Warming up to the the Pluriverse #3: On imagining beginnings

In this third warming up talk we speak to Mariana Pestana, curator of the fifth Istanbul Biennale entitled “Empathy Revisited: Designs for more than one” about what kind of ‘radical design imagination’ (Escobar 2018) the world needs, today.

In a nutshell, Mariana’s critical social practice investigates “the role that fiction can play in re-imagining futures for an age marked by technological progress and an ecological crisis.” Initially trained as an architect, Mariana lives and works between Porto and London where she has taught at Royal College of Art and Central St Martins. She is one of the co-founders of The Decorators, a collective that produces collaborative public interventions and cultural programs, such as Expedition Empathy (Azores, 2019). The publications she (co)edited over the past years speak volumes: “ The Future Starts Here ” Victoria and Albert Museum(2018); “Eco Visionaries: Towards an Interspecies Future” Matadero Madrid (2019).

References

• New Civic Rituals
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/programme…ivic-rituals
• Sundial of the Blind by Eli Bensusan
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/project/1…of-the-blind
• Microbial Fruits of Istanbul by Orkan Telhan and elii
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/project/1…-of-istanbul
• LANZONI Susan. Empathy: A History, Yale Books, 2018
  yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300222685/empathy
• Vernon Lee, one of the first to write about empathy
  www.jstor.org/stable/25067229?se…_info_tab_contents
• Critical Cooking Show
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/programme…ooking-shows
• Library of Land and Sea
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/programme…land-and-sea
• Partnerships by FRAUD
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/project/4…partnerships
• Earthable by Aslihan Demirtas
• Agros Istanbul by Aslihan Demirtas
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/project/4…ros-istanbul
• Sumitra Upham, curator of Programmes
  tasarimbienali.iksv.org/en/5th-istanb…ratorial-team
• Future Anecdotes
  www.futureanecdotesistanbul.com/Future_An…/fai.html
• Mattering of a productive mythology by Alsi Uludağ
  This case study, on which Wong & Krier zoom in during the talk, maps the tools, materials and spatial conditions that transformed the mythology of the Büyük Menderes Graben, with support from the women of Kızılcaköy, the olive and fig growers and their lawyer.
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/project/4…ve-mythology
• APUJARAI Arjun. The Future a Cultural Fact. Essays on the Global Condition, Verso Books, 2013
  www.versobooks.com/books/1171-the-…s-cultural-fact
• ILLICH Ivan. Tools for Conviviality, Fontana/Collins, 1973/1975
  monoskop.org/images/3/3e/Illich…viviality_1975.pdf
• Material Histories: Sands, Soils, Recipes and Other Archives by Counterspace
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/project/4…her-archives
• Cooking With Stories by depatriarchise design and Mayar El-Bakry
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/critical-…with-stories
• The case of meat by Valeria Meiller & Agustin Schang
  empathyrevisited.iksv.org/en/critical-…case-of-meat

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