Selected recent publications

Baumgarten, Lisa (2023): Resonance and Ontological Design – On facilitating and obstructing transformative teaching and learning experiences in design education. In: Mehl, Johanna, Höfler, Carolin: Attending [to] Futures – Matters of Politics in Design Education, Research, Practice. Hamburg: Adocs Verlag.

»Teaching Design Conversations continued…« (2021–2022)
Series of conversations with international protagonists of design education, published by Teaching Design, funded by the Stimuleringsfonds 

Baumgarten, Lisa, Recklies, Mara (2021): Willkommen im Zoom-Optikum. In: Form 293 »Werkzeuge«, Frankfurt/Main: Verlag form.

Baumgarten, Lisa, Leijdekkers, Judith (2021): A Disappointing bibliography. In: Van der Veer, Joannette (ed.): Unununimimimdededesign – the hesitant state of design. Eindhoven: Onomatopee.

Baumgarten, Lisa (2021): Research as Care. In: Design Lab #6. In: Fezer, Jesko, Kunstgewerbemuseum der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin (ed.). Berlin: Sternberg Press.

Baumgarten, Lisa, Neidhardt, Anja (2020): Im Dialog mit den Dingen mit. In:  Christensen, Michelle, Fezer, Jesko, Herlo, Bianca, Hornuff, Daniel and Joost, Gesche (ed.): Lechts Rinks, Eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Design der Neuen Rechten. Hamburg: ADOCS Verlag.

Baumgarten, Lisa, Steinmann, Paul (2020): ACCESS/ NO ACCESS – Transformation IX, Temporäre Galerie, herausgegeben von der Pädagogischen Werkstatt des Campus Rütli.

Baumgarten, Lisa, Neidhardt, Anja (2020): Discrimination Follows Design – Design Follows Discrimination – Eine feministische Perspektive auf Gestaltung. In: Form 287, Frankfurt/Main: Verlag form.

Baumgarten, Lisa, Neidhardt, Anja (2019): Editorial. In: And She Was Like: BÄM! Newsletter #33. And She Was Like: BÄM!, Cologne.

Selected seminars and speaking engagements

• Designvermittlung als (selbst-)kritische Praxis. Lecture at Kurt-Schwitters-Symposium themed “Kritik als Haltung und Methode” at University of Applied Sciences Hannover, 26.–27. Oct 2023.
  

Description:
Kunsthochschulen sind immer noch die exklusivsten tertiären Bildungseinrichtungen in Europa. Historisch verzahnt mit deren Entstehung ist auch die Designdisziplin geprägt von weißen, männlichen, imperialistischen Perspektiven. Das Designstudium spielt eine entscheidende Rolle für die Ausbildung zukünftiger Designer*innen und hat somit das Potential die Disziplin hin zur Verbündeten marginalisierter Menschen, anstatt Komplizin unterdrückerischer Systeme zu entwickeln. Die Entfaltung dieses Potentials setzt jedoch eine selbstkritische Auseinandersetzung mit der Entstehung der Disziplin, ihrer Werte und ihrer Vermittlungsformate im Kontext von Designlehre an Kunsthochschulen voraus.

• Doing Knowledge in Design – Über Wissensproducktion und Wissensvermittlung im Design. Panel with Lisa Baumgarten, Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena and Mara Recklies at Interposed Symposium, University of Applied Sciences Mainz (Germany), 18. Oct 2023.
  

Description: How can transdisciplinary critical-emancipatory knowledge about and for design be produced? And what does a scientific collaboration which is guided by relationality and care look like? In the panel “Doing Knowledge in Design”, Lisa Baumgarten, Anja Neidhardt-Mokoena and Mara Recklies discuss these questions on the basis of their current joint research on knowledge production in design historiography and its mediation. They approach design from three different angles: critical design mediation, feminist research and philosophy.

• The Leftovers: Digesting Design Education. Lecture at Imagine Elsewhere: A Day for Re-Thinking Design Museums with Michael Law Barrett, Lisa Baumgarten, Setareh Noorani, Sabrina Rahman, Anna Westman Kuhmunen, and Vanessa Zeissig. Organised by Anja Neidhardt and Christina Zetterlund. 29 Nov 2022, at Kulturparken Småland, Södra Järnvägsgatan, Växjö, and online via Zoom.

Description of the research seminar: Museums, as well as the design discipline, developed in parallel with Western Modernity with its way of forming knowledge and shaping a world. During the second half of the 19th century, design museums were founded in the metropolis of the global North as a method of teaching the notion of quality to producers and consumers alike. Here, the foundation for collections and archives that still have a role in how design is understood, and its history is written. It is histories that still live in understandings of design, it is histories that through design practices create futures. To formulate other histories is to make other futures possible. We would like to invite you to a day where we ask the question how can (design) museum make other histories possible? During the day practitioners and researchers who have been working with how we can re-learn and re-make museum practices will share insights into their approaches. Together we will then discuss how we can make diverse histories, and therefore diverse futures, possible. Or to put in the words of the philosopher Bayo Akomolafe: how we can go awkward.
Find the program here.

• Resonance and Ontological Design: On facilitating and obstructing transformative teaching and learning experiences in design education. Keynote lecture at Attending (to) Futures Conference. Organised by Johanna Mehl and Carolin Höfler at Köln International School of Design of TH Köln (Cologne, Germany) from 18-20 November 2021.

Description: Institutionalized design education – as a formative stage of life that most future designers will go through – is decisive for the practical and discursive development of the field. Furthermore, channeling Arturo Escobars concept of Ontological Design and the «relational dimension of life» (Escobar, 2018) it is decisive for shaping our present and future. In order to relate, however, we need to feel like the world concerns us – we need to experience «resonance» (Rosa, 2016). According to Rosa, a caring relationship with the world can be facilitated or obstructed by education. Not only in school but also in design education, the way is paved for how we relate to the world and how we want to contribute to shaping the future. So, how can design education mediate that the world concerns all of us?
Trying to find words to express my experiences in teaching/learning design I consulted Escobar’s and Rosa’s concepts which – brought together – opened up a new framework for my teaching/learning practice. At «Attending [To] Futures» I’d like to invite you to follow me through my thought processes, the hurdles I came across, and the questions that arose.

• Baumgarten, Lisa, Neidhardt, Anja. (2020): Teaching Design CONVERSATIONS, 28 Jan – 11 Feb 2020, at A–Z, Berlin

Description: Teaching Design CONVERSATIONS is a temporary library and conversational format about design education from intersectional feminist and decolonial perspectives. Building on the online platform Teaching Design, the two-week long format CONVERSATIONS provided access to literature in a physical space as a framework to come together and connect with like-minded design educators – such as ourselves – and everybody interested in the field. The temporary library at A–Z grew from the collectively gathered resources from our online platform Teaching Design. The books were compiled from Berlin libraries and provided by proqm. We invited the public to use the space to browse through the literature, read, listen and discuss. The A–Z space was transformed by commissioned work by artists and designers Benedetta Crippa (Stockholm), Peter Behrbohm (Berlin) and Fabrice Höfgen following core principles of Teaching Design: The temporary library offered access to resources to develop transformative strategies, a safe space to ask critical questions and start a dialogue and the tools to share and exchange knowledge. The program included an opening event with contributions by Imad Gebrayel, Stefanie Rau and Madeleine Morley; a workshop with Antonia Schneemann and Lisa Baumgarten, as well as a book release with Jungmyung Lee and Lieven Lahaye.