Join DESIS Lab at The New School for a day-long exploration of the ways practitioners are forging alliances and taking action to address social, political, environmental, and economic issues and redress conditions broadly.

This forward-looking anniversary celebration will foster conversations aimed at defining the lab’s future research agenda. Our vision for the lab is to more fully embrace and develop creative transdisciplinary practices that draw on design, artistic research, performativity, cinema, and the humanities and social sciences.

The event is designed to open a provocative discussion among creative practitioners from a variety of fields on their understanding of these approaches and how they employ them in their work. As attendees reflect on recent projects, they delve into the challenges posed by engaging with diverse publics and invite an exploration of creative responses as essential means to navigating meaningful, enduring, and equitable relationships. The gathering will draw on its ten years of experience convening dialogue on various modes of engagement—particularly those based in solidarity and care.

Since Parsons’ DESIS Lab began its work a decade ago, the role of design has evolved apace with the dramatic shifts in our understanding of the world and the varied experiences of individuals negotiating it. From Black Lives Matter to the Me Too movement to Standing Rock to the global rise of neo-fascism—along with ongoing crises related to war, climate change, migration, and the economy—our lives have been altered in profound and unequal ways.

And design now plays a problematic role by contributing to the overwhelming complex problems we now face while also working to ameliorate those problems. This event traverses the past decade to consider the ways design intervenes in contemporary contexts and crises by asking, What is design’s capacity to propose other possibilities and catalyze actions to realize alternative worlds? What can be learned through transdisciplinary collaborations responding to critical issues over the demands of clients, audiences, and disciplinary norms and canons?

We look forward to celebrating with our partners, colleagues, students, and the broader community to reflect on our past projects and, above all, a conversation about the future.

This event is free and open to the public