The webspace ‘Daily Decisions’ brings together collaborative works developed in the wider context of the Disarming Design Department (Sandberg Instituut Amsterdam, 2020–2022). They generously share daring dialogues, collective collages, tentative translations, and intuitive instruments. It features collaborative works by Lama Aloul, Saja Amro, Julina Vanille Bezold, Rasha Dakkak, Farah Fayyad, Mohamed Gaber, Anna Celda, Ayman Hassan, Siwar Kraitem, Ott Metusala, Naira Nigrelli, Karmel Sabri, Qusai Al Saify, Sarah Saleh, Mohammed Tatour, Jara van Teeffelen and Samira Vogel
In questioning the term ‘Disarming Design’ the group grappled with the act of naming, and made an extensive list of possible DD-translations, to interpret DD according to media and outlets. These terms are the base for this digital archive of collaborative works; where each DD-interpretation presents specific projects as a conversation starter for further collaborations.
The accompanied publication ‘Durable Discussions’ presents life-making practices across objects, events, places, and habits. In research through writing, seventeen essays sense and transform the poetics and politics of the everyday, offering perspectives in thinking about art and design as emancipatory politics. (Onomatopee, 2022)
This webspace has been designed and developed by:
PING (Miquel Hérvas Gómez, Agustina Woodgate and Sascha Krischock), Nick Reilly, Sarah Saleh and Jara van Teeffelen
Typeface by:
Kyiv Type Foundry.
With the support of:
Creative Industries Fund in the context of Disarming Design from Palestine
Disarming Design was a temporary masters programme at the Sandberg Instituut that ran from 2020 to 2022. It was committed to design practices in situations of oppression acting on the overlap of design and politics, and positioned design as a cultural tool to foster disarming ways of knowing.
Team:
Hannes Bernard, Flavia Dzodan, Rana Ghavami, Lara Khaldi, Yazan Khalili, Francisca Khamis Giacoman (coordinator), PING (Miquel Hérvas Gómez, Agustina Woodgate, Sascha Krischock), Huda Smitshuijzen-AbiFarès, Jonas Staal, Annelys de Vet (department head)
On D_D
Rasha Dakkak, May 2022:
To disarm: to take a weapon away, to deprive of means, reason, or disposition, to be hostile, to make harmless, to win over.
I still remember the moment when we were all, momentarily, aligned. We, the seventeen of us, wanted a new name. When something is disarming, it calms hostility. Whose hostility is evoked in naming this department, Disarming Design? The term ‘disarming’ was questioned in our ongoing discussions due to its misleading connotations with the Arabic-speaking world, from which eleven of us hail; it seemed to exoticise, conjuring up images of hostility, rage, and suspicion. It was hard to overlook the setting in which we operate and how the act of arming or disarming might frame us.
It was also obscure whether we were learning to unarm design. Are we disarming design broadly speaking, or just a specific design discourse and practice? Are we here to be unarmed by design? Is it the idea to be disarmed by a particular school of thought? Or should design be disarming?
We also grappled with the act of naming. The requirement for a fixed name to ensure and validate the department’s uniqueness, transforming it into something verging on the monumental.
We opted for the initials DD after two years of deliberation, negotiation, and sometimes acceptance, acknowledging a lineage of lengthier conversations that emerged when naming events occurred during our time at Disarming Design, such as Diasbura Radio and Disclosing Discomfort, the title of an exhibition we held at Mediamatic in Amsterdam in November 2021.
We felt a sense in what began as a pun, where we can interpret DD according to media and outlets. In a call with Yazan, he unveiled another facet of this naming strategy, listing corporations that have sidelined their names in favour of initials, such as BP, KFC, etc. They undergo such rebranding that is diametrically opposed to their past in an effort to conceal their histories. Another case in point is the IDF, which has been called into question since the IOF may be a better reflection of how Israel has abandoned its ‘defensive’ military tactics in favour of an ‘offensive’ one.
The extensive list of possible DD translations accentuates this point: meanings shift, allowing each of us some leeway in reading these two years as we see fit. It permits all to input their views:
Disclosing Discomforts
Design Department
Desired Discipline
Decentralised Depictions
Developing Discrepancy
Denying Definitions
Disassembling Details
Daily Decisions
Dismantling Discourses
Doubting Data
Double Displacement
Disorganised Drama
Daring Dance
Dazzling Days
Diaspora Dialogues
Decolonising Decolonisation
Dutch Design
Dodging Dogma
Depth Dwellers
Distance Decay
Dramatic Dinosaurs
Dear Deviants
Devoted Devices
Detailed Detours
Damned Dadaism
Deployed Desires
Divine Dialects
Direct Development
Decentralising Decisions
Done Deal
Divergent Demonstration
Distorted Discourses
Demanded Discourses
Distant Departure
Dramatic Difference
Dissemination Dreams
Diving Deep
Deadly Discussions
Discursive Discourse
Disobedient Devices
Dirty Dicks
Different Disappointments
Debating Design
Distressful Disorders
Distinctive Distress
Dominant Disputes
Despite Division
Darkness Descending
Double Dilemma
Definite Demands
Debatable Discussable
Deepest Desires
Doubling Down
Dumb Deadlines
Decent Drafts
Desirable Delights
Delicious Dough
Delectable Dates
Digesting Delights
Diasbura Delights
:D:D
Durable Discussions