As part of the exhibition “Tools for the Design Revolution”, we presented opportunities for assessing and improving products in terms of their social and environmental sustainability. Central to this was the “world formula”, which results from dividing the world’s available key resources by the world population.

For us as design researchers, the next logical step is to ask: how should our way of life be designed based on the aforementioned equation?! The alternatives should not be escapism or exit scenarios, but rather viable cultural approaches for a sustainable form of society, integrating many existing initiatives and ideas and thinking ahead.

This reorientation of values will be focused on such questions as: Which new qualities will take shape? How does art reflect the interaction of climate change and society? Which options will be sketched out here? What does it take to get away from the sacrifice debate? What might signals of optimism for a culture of sustainability look like?

GUESTS: 

Christoph Breuer (KAIROS Impact Research and Development GmbH, Bregenz), Nunu Kaller (blogger, self-experiment “A Year Without Buying Clothes,” environmental activist, Vienna), Maren Richter (curator and art critic, Grammar of Urgencies)
Moderated by Harald Gründl (design theorist and director of the IDRV; designer (EOOS), Vienna)