“Silence Of Academy”: Expressing Harassment Through Collective Design Process

The aim of this research is to investigate how design can be practised to facilitate self-expression of women, suffering from sexual harassment in universities. The underlying statement, of using design to counteract harassment, is to indicate that design activity can be utilised not only for industrial interests, but also in the realm of socio-political issues such as gender activism and women's struggles. With this aim, in a two-year practice-based design research entitled Silence of Academy, a series of workshops was initiated and facilitated by the design researcher-as the first author of this article-in collaboration with an undergraduate women's association. During the workshops, the undergraduate woman participants, who were directly or indirectly exposed to sexual harassment in universities, sought for an alternative medium to tackle, divulge and speak out the silenced experiences of sexual harassment. By doing so, participants explored the possible ways to create space for their self-representations, not as subordinated or surrendered subjects, but as active agents. They created collective narratives based on their own shared experiences, later captured and amplified by the researcher's design interventions for further actions. At the end of the process, the articulation of harassment was presented as a physical artefact, in the form of a dictionary, also used as a public intervention to encounter the academic milieu beyond the women's circle. In this article, after the issue of sexual harassment and the engagement of women's voices in design is contextualised, the process of design research will be explained through the methodology which is based on participation, storytelling and self-documentation. Moreover, the analysis will focus on how socially-politically engaged design activity can be used to enhance the medium for women's dialogues, and to empower women in resistance by facilitating their self-representations

Aesthetics in Distress: Gender-Based Violence and Visual Culture. Introductory Note

Versão portuguesa: Canlı, E., & Mandolini, N. (2022). Estética em angústia: A violência de género e a cultura visual. Nota introdutória. Vista, (10), e022009. https://doi.org/10.21814/vista.4071Gender-based violence (GBV), a social issue that involves acts of physical, sexual, and/or psychological abuse exercised towards a subject based on her/his/their gender, remains one of the most long-standing and challenging problems of our times. From intimate partner violence to street harassment, from labour exploitation and precarity to workplace mobbing, from disenfranchisement to criminalisation, GBV is a “continuum” (Kelly 1987) that refers not only to embodied violence but also to political, legal and economic violence perpetrated against women, girls and those whose gender does not comply with the binary categories of heteropatriarchal norms, which might include men and boys. Such violence, mostly deriving from hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1987), oftentimes preys and afflicts bodies who are further marginalised by other identity attributes such as sexuality, race, ethnicity, religion, age, ability and so on (Crenshaw 1990; Creek and Dunn 2011). This multilayered issue, therefore, needs to be understood beyond the simplistic dualities of female/male and perpetrator/victim, and should be taken into consideration from an intersectional viewpoint, examining socio-political power structures, systemic inequalities and norms in which GBV is perpetuated. On the one hand, the last decades have witnessed an increasing visibility and public awareness of gender-based violence, thanks to feminist, queer and trans* activism, anti-violence efforts at grassroots level, social media mobilisations, enactments of transformative justice, and the momentous shift incited by the #MeToo (Romito 2007; Boyle 2019). On the other hand, the changing façade and breadth of violence, accompanied by the intractable depth of digital communications, escalating financial precarity, worldwide political turmoils and environmental crises, ongoing colonial practices of land grab, arm conflicts and the rampant displacements thereof, as well as by the recent Covid-19 pandemic, have exposed vulnerable groups to gender-based violence in sites that are not only homes, streets and workplaces, but also the cyberspace, camps, detention centres, industrial complexes, prisons, borders, and so on. Taking into account the severity and complexity of such a deeply-rooted phenomenon which needs to be addressed, examined and counteracted further, with this special issue, we aim at providing a platform for academic, artistic and activist research that works at the intersection of Gender Based Violence Studies and Visual Culture. The visual modality has always been crucial to the perpetuation of and resistance to the patriarchal symbolic order from which sexist violence originates. Visual arts and media such as film, painting, plastic arts, comics, advertisement and design have notoriously been recognised as sites for the reproduction of GBV through the biased representation of binary gender categories, the infamous male gaze (Mulvey 1989; Oliver 2017), the objectification of feminine/gender non-conforming bodies, and the fetishization of violence. Simultaneously, the visual has, over the last half century, reached the status of privileged battlefield for cultural interventions carried out by feminist, LGBTQI+, intersectional and decolonial artists and media activists interested in confronting, and possibly subverting, the aforementioned sexist regime of representation (Slivinska 2021; Rovetto and Camusso 2020).A violência de género, questão social que envolve atos de abuso físico, sexual e/ou psicológico exercido sobre um sujeito com base no género (Boyle, 2019a, pp. 23–25), continua a ser um dos problemas mais antigos e desafiantes do nosso tempo. Da violência doméstica ao assédio nas ruas, da exploração laboral e precariedade ao abuso no local de trabalho, da privação do direito de voto à criminalização, a violência de género é um "continuum" (Kelly, 1987). Refere-se não só à violência física, mas também à violência política, legal e económica contra mulheres, jovens mulheres e aqueles cujo género não obedece às categorias binárias das normas heteropatriarcais, que podem estender-se a homens e rapazes. Tal violência, derivada principalmente da masculinidade hegemónica e heteropatriarquia (Connell, 1995; Connell & Masserschmidt, 2005), muitas vezes persegue e aflige corpos que são ainda mais marginalizados por outros atributos de identidade tais como sexualidade, raça, etnia, religião, idade, deficiências, entre outros (Creek & Dunn, 2011; Crenshaw, 1990). Esta questão multifacetada precisa, portanto, de ser compreendida para além das dualidades simplistas de mulher/homem e pessoa ofensora/vítima e deve ser tomada em consideração de um ponto de vista interseccional, examinando estruturas de poder sociopolíticas, desigualdades sistémicas e normas em que a violência de género é perpetuada. Além disso, dadas as dimensões proeminentes (hiper)visuais, virtuais e discursivas da nossa cultura contemporânea (Agger, 2004; Hall, 1997; Rose, 2014), é hoje imperativo estudarmos o fenómeno da violência de género tendo em plena consideração as suas representações e imaginários relacionados

