Title: 16 Artist: Arjan Zazueta Materials: Hand-stitched cotton thread on paper towels Size: 44 x 44 inches
MADS Alumni Quizayra Gonzalez and co-curator Cass Gardiner have been awarded the Center for Craft, Creativity, and Design’s 2017 Curatorial Fellowship. Together they will design a show for Fall 2017. We extend our congratulations to Quizayra and Cass! Here is more detail about the show:
Clive Dilnot: Introductory talk given at the graduation of MA Design Studies, May 19th 2016:
It is an honor today to introduce to you the 3rd cohort of graduates of MA Design Studies, a very special and indeed brave, group of students.
They are special because the MA in Design Studies is one of the most exclusive degrees in the world. The program is unique in North America and I think is unique in the world. These are, in the best sense of the word a rare group of students. We have to hope they are not also an endangered species.
Over the month of April, MA Design Studies student Laura Belik, in conjunction with the Design Studies Forum, organized the “Latin America Documentary Screenings: Discussions Of Space,” a series of film screenings and talks focusing on the spatiality and urban environments of the region. Each event highlighted different aspects of the topic of space, with discussion topics ranging from cities, urban democracy, and social justice to public spaces, the commons, and displacement.
VISUALIZING THE MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA
FILM, DOCUMENTARIES AND EXPERIMENTAL VIDEO SCREENINGS
ORGANIZED BY THE MENA WORKING GROUP AT TNS (SPRING 2016)
ROOM 1009, 6 EAST 16TH STREET
The MENA Working Group is an informal network of graduate students and faculty members working at The New School (NSSR, Parsons, Milano) and concentrating their research on the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), broadly construed. Launched in October 2015, the Working Group organizes a graduate student conference on April 22nd and hopes to serve the needs and interests of graduate students at TNS. With this series of films, the MENA Working Group offers a space of discussion open to all New School students, Lang and graduate researchers. The screenings are free and will generally be held Thursdays, 8-10p, followed by a peer-led discussion. Organizer: Salma Shamel Bakr Faculty contact point: Benoit Challand
Mae Wiskin, class of 2016 MA Design Studies second year candidate, was recently featured on VICE News On The Line. The segment was on India’s mental health crisis and women’s rights. Mae spoke to VICE News journalist Neha Shastry about the ways in which digital technologies can be used to help battle the stigma and shame associated with mental illness. Mae researches the intersections between “smart” technologies, text-based behavioral therapies and psychopathology. Her work on “designing” the new frontier of mental health treatments and interventions advocates for the incorporation of tele-health technologies in order to gain access to those most vulnerable both in India and globally.
Mae’s VICE News feature begins at 19:19.
The MA Design Studies program welcomed its third cohort with a series of Orientation events designed to introduce everyone to Parsons, the New School, and New York City; and, most of all, to get to know each other a bit before diving into classes. The week began on Monday, August 18th, with official welcomes, followed by informal introductions, toasts, and a wide-ranging conversation with professors Clive Dilnot and Jilly Traganou at Director Susan Yelavich’s loft in Soho.
Appropriately for a program that explores values and ideologies embodied by design, on Tuesday we visited the Guggenheim Museum for a guided tour of Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe.
Left to right: Micki Unterberg, Anke Gruendel, Soohee Cho, Gene Duval, Sonja Holopainen, Laura Sancez, Estefania Acosta, Quizayra Gonzales, Laura Belik.
On Wednesday, Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine at the Rubin Museum of Art offered a contemplative respite in the middle of a week of concentrated informational meetings with librarians, archivists and student services administrators.
The day after exploring bodily health at the Rubin, we shifted gears on Thursday and looked at how design can contribute to the health of the city and its residents. We were hosted at the loft of Marpillero Pollak Architects in Tribeca, by MAP partner Linda Pollak, who shared insights into how she and her partner Sandro Marpillero approach the design of urban open spaces in conjunction with residential architecture, museums, and cultural institutions. After a conversation that ranged from the efficacy of New York City’s project to plant a million trees to designing for differently abled bodies, we were treated to a tour of MAP’s live-work loft with its own unique network of open spaces.
Thoroughly saturated, but with a better sense of each other and the program they’ve embarked on, the Class of 2016 closed out a week by celebrating with all of the other new MA and MFA students at a reception on Thursday evening at Parsons—a reception that marked not just the end of Orientation but the beginning of a host of exciting new academic trajectories.
Left to right: Estfania Acosta, Quizayra Gonzales, Laura Belik in Marpillero Pollak Architects studio.
Left to right: Architect Linda Pollak, Misha Volf, Quizayra Gonzales
Misha Volf’s Speech at Graduation Ceremony of MA DS 2016 class
Talk by Misha Volf as the student speaker given at the graduation of MA Design Studies, May 19th 2016:
Thank you, Faculty, Administration, Friends, Family, Graduates,
Two years ago, when I was considering Design Studies, I came in to interview with Susan [Yelavich, Director of the Program]. Among the ways she framed the program, one of them was as a NEXUS of THEORY and PRACTICE. After the interview, as I travelled back home, I was abuzz. “This is perfect,” I thought. This wasn’t going to just be some heady, theorizing about commodities, or semiotics, or the anthropocene; nor was this simply going to be about the production of stuff, putting design to work, so to speak, or something my father with increased longing would call “marketable skills.” No, no. This was going to be something else. This was going to be, … THE NEXUS!
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