Future Talks¶
Andreu Desjardines¶
This talk was interesting regarding how one is part of the study itself. The most interesting thing for me was the subsequent conversation we had, mainly a question from Jime, where she asked about how academic a 1PP exercise was. This, coupled with Marielle’s comment about the privilege of doing such an activity, triggered a critical view of the methodology.
Sometimes it is hard for me to understand and make peace with what 1PP proposes, as I come from a scientific and mathematical background, these new ways of understanding hypotheses, theories and experiments, escape my comprehension. I am grateful for the growth that MDEF has given me in that sense, since thanks to this “methodology” I have been able to understand conclusions that emerge due to the experience itself, and not to calculations or in-depth social studies that can take years to generate a conclusion. This opens a huge door to be able to create new knowledge from personal perspectives, without trying to question academic or technical validity.
Laura Forlano¶
Laura’s work reminded me of the statement of when innovation is valuable. Innovation is valuable (or is really innovation) when your hypothesis is not fulfilled, that is, when something happens that you did not expect. Many times when designing we lose perspective, and there is a barrier that we often can’t jump, purely because we haven’t experienced it first hand.
When I was talking about disabilities and other communities, I remembered how I personally feel about feminism. Even though I “commune” with feminism, I have a hard time calling myself a feminist, and I have a hard time seeing men as feminists, because we can never reach that empathy that comes from experiencing discrimination first hand. I am an ally, pro-feminist, but I would never be able to be part of a discussion or give an opinion, as I feel it is not my place as a man.
Federico Van Amstel¶
Before the master I had never heard about colonization in design environments. This talk and the master itself have been a constant learning experience, particularly in questioning and revaluing ancestral and indigenous knowledge. In Chile there is a great stigmatization and negative perception of indigenous peoples, generally associated with terrorism or responsible for the slow progress of the country. However, in reality what was happening was that we wanted to come with forestry, mining, industrial farms, and destroy their sacred territories. History belongs to those who write it, and as far as I have realized, it has never been written by the Chilean indigenous peoples.
As a reflection I share Galeano’s poem, “Los nadie”.
The Nobodies
Fleas dream of buying themselves a dog, and nobodies dream of escaping poverty: that one magical day good luck will suddenly rain down on them–will rain down in buckets. But good luck doesn’t rain down yesterday, today, tomorrow, or ever. Good luck doesn’t even fall in a fine drizzle, no matter how hard the nobodies summon it, even if their left hand is tickling, or if they begin the new day with their right foot, or start the new year with a change of brooms. The nobodies: nobody’s children, owners of nothing. The nobodies: the no ones, the nobodied, running like rabbits, dying through life, screwed every which way.
Who are not, but could be
Who don’t speak languages, but dialects
Who don’t have religions, but superstitions
Who don’t create art, but handicrafts
Who don’t have culture, but folklore
Who are not human beings, but human resources
Who do not have faces, but arms
Who do not have names, but numbers
Who do not appear in the history of the world, but in the police blotter of the local paper
The nobodies, who are not worth the bullet that kills them.
Julia Ballesteros y Milena Rosés¶
Julia and Milena’s work is inspiring because they propose how to approach design with new perspectives, much closer to the communities, who are the real protagonists of the devices or innovations that we can create.
The perspective of alternative paths made me think about how I have chosen alternative paths. Mainly because I studied engineering and I have worked in the world of communications and now I am in a master’s degree in design. Undoubtedly these types of interactions are extremely enriching, and these perspectives that we consider alternative, are actually a tremendous contribution to close many of our blind spots. Many times we design from points of view that we had before, and that is not knowledge, but in reality are prejudices, that if we do not face them with more culture and interaction, they are consolidated. Julia and Milena represent a vision of how we can, through the community, not be performative and advance in a design that does not seek to pass to carry the previous collective knowledge.