Distabling: acts of emergent design research

Distabling will be a space for showcasing current research projects of Higher Degree Research (HDR) candidates in the RMIT School of Design. 

Using a dining table as both a concept and a physical platform, we will have a series of activities conducted by HDR students at different stages of their research, sharing unfinished outputs and thought processes. Building on the concept of an ecology of practices, researchers are going to collaborate across different topics of inquiry and engaging in an extended spectrum of acts, from exhibitions to workshops, involving multiple forms of engagements and interactions with the audience. 

On its second edition, this event is intended to be a generative space for unveiling ongoing transdisciplinary design research projects that engage with other worlds as a response to the current global social, political and environmental crisis, exploring the inclusion of different sources of knowledge, exceptional, contradictory and non-linear processes of research, methodological assemblages and ethical and ontological inquiries for design practitioners. 

The event is led by a group of doctoral researchers from the School of Design working across design disciplines and exploring a diversity of topics such as material decay, national identities, uncertainty, cosmologies, bureaucratic institutions, and expanded senses, among others.

Schedule

11am–6pm
Ongoing exhibitions

MONDAY 27/05
12pm–1:45pm
Distabling bodies in space, by Kel Glaister and Georgie Nolan
2pm-4pm
Tabling stories, by Akbar Adhi Satrio
4:30pm-6pm
Event opening

TUESDAY 28/05
12pm-1:30pm
Distabling plant kinship, by Stephanie Ochona
2pm-3:30pm
Tabling soil matters, by Javier de Urquijo Isoard and Steven Santer
4pm-6pm
Tabling sensory divination, by Mengke Lian

WEDNESDAY 29/05
11:00am–1:00pm
Distabling Worlds, by Andres Ortega  
1:30pm–3:30pm
Open acts

Participants: Isabella Brandalise (BRA), Alan Fong (SG), Kel Glaister (AU), Joseph Johnson (AU), Mengke Lian (CN), Georgie Nolan (AU), Stephanie Ochona (PH-AU), Andres Ortega (CL), Steve Santer (AU), Akbar Adhi Satrio (ID), Javier de Urquijo (MX), Gideon Utapea (ID).