Office of Bureaucritic Imagination: State of Exception

The "Office for Bureaucritic Imagination - State of Exception" is a participatory speculative performance1 to design new laws and rethink alternative forms of political engagement. Together with designers, city municipality, politicians, local associations and citizens, the office provides opportunities for productive deliberations - where public and private interests are bridged and opinions are exchanged. Thus forming the basis for new futures to be imagined and perhaps enforced

Riders on the storm : workplace solidarity among gig economy couriers in Italy and the UK

In light of the individualisation, dispersal and pervasive monitoring that characterise work in the ‘gig economy’, the development of solidarity among gig workers could be expected to be unlikely. However, numerous recent episodes of gig workers’ mobilisation require reconsideration of these assumptions. This article contributes to the debate about potentials and obstacles for solidarity in the changing world of work by showing the processes through which workplace solidarity among gig workers developed in two cases of mobilisation of food delivery platform couriers in the UK and Italy. Through the framework of labour process theory, the article identifies the sources of antagonism in the app-mediated model of work organisation and the factors that facilitated and hindered the consolidation of active solidarity and the emergence of collective action among gig workers. The article emphasises the centrality of workers’ agential practices in overcoming constraints to solidarity and collective action, and the diversity of forms through which solidarity can be expressed in hostile work contexts

Designing in Dark Times. An Arendtian Lexicon.

The architectural historian and critic Kenneth Frampton 'never recovered' from the force of Hannah Arendt's teaching at The New School in New York. The philosopher Richard J. Bernstein considers her the most perceptive political theorist and observer of 'dark times' (a concept which, drawing from Brecht, she made her own). Building on the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt, and on the increasing turn in design towards the expanded field of the social, this unique book uses insights and quotations drawn from Arendt's major writings (The Human Condition; The Origins of Totalitarianism, Men in Dark Times) to assemble a new kind of lexicon for politics, designing and acting today. Taking 56 terms – from Action, Beginnings and Creativity through Mortality, Natality, and Play to Superfluity, Technology and Violence – and inviting designers and scholars of design world-wide to contribute, Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon, offers up an extraordinary range of short essays that use moments and quotations from Arendt's thought as the starting points for reflection on how these terms can be conceived for contemporary design and political praxis. Neither simply dictionary nor glossary, the lexicon brings together designing and political philosophy to begin to create a new language for acting and designing against dark times

The Cyberiad - telling stories of power relationship in future words

In this workshop, we mean to explore how ideas of power might be explored through different ideas of “Future”. This workshop asks its participants to open up a more multivalent temporality, looking at multiple possible futures and the ideas of societies (and therefore, also the power-relationship) they might convey. It aims to nurture questioning how this might help to understand better how we, as designers, can help to envision new kind of actions to be undertaken in the present public realm, and which alternative meanings - such as those of citizenship, politics and power - can be conveyed by our design actions

Riders on the Storm: Workplace Solidarity among Gig Economy Couriers in Italy and the UK

In light of the individualisation, dispersal and pervasive monitoring that characterise work in the ‘gig economy’, the development of solidarity among gig workers could be expected to be unlikely. However, numerous recent episodes of gig workers’ mobilisation require reconsideration of these assumptions. This article contributes to the debate about potentials and obstacles for solidarity in the changing world of work by showing the processes through which workplace solidarity among gig workers developed in two cases of mobilisation of food delivery platform couriers in the UK and Italy. Through the framework of labour process theory, the article identifies the sources of antagonism in the app-mediated model of work organisation and the factors that facilitated and hindered the consolidation of active solidarity and the emergence of collective action among gig workers. The article emphasises the centrality of workers’ agential practices in overcoming constraints to solidarity and collective action, and the diversity of forms through which solidarity can be expressed in hostile work contexts

Sustainable qualities: Powerful drivers of social change

Looking attentively at the complexity of contemporary society, we can detect a variety of creative communities involved in sustainable social innovation. Behind each of these initiatives stands a group of people who have been able to imagine, develop and manage something new, beyond the standard ways of thinking and doing. They have succeeded in challenging the apparent hegemony of mainstream ideas about how problems need to be solved by providing valuable alternatives. A primary common feature of such creative communities is that most of them have sprung from collaboratively confronting the problems of everyday life. Facing up to these, they have conceived new models of thought and action where everybody wins – individuals, society and the environment. A second common feature is that they produce and are, in turn, driven by new notions of qualities: new qualities of their physical and social environments. We can refer to these as sustainable qualities: qualities that require more sustainable behaviours in order to enjoy their benefits

Re-framing the Politics of Design

Re-Framing the Politics of Design is a research, exhibition and book project exploring the role of designers in collaboratively giving shape to future changes addressing complex challenges such as climate change, mobility and migration. By looking at concrete, situated case studies, this book explores the current need for designers to re-frame their political agency, engaging with the deep relationality connecting us all, humans (and not only those who already have a voice in society and are represented) but also more-than-human actors

With or Without U(nions)? Understanding the Diversity of Gig Workers’ Organizing Practices in Italy and the UK

Since 2016, mobilizations of gig workers across European countries have become increasingly common within location-based services, such as food delivery. Despite remarkable similarities in workers’ mobilization dynamics, their organizational forms have varied considerably, ranging from self-organization, to work councils, to unionization through rank-and-file or longstanding unions. To start making sense of this diversity in organizing practices, we compare two cases of mobilization in the food delivery sector: in Italy, where workers have initially opted for self-organization, and in the UK, where they have organized through rank-and-file unions. Drawing on interview and observational data gathered between 2016 and 2018, we find that the diversity of organizational forms across the two cases derives from the interaction between agential and contextual factors, namely: the capabilities of rank-and-file unions and the political tradition of militant organizing of the environment within which gig workers are embedded. These findings contribute to the emerging debate on labour relations in the gig economy by showing the central role that factors external to the labour process and to the institutional context play in shaping the structuring of labour antagonism in a still lowly institutionalized sector characterized by transnationally homogenous challenges.Introduction Understanding variation in precarious workers' organizing practices: Insights from the extant literature Understanding the varity of organizing practices in the gig economy Case selection, methodology and data Introducing the cases: Riders' mobilizations in the UK and Italy Exploring differences in organizing forms Discussion and conclusions Acknowledgements Reference

2030 International RHIZomatic Assembly (IRHIZA)

In an interactive design fiction performance we ex- plore the notion of non-human intelligences and their active agency in political discourse. Through speculati- ve means a future context serves as both backdrop and design space for debates between humans and plants, exploring how the scientifically envisioned increased means of communication between the two could sha- pe new solutions and realities. The performance hence deals with an expanded notion of “participation” and debate beyond mere human actors. In a multidiscipli- nary setting, participants stemming from both design and other fields of research (e.g. (ethno)botany, (neuro) biology, anthropology, etc.) will engage in a role-play and joint speculative storytelling effort aimed at explo- ring new questions regarding the challenges and oppor- tunities shaped by such a future world