Pivot 2020: Designing a World of Many Centers

Abstract

xv Usually, designs and designers from colonized countries, marginalized and indigenous communities and minorities (the so-called Global South) are judged as "less good" than their counterparts from the Global North -probably because they are not completely aligned with the "grammar" and values of the Western template. We started in this line of work at the DRS2018 conference, when we chaired (with Dr. Aija Freimane) the track "Not just from the Centre: Multiple voices in Design". For that track, we made a specific Call for Papers to designers from outside of the 'center' of Western culture. Designers and educators from 16 countries across Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, The Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia and Oceania responded to our call. The interest generated by this track encouraged us to create the DRS Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group (SIG). As DRS SIG convenors, we intend to create space for scholars and designers who are often invisible, offering them support, visibility and recognition.In the last few years, as the movement to decolonize design gains strength, more diverse voices have been featured on the stages of the Center-including, for example, Indigenous voices, more people of color, and more people from countries from the Global South. In short, the Center is slowly starting to include people who have been excluded from the main narrative of design. The challenge here is not only to include people as tokens, but also to embrace their way of thinking, conceiving reality, producing material culture and organizing social life.We believe, however, that the purpose of a radical design practice is not only to fix the Center (by making it more diverse), but to help to create a world with multiple centers -in which many realities, forms of thinking and being can co-exist. To refer to this world, we adopt the concept of the Pluriverse, proposed by Arturo Escobar ( 2018), inspired by a Zapatista dictum, that refers to a "world where many worlds fit". The concept of the Pluriverse challenges one of the pillars of Western Modernity that is Universalism-the idea that we all live in a single world-in favor of a multiplicity of possible worlds that nurture and respect life on Earth (Escobar 2020; Kothari et al. 2019). The Pluriverse does not only refer to the immense diversity of worlds-of diverse ontologies and epistemologies-available on our planet; but also to the fact that these multiple worlds have been shaped and harnessed, oppressed and suppressed by the scientific, technological, and hegemonic forces of Colonialism and Modernity. The Pluriverse framework embraces the idea that significant societal innovations and alternative futures are emerging from the political margins and communities of the Global South (Kothari et al. 2019).Our main goal with the PIVOT 2020 conference has been to build and support a worldwide network of collaborators and allies with shared values. And we hope we have accomplished the goal of creating a Pluriversal Design community, connecting scholars, designers and...