Concept, approach and results of an ongoing research project. Experimental and artistic practices are used to interfere with the local surrounding in order to gain knowledge, from which performative actions derive.
SOCIAL DESIGN THINKING
Social Design Thinking is an ongoing research project in search of a design practise that fulfills the claims of 1960s countercultures ideas, which strongly influenced the Social Design Movement that was propagated by designers like Victor Papanek in this time. It’s the same ideas that were later picked up by the management schools and the modern Design Thinking movement that originated from them, using a similar activist rhetoric and promising individual creative freedom, as well as social responsibility, which in reality it is not able to fulfill.
Social Design Thinking sees the structures of capitalist consumerism as part of the problem, if not its underlying cause and therefore excludes them from being part of the solution. It promotes a ‚Think Global, Act Local‘ approach and is based on Joseph Beuys' conception of creativity, according to which every human has the ability to create and change their environment, according to their own imagination. This to me forms the basis of all democratic thoughts and actions.
As part of my Bachelors Degree I developed a theoretical basis which serves as the foundation for my practise of social intervention – Social Design Thinking
