Burcu Dogramaci & Kerstin Pinther 
Design Dispersed [PDF ebook] 
Forms of Migration and Flight

Design Dispersed pursues the complex and heterogeneous connections between migration and design in the 20th and 21st centuries. The edited volume gathers contributions by international researchers and curators on the question of how design practices and (historical) objects articulate, respond to and critically reflect on migration, flight and displacement: Besides a collage which highlights the aesthetic effects resulting from the networking, overlapping and mixing of forms, another strand of the book looks at the political and social dimensions of design. How are design objects material modes of a critical inquiry on movements of people and things? What role do object trajectories play in the émigré movements of the 1930s and 1940s? Other texts follow the question of how migrants and refugees form their experience and political fight for acceptance into design and architectural productions. A final essay contributes to wordings and projections – what vocabulary do we need in order to adequately think and write about a design dispersed?

About the author

Burcu Dogramaci is professor for Modern and Contemporary Art History at the Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Germany. Her research focus in exile and migration, photography, fashion, urbanity, architecture, sculpture, and Live Art.
Kerstin Pinther is professor for African Art History at the art history department of Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Germany. Her research focuses on contemporary art, architecture, urbanism and design in Africa and its diaspora. Her most recent publication looked at ‘New Spaces for Negotiating Art (and) Histories in Africa’. As a curator, she organized the exhibition ‘Afropolis. City, Media, Art’ (2010-2012).