»Start this book, or start your thesis, your essay, your talk, your thinking, your design, your gardening, your building, your song, your dance not from fear and enclosure but from richness: now is the time for our hearts to dance. Now is the time to write the poetry of overflowing.«
These lines from the introduction of Hope in Hopeless Times by John Holloway [1] can serve as an inspiration and motivation for transformation-engaged activities, also for By Design and by Disaster 2025.
We are excited to announce the By Design and by Disaster Conference 2025 (DDcon25), taking place on 8–10 May 2025 in South Tyrol, Italy. In its annual conference, since 2013 the Master in Eco-Social Design is bringing together people and organizations from diverse fields such as design, art, sciences, activism, rural–urban development, alternative agricultures, etc. We offer a lively mix of talks, workshops, walks, exhibitions, paper presentations, good food, drinks, music, dance, connection, and exchange. The focus in 2025 is Hope – reclaiming the future. We start with a call for papers and visual essays ↘︎ more about key dates and double-blind peer-review. Soon we will also publish calls for hands-on workshops, 7 x7 talks and walks.
›Everything will be fine‹ is not the kind of hope we are concerned with. Instead of this naïve attitude, we look for practices, stories, structures, strategies, and theories that revolve around hope and nourish the engagement towards a good life for all, at least dignified lives on a living planet. To ›never believe a prediction that doesn’t empower you‹ as Sean Stephenson [2] told us, does not mean to ignore the escalating crises and disasters. We want empowering hope of action, not ignorant hope of illusion and escapism. ›Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will‹ Antonio Gramsci wrote it in his prison letters in 1929 [3]. Still, let’s acknowledge that many hold on to illusions because coping with those brutal realities is overwhelming and depressing: Climate catastrophe, biodiversity extinction, extreme inequality, wars, enormous suffering, forced migration, murderous border regimes, rise of the far-right and other authoritarian, racist and sexist forces, you name it… plus the inertia, the greenwashing, the hegemony of normality and the violence defending it, the anticipatory obedience, the manifold powers against an emancipatory social-ecological transformation… plus failing dialogues, pointless negotiations, empty promises, lost battles, backlashes, disappointed hopes, exhaustion, frustration, anxiety, anger, sadness, the feeling of being trapped, powerless, desperate and hopeless – even if de facto privileged. Discouraging. Let’s face it together. Not alone. And find out how to cultivate and care for hope – empowering us and others to engage in irresistible ways. So it spreads. ›It is time to re-learn hope.‹ (Halloway 2022:15)
With Donna Haraway, we are ›impatient with two responses […] to the horrors of the Anthropocene and the Capitalocene: 1. a comic faith in technofixes‹ and market solutions, ›2. […] a position that the game is over, it’s too late, there’s no sense trying to make anything any better, or at least no sense having any active trust in each other in working and playing for a resurgent world.‹ [4]. Struggles for reformist improvements, e.g. better wages, social welfare and environmental protection, are not contradicting commitment and hope for a radically better society. According to Frigga Haug it requires ›building connections among fragmented struggles, about creating a space of orientation which can re-contextualize the struggles and move them forward.‹ [5]. In parallel to ›the art of politics‹ as she calls it, Spaces of other logics are co-created, which enable ›with Michel Foucault: the art of not being governed in this way, with Bini Adamczak: of not being identified in this way, with Jason Moore: of not having to live in this way.‹ [6] Through building, maintaining and defending such Real Utopias (Wright 2010) people are learning to act and to become differently, to extend imaginaries of the future by prefiguring them, to create attractive narratives and images, to interconnect, multiply and extend – moving towards solidary and sustainable modes of re*production. Commons ›can form cracks in capitalism everywhere. When the ice melts, we become the water that breaks the walls.‹ (Habermann 2024:127). With these lines Friederike Habermann ends her recent book, and we are looking for contributions to the conference ›to win back hope, not as an abstract idea or empty slogan, but as a collectively crafted and lived reality.‹ (Eschmann & Nehe 2024:13) [8].
