Design Means…with Dash MacDonald

When: Thursday, 9 February 2017, 5 pm

Where: Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Whitehead Building, Goldsmiths

Free and open to all

Dash N’ Dem are a design action group whose wide-ranging participatory projects centre on popular education and critical and creative citizenship participation. Dash will reflect on the open-ended, collaborative structure of their practice and how co-design can act as a form of activism that empowers different audiences to confront and reimagine their reality.

Dash will be presenting work that aims to make politics more accessible and engaging, including:

-Providing a group of teenagers at the South London Gallery with a David Cameron lookalike to take over and create their own party political broadcast in the run up to the 2015 UK general election

-Revisiting an 80’s post-punk compilation cassette ‘Dump it on Parliament’, originally produced in opposition to a proposed nuclear waste dump in Bedfordshire, and inviting emerging bands to develop cover versions and write new songs of protest

-Working with Slix and Prince Rapid from the Rough Sqwad, one of the original Grime crews, to use Grime as a young people’s political language, and engaging teenagers from Tower Hamlets with issues like workers rights and corporate greed

Design Means with Ersin Han Ersin: reinterpreting perception

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Last Thursday (January 19th), the Design department re-started its series of open talks with Design practitioners “Design Means”, and the first guest speaker for 2017 was Marshmallow Laser Feast‘s Ersin Han Ersin, visual artist and director.

After a brief introduction to the history of virtual reality and interactive technologies (which are all a lot older than we usually think!), Ersin Han took the audience on a tour throughout his innovative, mind-expanding work which tackles our lack of meaningful connections with nature and looks at worlds that lie beyond our human sensory perception. Continue reading “Design Means with Ersin Han Ersin: reinterpreting perception”