DUST, DIALOGUE AND UNCERTAINTY

Dust, Dialogue and Uncertainty gives form to a decade of inquiry by the Netherlands-based research platform slowLab, combining diverse facets of its ongoing investigations into the potentials of Slow knowledge in design thinking and practice.Organized around six core research topics—Slow Identity : Slow Agency : Slow Governance : Slow Economy : Slow Ecology : Slow Pedagogy—the exhibition presents a dynamic range of philosophical and creative positions that challenge the paths through which contemporary design fields operate, suggesting new values and more holistic and critical perspectives for addressing the complexity of an ever-accelerating world.

Participating artists and designers: Maria Blaisse, Jellie Dekker, Fallen Fruit, Amy Franceschini, Monika Hoinkis, Lucie Libotte, Julia Mandle, Mayke Nas, Jorge Otero-Pailos, and Henriette Waal.

Video interviews with Fernando Garcia-Dory, Jeanne van Heeswijk, Lanka Horstink, Caroline Nevejan, Alessandra Pomarico, Ljiljana Rodic-Wiersma, and Judith Wehmeyer van den Boom.
Participants are a compelling array of thinkers and practitioners (working within and beyond design fields) who have been selected not only for the specific relevance of their ideas and methodologies to the Slow research topics, but also for the breadth of knowledge that their combined discourses generate.

As the title suggests, the exhibition emphasizes both material and immaterial aspects of Slow knowledge, including unexpected variables of encounter and discovery through which new trajectories can be revealed. The videos, artifacts and installations on display are sources of inspiration for moving beyond the dominant systems and structures of today, deepening awareness, firing up the senses, and casting new configurations of resources and relationships to support more sustainable and resilient forms of living.

The physical layout is punctuated by formal and spatial mechanisms designed to induce experiences of “Slow reading”: meaningful moments of analysis and introspection in which viewer-participants are able to pause, reflect and engage more openly and intuitively, bringing fuller attention to the artifacts and information at hand as they establish their own unique rhythms of participation.

Collectively, these different layers of experience facilitate pluralistic understandings of Slow knowledge as an evolving ground of thinking-sensing-acting-relating from which to more fully experience the now and more consciously consider the future.

Additional work by student participants in slowLab’s fall 2014 research residency at Pratt Institute.

Dust, Dialogue and Uncertainty is curated by Ana Paula Pais and Carolyn Strauss.

slowLab is a nonprofit research platform for Slow design thinking, learning and practice. Founded in New York and based in the Netherlands, slowLab supports an international network of thinkers and creative actors (designers, artists, architects, technologists, environmentalists, social theorists, economists, educators, and activists) who participate in its residencies, workshops, presentations, publications, academic projects, and evolving dialogues.Text and photos by SlowLab. This work was developed and/or presented in the context of the exhibition ‘DUST, DIALOGUE AND UNCERTAINTY – Slow Knowledge in Design Thinking and Practice,’ on view December 5, 2014 – February 7, 2015 at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery in New York City. The exhibition was curated by Ana Paula Pais and Carolyn Strauss of slowLab.