Abstract
This paper charts the complex motivations, logistics and desires of doing collaborative, performance-centered experimentation within a design education context—in particular during public project reviews. I consider living tensions that emphasize active participation, the care work of crossing disciplinary borders and student-teacher relations, and the aspirational spatial-pedagogical arrangements of design/arts studio contexts. My research employs as a case study the sophomore-level product design course entitled “Animating Bodies” (2020-24, University of Utah)—where students and I reconceive reviews as all-class “demonstrations of knowledge,” inviting community members into our working environment, and recasting the students’ host institution as an active rehearsal site. In the will to camaraderie over competition, multiple vectors of hospitality converge: these reviews welcome a range of interlocutors, peers and professionals from diverse backgrounds as a kind of moveable feast. In counterpoint to formal critique structures, one may picture a fleet of bodies blithely falling in and out of formation, with all participants engaging (and oftentimes wearing, inhabiting, or “playing”) in-situ prototypes. Sites of incubation and production are duly sites of reception and generosity, with students becoming ambassadors, tour-guides, and co-creators of their presentation space. Building on my research on the performative gestures of the contemporary university campus, these pedagogical techniques call into question the typical, often bureaucratic deployment of existing academic architectures. I also reflect on the nested (and relative) hospitalities of departmental cultures and student cohorts, balancing (or troubling) them against the omnipresent pressures higher education places on forms of research and knowledge production.
Presenters
Steven ChodoriwskyAssistant Professor, Division of Multi-Disciplinary Design, University of Utah, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Performance, Pedagogy, Design, Studio, Site-specificity, Spatial Practice, Architecture, Critique, Participation
