The „Decolonising Design“ platform was launched in June 2016 as a collective effort to respond to pressing ontological and epistemological issues within design theory, education, and praxis. With the platform we want to invite a „thinking otherwise“ about design’s complicity with structural inequalities and marginalities, in a world much shaped by Western, Euro- and Anglocentric systems and institutions (academia being one of them). Instead of promoting a policy of diversity and multiperspectivity within the framework of the same quite resilient hegemonic institutions, we want to contribute not only to a radical structural redirection on the field’s own ontological designing, but also to acknowledge the complexities and uneasiness such an effort might entail. In this public dialogue we want to contour these issues further, present the online platform as one possible vehicle for dialogue and critical inquiry, and engage in an open conversation about strategies for new ways of sensing and knowing.

This event is hosted in collaboration with Critical Media Lab Basel, Academy of Art and Design FHNW (www.ixdm.ch).