California College of the Arts - CCA | The Rodina: Togetherness @CCAarts | Uploaded December 2021 | Updated October 2024, 37 minutes ago.
We are delighted to welcome Tereza Ruller of The Rodina for this playful yet earnest talk on the potential of participatory design to bring social change. The Rodina is the design studio of Tereza and Vit Ruller, based in the Netherlands, and is known for creating vibrant and critical interactive settings that serve as discursive and social prompts in schools, museums, and public spaces.
In every project The Rodina asks “How do we invite an alienated audience to share an experience?” And the tools she creates to invite us are far ranging. From carpet maps of the psychosocial landscape of contemporary life, ready to be navigated by participants, to books with essays on and pseudo artifacts of the anthropocene, available in both print and as a video game, and beyond. Rodina’s real medium is interaction.
Ruller encourages practitioners considering participatory design to leave the object-centric parameters of design, to “reproduce the viewer as a co-producer,” and “Embrace the field of potential!” Participation and performance in design, she explains, can be a transformative experience, provided there is real agency for the participant to make decisions and actions beyond a prescribed response.
In the talk we see graphic scripts for possible modes of action, costumes, and interactive spaces she calls playgrounds. “Caring and playing are important to an empathic society,” she tells us. Ponchos provided in many of the scenarios are “costumes for roleplay, the one who wears them can become something else. Performance transforms the participant.” The aesthetic of the projects feels highly contemporary with its ambiguous shapes and poses, bits of human anatomy and earthly landscape, digitally rendered and overlapping in bold and plastic color schemes.
Ruller shares her references generously, from Ben Patterson of Fluxus, to theorist Donna Haraway, to performance artist Martha Araújo, and many others. Each seem to inspire tactics and reasons to activate participants to engage with the social concerns of her own practice such as resource mining, the de-futuring of species, and conditions of labour. Her talk is filled with dense ideas and deep commitment, yet delivered in a friendly and approachable voice. At the end she asks us to join her, “Let’s use our privilege, our talents to make change together. Transform yourself and transform others.”
Authored by Saraleah Fordyce
We are delighted to welcome Tereza Ruller of The Rodina for this playful yet earnest talk on the potential of participatory design to bring social change. The Rodina is the design studio of Tereza and Vit Ruller, based in the Netherlands, and is known for creating vibrant and critical interactive settings that serve as discursive and social prompts in schools, museums, and public spaces.
In every project The Rodina asks “How do we invite an alienated audience to share an experience?” And the tools she creates to invite us are far ranging. From carpet maps of the psychosocial landscape of contemporary life, ready to be navigated by participants, to books with essays on and pseudo artifacts of the anthropocene, available in both print and as a video game, and beyond. Rodina’s real medium is interaction.
Ruller encourages practitioners considering participatory design to leave the object-centric parameters of design, to “reproduce the viewer as a co-producer,” and “Embrace the field of potential!” Participation and performance in design, she explains, can be a transformative experience, provided there is real agency for the participant to make decisions and actions beyond a prescribed response.
In the talk we see graphic scripts for possible modes of action, costumes, and interactive spaces she calls playgrounds. “Caring and playing are important to an empathic society,” she tells us. Ponchos provided in many of the scenarios are “costumes for roleplay, the one who wears them can become something else. Performance transforms the participant.” The aesthetic of the projects feels highly contemporary with its ambiguous shapes and poses, bits of human anatomy and earthly landscape, digitally rendered and overlapping in bold and plastic color schemes.
Ruller shares her references generously, from Ben Patterson of Fluxus, to theorist Donna Haraway, to performance artist Martha Araújo, and many others. Each seem to inspire tactics and reasons to activate participants to engage with the social concerns of her own practice such as resource mining, the de-futuring of species, and conditions of labour. Her talk is filled with dense ideas and deep commitment, yet delivered in a friendly and approachable voice. At the end she asks us to join her, “Let’s use our privilege, our talents to make change together. Transform yourself and transform others.”
Authored by Saraleah Fordyce