A Manifesto for Decolonising Design

Much of the academic and professional discourse within the design disciplines over the last century has been bereft of a critical reflection on the politics of design practice, and on the politics of the artifacts, systems and practices that designerly activity produces. Our premise is that— notwithstanding important and valued exceptions—design theory, practice, and pedagogy as a whole are not geared towards delivering the kinds of knowledge and understanding that are adequate to addressing longstanding systemic issues of power. These issues are products of modernity and its ideologies, regimes, and institutions reiterating, producing and exerting continued colonial power upon the lives of oppressed, marginalised, and subaltern peoples in both the ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ world. This planet, shared and coinhabited by a plurality of peoples, each inhabiting different worlds, each orienting themselves within and towards their environments in different ways, and with different civilisational histories, is being undermined by a globalised system of power that threatens to flatten and eradicate ontological and epistemological difference, rewriting histories and advance visions of a future for a privileged few at the expense of their human and nonhuman others

Rethinking Carceral Domesticity. Electronic Monitoring, Punishment and Home as Prison

This article explores the evolving dynamics of carceral domesticity in the context of Electronic Monitoring (EM) as a contemporary techno-penal practice. While the prison, as the main outlet for punishment, keeps blurring the boundaries between the private and public by challenging traditional conceptions of domesticity, recent prison reforms driven by mass incarceration and overcrowding, have led to the proliferation of EM-based house arrests as alternatives to imprisonment. However, technologies and punitive implications of EM on people and their households remain underexamined. Therefore, drawing on emerging theories, testimonies and government reports through a Post-Domestic lens, this article argues that EM devices, such as wrist bracelets and ankle shackles, complicate notions of privacy, autonomy, dignity, economy and safety within domestic spaces. It further discusses how such techno-carceral practices perpetuate and reinforce existing inequalities, particularly affecting gendered, sexualized, and racialized bodies disproportionately and consolidating the status quo of the criminal justice system. In doing so, the article engages with prison abolitionist theories to speculate on alternative approaches to transforming spaces and justice, by shedding light on the intricate power dynamics inherent in carceral domesticity and EM-based confinement, aiming to contribute to the discourse surrounding the reconfiguration of domestic spaces within the context of harm

Sorry to be heavy but heavy is the cost: Colonialism/Coloniality and its contemporary manifestations (Part 1); Intersectionality and Decoloniality: Design, Politics and Power (Part 2)

Part 1: In this conversation we will address the political complexities of design as both a product and a producer of colonialism and coloniality. Yet, to understand these complexities beyond the act of designing, we will discuss coloniality through issues such as settler colonialism, modernity and capi - talism, police states, identity repro - duction, the problem of diversity, and humanitarian imperialism. Seeking inspiration from anti- and decolonial struggles, whether historical or contemporary, this conversation aims to shed light on the greater matrix of power in which design resides and operates. Part 2: In this session we will expand discussions emerging out of the session 2P, this time through the lenses of design and materiality. Inquiring and propelling a more informed discussion on the agency of design and design research within coloniality through various examples, we will sketch out possible political and radical decolonial redirections for design research and practice

Design Activism: A Conversation by The Decolonising Design Group

The drive to gleefully whitewash complex issues with absurdly simple (but graphically stunning!) ‘solutions’ is permanently received by design with open arms. It focuses on the individual, in a carefully packaged universal formula that can be marketed and thrive on a superficial layer of promise and deception