MA Graphic Media Design [MA GMD] invites you to join us for the launch of A Line Which Forms a Volume 4 [ALWFAV 4]. Thu, March 25, 2021 18.00-20.00 GMT ORDER…
MA Graphic Media Design [MA GMD] invites you to join us for the launch of A Line Which Forms a Volume 4 [ALWFAV 4].
Thu, March 25, 2021
18.00-20.00 GMT
ORDER YOUR TICKETS
The symposium, hosted by London College of Communication, will present a critical reader of graphic design-led research that is authored, edited, designed and published by MA GMD course participants with guest contributors.
ALWFAV 4 will approach decoloniality by reflecting on the constructed borders of the design canon. We ask, what are the boundaries that graphic design exists within? The issue focuses on the possibilities of design practices to tilt, move and cross borders.
Looking at the volume as a territory, ALWFAV 4 brings together contributions from Ahmed Ansari, Clara Balaguer, Yu Jiwon, Lucas LaRochelle, Paul Bailey and Tony Credland with Adapt, Evening Class, Haunted Machines and Paul Elliman, and the MA GMD participants with the aim of generating new threads of inquiry. By tilting the dominant axis of direction, the publication takes on a journey that goes out of lines, in an attempt to share, open, expand the conversations around design research.
As designers graduating from an institution, but coming from different backgrounds, we recognise the importance of making our voices cacophonous, rather than uniform. In this sense, the publication unfolds through three sections (tilt, move and cross) to be read as thematic approaches to the contributions without a set hierarchy. The symposium will follow this editorial line too.
TILT
Glimmering Opacities: From Queering The Map to QT.bot
Lucas LaRochelle
How might we queer the supposed ‘objectivity’ of artificial intelligence by reveling in its incoherencies, and in turn imagine new worlds through this oblique lens? What is the role of fabulation in the marginalized archive? This talk will explore the genesis of QT.bot – an AI trained on the textual and visual data of the community-generated counter-mapping platform Queering The Map – that generates speculative queer and trans futures and the environments in which they occur. In collaboration with the voices of their human community, QT.bot fabulates on the absences of the archive, orienting us away from what is, and towards what could be.
Making Ignorance Great Again (An Open Letter)
Rita Buica
We live in an age of ignorance.
Make Ignorance Great Again (An Open Letter) delves into forms of ignorance surrounding the climate conversation by considering the notion of climate misinformation and denialism. In this piece, the designer addresses directly the climate denier through an open letter that expresses deep concern and curiosity regarding the concept of climate ignorance. Make Ignorance Great Again (An Open Letter) is a call for attention in the realm of climate change that uses exaggeration as a tool and seeks to challenge the role of the designer in unexpected ways.
Can we make ignorance great again?
MOVE
The Fleshy Nature of the Body Public
Clara Balaguer
A fragmented set of observations that condense three years of collective/solitary rumination on the idea of the body public. By (actively) dissecting the published body into five parts—face (cover), circulation, spine, guts, and feet—the coauthor attempts to understand how each limb/organ/system functions in relation to/in isolation from the whole. This rumination will be woven with personal interludes around the coauthor’s state of mind (and other activities) as a recent migrant from a tropical periphery to a center of colonial capital. The personal is indivisible from the body public, as mind and body are not isolated from each other but rather entangled by experience into something describable as flesh.
Cultural Identities as Backdrops, as Props
Daphne Tsang
Cultural Identities as Backdrops, as Props will explore the hidden techno-orientalisation of Hong Kong’s cultural identity in the miss-en-scène of Blade Runner (1982), Ghost in the Shell (1995), and 2046 (2004) with short clips.
‘…This is not to say that Hollywood should not envision the Orient’s future; Hong Kong welcomes lending its cityscapes and signage to Hollywood. Oshii contextualises the act of techno-orientalising the former colonial city in a flawless manner. A language is not merely a prop; a cityscape is not just a backdrop.’
CROSS
Roundtable Discussion
with common-interest (Nina Paim, Corin Eliot Gisel), Paul Bailey and members of the ALWFAV 4 team.
The discussion will depart from a theme extracted from an interview held with the South Korean designer, writer and educator Yu Jiwon. We will discuss the notion of interlocality – as an approach to resist a single-sided reading of globalism – and how this might help us think about the acts and processes of publication.
We look forward to sharing this moment of making these thoughts, concerns and practices public together.
With great thanks to our advisors: common-interest
Please follow @MAGMDLCC for further announcements.
IMAGE CAPTIONS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)
— QT.BOT – SITTING HERE WITH YOU IN THE FUTURE, LUCAS LAROCHELLE
— MAKING IGNORANCE GREAT AGAIN, RITA BUICA
— REDACTED BIG TECH PLATFORM FLIER STUDY FOR PUBLISHING AS BLOODLETTING, AN ESSAY AND SOCIAL MEDIA PLAY, ALL BY TO BE DETERMINED
— CULTURAL IDENTITIES AS BACKDROPS, AS PROPS, DAPHNE TSANG
— ROUNDTABLE IMAGE: ALWFAV TEAM
ALWFAV 4 TEAM: RHYS ATKINSON, RACHEL SO DAM JUNG, ALEX JAE EUN KIM, RICCARDO RIGHI, QI YAO, YITING ZHU