This research focuses on emphasising the possibilities of protest or disruption for designers. Designers must be aware of structural social problems and developments in the world and should be able to take a stance. A simple ethical reflection or speculative concept is not enough: design requires a certain unruliness of the designer. A certain form of creative resistance is expected from the designer within contemporary design practice. We need to further politicize design critique and experiment with concrete design protests and collective creative resistance.
Research has now been running for four years and focuses on experimenting with critical practices, autonomy, and resistance in design curriculum. Approaches and articulations are sought after in philosophical texts to further explore this and to argue its importance. The outcome is of course not a formula, but an extensive package of suggestions, reflections, examples and exercises. These are aimed at promoting designers’ critical, social role and making them aware of potential autonomous approaches, in order to reinforce the unruly and radical creative strategies of designers in current design practice.
Rebergen, E., Eikelboom, W. & Olma, S. (2021) ‘Looking for Trouble: Raising and Tackling Problems Through Design Research
’, P. Joore, G. Stompff, J. van den Eijnde (eds.) Images of Design Research, Rotterdam: NADR, 100–110.
The results of the research regularly lead to internal educational publications and are also implemented in an annually developing form within the curriculum of the Communication & Multimedia Design programme in Den Bosch. A result of the research activity is the website ontwerpkritiek.nl.
Ongoing research, started in September 2016.
Principle investigator
Eke Rebergen
Other researchers involved
Bart Stuart
Klaar van der Lippe
Professor
Sebastian Olma
Collaborators
Students of 2nd year design project Playful Interaction (CMD AI&I, ‘s-Hertogenbosch)
Institute
Avans University of Applied Sciences
‘Disrupting our contemporary society can be a serious design goal.’
Eke Rebergen is a researcher within the Cultural and Creative Industries research group and a tutor at the Communication & Multimedia Design programme at Avans University of Applied Sciences in Den Bosch.
‘To be able to research something thoroughly, you have to deeply engage, not just look at it from the outside.’
Bart Stuart is a researcher at the Cultural and Creative Industries research group and an independent artist.
Rebergen, E.; Eikelboom, W. & Olma, S. (2021) ‘Looking for Trouble: Raising and Tackling Problems Through Design Research’, P. Joore, G. Stompff, J. van den Eijnde (eds.) Images of Design Research, Rotterdam: NADR, 100–110. Nederlands: Looking for Trouble. Problemen oprakelen en aankaarten door ontwerponderzoek. In P. Joure, G. Stompff, J. van den Eijnde (Reds.), Beelden van Applied Design Research. Nederland: Network Applied Design Research.
The research group Cultural and Creative Industries investigates the role of artists and designers as creative innovators and drivers of social and economic change. Affiliated researchers analyse the cultural and creative industries from a critical point of view and examine the conditions under which timely forms of aesthetic expression and social connectedness can actually take place within the precarious reality of this field. What economic models are required by artists and designers to create a meaningful practice within the aesthetic, social, and economic intentions of the cultural and creative industries? What skills sets are required for those artists and designers who don’t just want to follow movements, but actually shape novel social and economic models of the future?
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