On January 19th, Jilly Traganou gave a talk at Against All Odds: Ethics / Aesthetics, a conference taking place at the Athens School of Fine Arts in Greece.
Professor Traganou’s talk, “Practices of Deterritorialization Towards Post-national Imaginings: Conjoining Aesthetics and Ethics in Design,” examined the capacity of designers to cultivate postnational societies. Exploring the ethical and aesthic commitment designers have to respond to the demand for more inclusive societies, Professor Traganou concentrated on Migratory Homes, a collaborative project which asks the vital question: “how can the disparate identities that constitute mixed societies collectively participate in the creation of a common ‘home/land’ that would be co-designed and co-owned?”
The conference explored the reciprocity between ethics and aesthetics in current environmental, social, and political contexts through several disciplines, including philosophy, aesthetic theories, sociology and the sociology of professions, curatorial practices, and topology. For additional conference information, please visit: http://aaoproject.org/?p=902.
Over spring break, Radhika Subramaniam, together with other Parsons faculty members, Lydia Matthews (Dean of Academic Programs) and Michael Morris (SCE), led a group of 7 students to Athens, Greece to participate in a workshop with Greek students. The New School students were from diverse disciplinary backgrounds (Decorative Arts, Fine Arts, Transdisciplinary Design, and Design and Technology at Parsons, as well as Environmental Studies at NSGS and from Milano). Students worked intensively on an examination of Exarcheia, a distinctive neighborhood in Athens’ urban fabric, through lectures, walks, mapping exercises, a charrette and critiques, and created interventions while reflecting on the collaborative process itself. An installation of this process, including documentation of the action, photographs and videos, will be exhibited as part of the AAO exhibition from July 6-31, 2011 at the Benaki Museum – Pireos in Athens.
For more information about the Against All Odds Project, please visit: http://aaoproject.org/?page_id=1447.
