Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Sprach- und literaturwissenschaftliche Fakultät - Nordeuropa-Institut

Ideas and ideals of ‘progress’ are embedded in ways of making and knowing the world, for example through technological development, rationality and economic growth. As design researchers, we will start this public lecture by sharing anchor points in history of where and how ‘progress’ was established to create common ground. We will also deliberate on how design has participated in making situations and lives better from certain – human-centered – perspectives, whilst also acknowledging that attention is increasingly directed towards what has been neglected and sacrificed in this progressivist project. The public lecture then moves into a seanse-workshop where we all explore, on location, how ideas and practices of ‘progress' take on a ghostly presence in design, haunting us as we try to find ways of doing and thinking design otherwise. The session strives towards finding ways of being better haunted to make liveable worlds through creative practice.