latin American contexts present at Aalto University. Rather than relying only on the preexisting structures of the University, Intento opens up a space to foster collaboration, circulation, and reflection, in order to disseminate and instigate forms of knowledge that challenge Western epistemological hegemony.

This exhibition launches and explores the possibilities of Intento within the University. It presents a curated collection of Master's and PhD’s theses, mainly from Aalto Arts, that allow us to engage with specific territories around Latin America. This constellation of works embraces the details, the thoughts, the memories, and the experiences that have emerged from and are entangled with specific geocultural localities. Through creating a dialogue among these various possible ways of doing and thinking, we aim to raise value to alternative attitudes towards knowledge production systems.

In order to navigate the constellation of the works present in this exhibition, we have mapped three categories (Territory, Familiarity and Making) that group various of the theses, which provide us with a framework to observe and recognise potential decolonial forces latent in these works.

Program Archive

Kollektiivi Water poems and Liquid layouts workshop: Part 2 - in collaboration with Debt for Climate Finland

Friday, 20th October
13:30-17:00 at Room F101, Väre Building, Aalto University

Our water inspired workshop is having a part two! This time we will collaborate with Debt for Climate Finland — a grassroot climate movement lead by the global South — as part of the programme of Somos S.U.R “Intento” exhibition. We will reflect on our personal relationship with water and its role in our lives and societies with a more critical perspective.

We will write short poems, and then design layouts and drawings inspired by the many forms of water. This is an invitation to visually explore how to communicate water’s flowy, changing and organic nature.
All the works will later be exhibited at Aalto University.

No previous experience or skills required. Open and free to everyone! No registration needed, limited seats so please arrive on time! Seats available on a first-come, first-served basis.

We will provide all the materials and snacks.
For further information contact tiivi.kollek@gmail.com

An interconnected Earth - What is climate justice activism in the future?

Monday, October 23rd at 17:30-19.30 in Room F101 at the Väre Lobby of Aalto University (Otaniementie 14).

S.U.R. and Debt for Climate Finland will host a panel discussion on the issue of climate justice and neocolonial debt mechanisms.

We will discuss the climate finance models that global political institutions offer to address economic climate injustice. And the implications of these financing models for the economies of the Global South.

Through a collective debate, we will discuss: what are the radical solutions for change? What are the roles and responsibilities of climate activism rooted in a social justice economy? In this historical context, where the Global North has a huge historical ecological debt to the Global South, the Global South is struggling with the severe impacts of the climate crisis, and the existence of this debt is denied by global economic institutions.

The panel participants will be activist from Latin America, an activist from the Debt for Climate movement, Niko Humalisto, the Finnish Missionary Society's advocacy expert, and with a video statement an activist in the Baaroo village area of north-west Pakistan. There will be plenty of time for questions and dialogue!

The panel is part of the Reparations for Baaroo campaign organized by Debt for Climate Finland. The campaign is raising funds for a drilling system for water in the village of Baaroo in the tribal region of North-West Pakistan. It also aims to make social media content of the ecological debt of the Global North and the consequences of this debt in the North West Pakistan region.

Decolonizing Knowledge in Design Education

26.10.2023 at 17:30 – 19:00 in Room F101 at the Väre Lobby of Aalto University (Otaniementie 14).

This panel opens a discussion about the issue of decolonizing Design education and practices within the Finnish context, with insights from active educators and professionals from the Global South. The central concern revolves around the possibility of integrating decolonial practices into the teaching and designing in Finland. This concern is rooted in the experiences of Latinx students at Aalto University's ARTS school, who have observed a marked absence of Non-Western perspectives, notably in areas such as sustainability. The panel will explore the challenges, possibilities, and implications of incorporating decolonial approaches into Finnish Design education.

This is a live panel of the podcast Diseño y diáspora, a podcast on social design hosted by Dr. Mariana Salgado. The panelists are: Dr. Andrea Botero (Aalto University), Dr. Florencia Quesada (Helsinki University), and Jimena Califa (UN Global Pulse).

La Gran Fiesta: Cold doesn’t exist, cold is only the lack of perreo.

🔊28.10.2023 at 21:00 - 03.00 🔊
@Muchachos (Iso Roobertinkatu 10)

An open invitation to all Latinxs and allies, to join this sweaty, perreo-filled, and deculonizing experience. We kick things off with reggaetón, inviting us to move, drop to the ground and reach the clouds. As we delve deeper into the early hours, the rhythms and dembow transforms into electronic beats, where metamorphosis is unveiled.

The grand celebration comes to life in collaboration with the Latinx Decolonization Collective S.U.R., and the Latin American Cinema Festival, Cinemaissí. This evening in Helsinki is a tribute to Latinx bodies, brace yourself for an event where booty-shaking is the key to the revolution. Welcome!

9-11 Juls Sanchez
11-12:30 DJ BURANA
12:30-1:30 DJ Carlos Papi
1:30- 3:00 DJ Wekesa

Juls Sanchez (Aka -Rola Salsera)
for the need to share what listening to Latin Rhythms generates, -Especially Salsa- of finding in their lyrics the appropriate words to express a feeling that reflects the experiences, identities and cultural fusions of the migrants, through the lyrics and rhythms with passionate dance steps, that process the themes of nostalgia, love, identity and adaptation, creating a unique fusion that resonates with the experience of the life abroad.

DJ Burana, playing neoperrex, and trying to create a safer-antipatriarchal dance floor with music created mostly by femme artists.

DJ Carlos Papi is a chaotic multidimensional entity playing some forbidden dembow, cumbia, guracha, and rhythms of the true old gods. Proper sounds If the sugar wine and other night delicacies didn't hit properly yet.

DJ Wekesa is a Helsinki based dj and a dancer, who plays amapiano, afrobeats, dancehall, hip hop, rnb and various remixes. Wekesa is a socially skillful dj, who can read the dancefloor while serving surprises and their own strong artistic view. This time they will focus on bashment, amapiano and remixes.

Safer space guidelines, taken from Myös’ collection of resources:

Respect dissenting opinions, experiences and perspectives. Respect everyone's identity. Do not assume anyone's gender, sexual orientation, financial situation, background or state of health. Respect everyone's physical and emotional boundaries. Consider your words. Take responsibility for your behaviour and actions. Don’t make physical or verbal threats. Be aware of your prejudice, your privileges, and the space you take. Take care of fellow human beings.

By acting against the rules of the space, you are excluding yourself from the event.

Collaborators

Collectives

Cinemaissí: Diego Ginartes, Lois Armas
Debt for Climate Finland: Upu Laukkanen, Taru, Pargol, Amjad
Diseño y Diáspora: Mariana Salgado
Edible Landscapes: Alejandra Alarcón
Kollektiivi: Adelaida Ávila, Milja Komulainen, Hau Lok Lo.
Muchachos
You Tell Me Collective: Seela Pentikäinen and Siiri Hänninen

Research Authors

Alejandra Alarcón
Amy Gelera
Andrea Botero
Brenda Vertiz
Carolina Isasi
Claudia Garruño
Eduardo Hernández
Eva Gallegos
Florencia Pochinki
Leonardo Hidalgo
Landys Roimola
Maria Ferreira Litowtschenko
Maritere Vargas
Nandara Mendes
Nathaly Pinto