qVita: The first two years (2019-20)
Host Institutions: Waterloo, MRU, UIUC, York Facilities: Games Institute, Waterloo; Department of Communication Arts, Waterloo Research Partners Universities: National University of Colombia (UNAL) Waterloo Region: Green Light Arts, Community Justice Initiatives, Elizabeth Fry Society, Waterloo Region Crime Prevention Council, InterArts Matrix International: Tumaco Diocese, Agencia de Modelos “La perla del Pacífico”; Asociación de Reciclaje FENIX; AMSMUD; Institution Educativa Iberia; Fundación TUMAC; the community of the neighborhood Buchelli; DASAN; “Mar es Vida” (Colombia) Research Groups Feminist Think Tank (FTT) Collaborative Digital Heritage Studio (CoDHerS) The Fountain Collective Active, Funded Research Projects Aesthetic Resistance (Feminist Do Media) Design for Peace LetUsSpeak Theatre for Relationality
CFP: Design Within Complexity
Please consider sharing with your communities, and/or submitting a proposal to our edited volume, tentatively titled Design Within Complexity. The CFP can be found on the qlab website (http://www.qcollaborative.com) and below: When the majority of designers teach or use design process models, they tend to emphasize the fact that the models are iterative, and that it will be natural to expect to go through the cycle more than once. It is also common practice to mention that the design cycle does not have a fixed starting point, but can instead begin at any stage of the model. In this book,
q11
We recognize and seek to amplify the work of the many intersectional feminist scholars and activists who have preceded us and who are our peers, especially those who are marginalized. Here you will find a curated collection of work that we find particularly inspiring, but that might not be part of any specific qlab initiative.
Design for Peace
Colombia, a country on the North-Western corner of South America, has been facing certain critical challenges—after a 50-year civil war, many Colombians are left suffering the effects of living in a post-conflict zone and the consequences of the displacement of over 3 million persons, and the death of 220,000, with 4 out of the 5 deaths non-combatant civilians. Various stakeholders, including members of the immobilized FARC, local farmers and ranchers, and indigenous groups, as well as participants from elsewhere in the country, are hoping to use design methods to imagine a better future for themselves, their communities, and their country.
CFP Digital Feminist Activisms: The Performances and Practices of Online Public Assemblies
This book seeks to gather provocations, analyses, creative explorations, and/or cases studies of digital feminist practices from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including, but not limited to, media studies, communication studies, critical and cultural studies, gender and sexuality studies, performance studies, digital humanities, feminist HCI, and feminist STS.
Please submit a 250-350 word abstract, a brief author bio, and any questions to Brianna I. Wiens (bwiens@yorku.ca) by May 30th, 2019. Accepted submissions should be 6000-7000 words and will be due to the editors by November 1, 2019.
@aesthetic.resistance
Instagram account documenting and amplifying marginalized voices in feminist, trans, queer, bipoc media. Instagram account that provides a data base of feminist media practices both historical and contemporary. Centers on work in the account that advances the idea of ‘the personal is the political’ in some form. The account is intended for feminist publics interesting in learning about feminist media tactics of resistance that both came before the current moment of fourth-wave digital feminist activism as well as learning about current projects that continue this work. The account is dedicated to amplifying marginalized voices from LGBTQ+ and bipoc communities in
The Personal is Aesthetic: The Formal Politics of Feminist Film and Media
Research grant exploring how the ‘personal is political’ is enacted as a platform for feminist resistance in film and media across two distinct times periods—the 1960s-1980s and 2010 to present. Which qlab research thread(s)? Feminist Placemaking Remediating Experience Design for Social Justice 100-250 word summary “The Personal is Aesthetic” compares the different ways that the personal is political is used as a formal strategy in feminist media in North America between two distinct eras: 1960-1980 and 2000-2018. The project asserts that there is important link between these two historical moments on both political and aesthetic fronts. As a tactic of
qConvenor, also Canada’s Design Educator of the Year
A national association representing Canada’s graphic designers has given Mount Royal University information design professor and one of our qConvenors, Milena Radzikowska, its inaugural teaching award.
Learning from W3 Represents (Feb 20, 2019)
Many thanks to the organizers, presenters, and participants of W3 Represents, an inspiring day of research presented by women and non-binary members of the UWaterloo community. We’re especially grateful for the generous feedback we received from participants in our panel presentation, “Learning to Practice: Intersectional Feminist Design Research in the qcollaborative”. Over the coming weeks, qlab will be following up on this list of excellent suggestions: Commit to amplifying the voices of other intersectional feminist scholars and activists, especially those who are marginalized. State in public and scholarly communications that the lab’s principles and commitments are in process and are
Theatre for Relationality
“Theatre for Relationality” is developing a new approach to audience development that inspires positive social change through collaboration with community partners. “Theatre for Relationality” is a partnership with Green Light Arts (GLA), a not-for-profit theatre company in Waterloo Region. GLA programs a series of audience engagement events called FUEL, whose core mission is to collaborate with community partners to inspire positive social change. In this project, we are extending the FUEL series by developing and evaluating four new audience engagement events for GLA’s May 2019 production of Guarded Girls, a play by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman about the cycles of harm experienced
Shamed
Shame is something that is felt so deeply and is so troublesome and is so disruptive to a person’s life that we wanted to show this in a way that in itself is disruptive. Hence our choice of an equally disruptive material: tampons.
Inaugural Feminist Reading Group—Fall 2017
Sara Ahmed: “Introduction: Bringing Feminist Theory Home” in Living a Feminist Life What are new things that Ahmed is contributing? How does Ahmed’s prose affect the reception of her theory? What is the role of intersectionality in restorative justice? What are the practical “action items” we can take from these readings? What is the relationship between subjectivity and embodiment? When are theoretical positions unuseful? What is the utility of the model? Maybe: Link between pragmatism and theory? Feminist pragmatism? Llewelyn, Kristina R. & Jennifer J. Llewellyn: “A Restorative Approach to Learning: Relational Theory as Feminist Pedagogy in Universities” How do
Phenomenology Reading group—Summer 2017
We’re meeting four times in July on JRS’s porch to ponder phenomenology as a possible framework for understanding audience engagement. This is Zac Gungl critiquing classical phenomenology’s rejection of materiality, situatedness, and interiority; Priscilla Ferronato doubting whether phenomenology can ever be useful for analysis or prediction; and Andy Houston proposing that site-specific engagements may be primarily haptic. In other highlights, Shana MacDonald’s theory of intersubjective performativity in cinema studies made JRS concede that performative modes other than theatre may be primarily conceptual in their ontologies. Feminist phenomenology questioning: is phenomenology concerned with the self (psyche?) and the world (transcendental real)?
Open Design
Like other fields influenced by the ‘open movement,’ such as open source software, open science, and open technology, open design is closely connected to the rise of computers and internet (De Mul, 2011). The introduction of digital technologies of the past decades has enabled new forms of organization and new forms of distribution of resources, or it has modified or rendered obsolete old forms (Goetz, 2003).