What creature do you dream of? - designart.unibz.it

Gstōlt

Filippo Maria Ciriani

Lily Claud DouglasPennant

Cedar Anne Schimke

Jonas Vogt

Student

Filippo Maria Ciriani Lily Claud DouglasPennant Cedar Anne Schimke Jonas Vogt

Academic staff

Jacopo Ammendola Johanna Dehio

Course

Project 2 - String Figures

Program

MA Eco-Social Design

Semester

2023/24 SS

What creature do you dream of?

Creatures invite us to enter into mysterious and unknown realms with courage and curiosity. Creatures swim, float, fly and burrow between the loved and the lonely. They inhabit the space between.

Our intention here is to invite you to disturb and reimagine the space between boundaries. We invite you to deliberately disrupt a social rule. How do you speak about grief? Where is the fear in your life right now? What has happened on this land in the last 85 years?

In this space of disruption, we invite you to weave with us: to imagine a creature and construct a shared reality with courage and curiosity.

External partner: BASIS Vinschgau Venosta

1/4
Traveling to BASIS Vinschgau Venosta, Schlanders‑Silandro for the first time all together and wandering the barracks independently and with Michael Schuster.

2/4
BASIS Vinschgau Venosta is a left leaning social activation hub and cultural space used by both international and local groups. BASIS inhabits former (Drusus) barracks in the Val Venosta valley, a site of military infrastructure that was used by the Nazi’s, Italian fascists and American troops before the re-use project. The location is charged with the tumultuous history of the market town and wider region.

3/4
Familiarizing ourselves more with the context through spending time in Schlanders-Silandro and talking to locals. Drinking coffee at nearby spots and generally loitering.

4/4
Engaging with interdisciplinary exercises (as research strategies). By applying an exercise generated by a collaborative class with professors from both Design research and Social Studies of Design, we were able to interact with our context and project through a transdisciplinary lense. The exercise involved rapid prototyping of a utopian/dystopian tool that would be needed in a future version of the world where certain crises and revolutions had come to pass. The exercise prompted alternative methods of imagining and thinking as did the improvisation games we played as a group.

<p>We ran two participatory workshops in BASISLOKAL, both circulating around questions, starting with: “What creature do you dream of?</p><p>During the second workshop a tale emerged in response to the ambiguous creature tail we were collectively building. Not entirely remembered, yet sure of a dragon and destruction, things being buried, we had found our point of connection. The spot and space where we as designers could arrive and curiously play, carrying all that we do, to try speak meaningfully with those in Schlanders-Silandro who wanted to meet us there. The tail had become that of a dragon.</p> — We ran two participatory workshops in BASISLOKAL, both circulating around questions, starting with: “What creature do you dream of?
During the second workshop a tale emerged in response to the ambiguous creature tail we were collectively building. Not entirely remembered, yet sure of a dragon and destruction, things being buried, we had found our point of connection. The spot and space where we as designers could arrive and curiously play, carrying all that we do, to try speak meaningfully with those in Schlanders-Silandro who wanted to meet us there. The tail had become that of a dragon.

<p>For our next interaction, that would take place at an annual community day festival held at BASIS - denk.Mal, we would activate the BASIS outside space while not skirting around intensity. We would try to ask direct questions to participants about the trauma filled history we had learnt. We thought of talking about ‘The Option’, about what it means to be forced, displaced from land, to have to choose between two terrifying paths, to bury things. We had been given our opening, the dragon tale from Gadria and had already constructed one dragon spine to materially work from. So we committed.</p> — For our next interaction, that would take place at an annual community day festival held at BASIS - denk.Mal, we would activate the BASIS outside space while not skirting around intensity. We would try to ask direct questions to participants about the trauma filled history we had learnt. We thought of talking about ‘The Option’, about what it means to be forced, displaced from land, to have to choose between two terrifying paths, to bury things. We had been given our opening, the dragon tale from Gadria and had already constructed one dragon spine to materially work from. So we committed.

<p>As part of our final intervention we carried out a procession. There had been a strong and persistent intent in the earlier phases of our project to do a walk or procession with the creature(s) we were to build. Furthermore, BASIS had offered us the opportunity to exhibit in their space in Schlanders-Silandro at the Schaufenster. This space would be accessible to the public once a week for a month following the planned opening on the 6th. Thus, to connect these two participatory opportunities and creatively introduce the public to our work, we decided to plan our procession route starting from the barracks of BASIS and finishing in front of our exhibition at the Schaufenster.</p> — As part of our final intervention we carried out a procession. There had been a strong and persistent intent in the earlier phases of our project to do a walk or procession with the creature(s) we were to build. Furthermore, BASIS had offered us the opportunity to exhibit in their space in Schlanders-Silandro at the Schaufenster. This space would be accessible to the public once a week for a month following the planned opening on the 6th. Thus, to connect these two participatory opportunities and creatively introduce the public to our work, we decided to plan our procession route starting from the barracks of BASIS and finishing in front of our exhibition at the Schaufenster.

Our heartfelt thanks to

Mirjam Bauer, Chiara Belpassi, Angela Bonan, Nachie Braga, Juliet Bremer, Vittorio Curzel, Irene Delfanti, Christoph Drechsler, Michael Edler, Ghali Egger, Alice Eichhorn, Carlotta Gambino, Simon Gamper, Hannes Goetsch, Katrin Gruber, Andrew Hilling, Nicola Hornäcker, Lalehan Kahyaoglu, Reyhan Khodaie, Paul Kofler, Ingrid Kofler, Shahar Moshe, Alex Nelson, Ella Overkleeft, Dominik Pazeller, Othmar Plattner, Ben Ratschiller, Salma Remadi, Diane Roy, Dolev Nahoom Sanbira, Paul Schimke, Nancy Schimke, Tobias Fabi Schöpf, Daniel Siegersma, Sandy Spieler, Dominik Stecher, Lukas Tappeiner, Marion Thaler, Dominik Told, Magda Tumler, Isolde Veith, Simon Wallis

South Tyrolean dialect linguistic advisors

Dominik Told, Simon Gamper

Additional photography by

Dominik Told, Michael Schuster

Can we create connections that overcome age and language barriers?

Can we have an ecology of sensitivity?

A project made in the course

Project 2 - String Figures

In the second Semester of MA in Eco-Social Design, student teams cooperate with external partners on “real world” projects. The partners were invited to contribute with a specific issue, challenge or topic, which served as starting points for the students to develop answers, solutions, but also to raise new questions. During the spring of 2024, eleven projects were developed, each one exploring a specific topic and with its own perspective. In collaboration with / partners: BASIS Vinschgau Venosta, Blufink, Comune di Bolzano Settore Donna, Comune di Stelvio, Climate Action South Tyrol, South Tyrol Music Festivals, COOLTour, Foundation Haydn, OfficineVispa, Politermica, Regreening Rentsh, Wiesl.

Explore this course

More projects by Cedar Anne Schimke, Filippo Maria Ciriani, Jonas Vogt, Lily Claud DouglasPennant