Deep Time Design – A Manifesto for the Post-Anthropocene

Workshop Description
The speculative workshop challenge students to move beyond short-term problem-solving and instead embrace long-term world-building provocation. By exploring concepts like Long-Term Biothinking, More-Than-Human Governance, and Deep-Time Justice, the program aims to shift participants from Human-Centered Design to Life-Centered Design. The purpose is to reframe our perspectives, prioritizing the continuity off all life vast timescales, expanding ethical consideration to treat non-human entities as citizens with agency rather than managed resources, and finally, ensuing current actions do not compromise the survival and resources of future generations.

Educational Goal

• Adopt a Life-Centred Paradigm: Shift design perspectives from Human-Centred Design (HCD) to Life-Centred Design (LCD) rooted in the Good Ancestor theory.

• Practice Deep-Time Speculation: Move away from short-term fixes to engage in long-term world-building and provocation.

• Cultivate a Biocentric Gaze: Break the "anthropocentric gaze" by applying rigorous design research methods to non-human entities, recognizing them as stakeholders in complex political and temporal systems.

• Visualize Temporal Justice: Develop the ability to visualize chronopolitics by drawing and designing across time (past, present, and deep future) rather than just spatial dimensions.

• Map Socioecological Interdependence: Physically map the relationships, governance structures, and direct/indirect connections within socioecological systems rather than focusing on isolated objects.

• Engage in More-Than-Human Empathy: Practice embodied ontology by analysing goals, pain points, and perspectives from the eye-level of non-human species.

What you need for this workshop

Your own notebook, pen/pencil/markers, paper (sketchbook for note taking and concept drawings). Costs related to concepts prototyping and poster printing.

Requirements

There are no previous requirements but the willingness to embrace a deep dive into the future, with whatever tools you may bring.

Where is it located?
H 2.18