›Hey, but isn’t this a design conference?‹ you might wonder. We respond with Herbert A. Simon that ›Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones‹ [9]. Accordingly, we are looking for design/art practices that resonate with thoughts on hope and transformation outlined above, and related research, strategies and practices. Design as service. Art as freedom. Design and arts can contribute to desirable change. Also, by making use of ‘classical’ elements and qualities of design as a discipline: good typography, concise visualisations, beautiful illustrations, functional constructions, clever details, elegant materials, etc. It matters what for and how.
›Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.‹
Václav Havel
Four Tracks of Transformation
These four tracks of transformation are thought to open up a broad spectrum. They should inspire, but not limit. In case your proposal doesn’t fit in any, choose the joker track.
Connected Alternatives
Keywords: Spaces of other Logics, Real Utopias, Commons, Commoning & Common-ism
Qualities & dynamics: experimental, learning, caring, regenerative, becoming together, including, interconnecting, spreading, institutioning, …
Radical Reforms
Keywords: Revolutionary Realpolitik, Transformative Cells, Commons-Public-Partnerships, Redistribution, Social Welfare, Environmental Policies, Eco-Social Tax/Subsidies, Democratisation, Participation, …
Qualities & dynamics: reducing harms, protecting, providing, mainstreaming, political, democratising, …
Social Movements
Keywords: Protest, Campaigning, Direct Action, Movement Commons, Alliances, Strategies, Occupation, Conversion, Socialisation, Commonization, …
Qualities & dynamics: resisting, organising, empowering, activating, influencing, mobilizing, expanding, …
Open Technology
Keywords: Open Source, Open Design, Knowledge Commons, Common Infrastructures, Democracy Technologies, Means of co-Re*production, …
Qualities & dynamics: democratising, circular, ecological, effective, cosmo-local, trans-local, global, …
Call for Abstracts → Keydates
250 words (please add references; the bibliography is outside the 250-word limit)
For visual essays, please add 1–3 image(s)
31.1.2025 Abstract submission (submission system coming soon)
21.3.2025 Abstract notification
→ For all questions related to the academic track, please write to mustapha.elmoussaoui@unibz.it.
For all other questions, email designdisaster@unibz.it.
Tiered 🤑 Pricing
The conference offers a structured registration fee schedule designed to accommodate a diverse range of participants. We acknowledge the varying circumstances of our attendees and have thus established a tiered pricing system to ensure accessibility. Here is a detailed breakdown of the registration fees:
Students (and others without significant income): 0 €
Phd Students (and others with precarious working conditions): 50 €
Participants in a decent income or sponsorship/institutional affiliation: 120 €
Fees for persons presenting papers or visual essays in the academic track (this includes publication in the proceedings, if the papers/essays are accepted):
Phd Students and persons without institutional affiliation: 50 €
Persons with institutional affiliation: 200 €
All will get 3 days full of keynotes, talks, workshops, walks, party, food, drinks. Some food and drinks will have to be paid separately. Details will follow as soon as we figured out exact costs, logistics, etc.
Stay Up-to-Date
You can join the By Design and by Disaster newsletter, its blog and social media channels (FB, IG). Here you find a review of last year’s conference and the proceedings of the academic track.
Scientific Committee
Andrea Fumagalli, Ingrid Kofler, Kris Krois, Eva Leitholf, Marc Herbst, Sonia Matos, Mustapha El Moussaoui, Teresa Palmieri, Anja Salzer, Elisabeth Tauber, Secil Ugur
References
[1] Holloway, John (2022). Hope in Hopeless Times. Pluto Press
[2] Speach by Sean Stephenson: The Prison of Your Mind, 2016 → audio & transscript
[3] Antonio Gramsci, Letters from Prison, vol. 1, trans. Raymond Rosenthal and ed. Frank Rosengarten (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), page 300
[4] Haraway, Donna (2016). Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press, page 3
[5] Frigga Haug (2009). The “Four-in-One Perspective”: A Manifesto for a More Just Life, Socialism and Democracy, 23:1, 119-123, DOI: 10.1080/08854300802635932, page 120
[6] Habermann, Friederike (2024). Overcoming Exploitation and Externalisation. An Intersectional Theory of Hegemony and Transformation. Taylor & Francis, page 8
[7] Wright, Erik Olin (2010). Envisioning Real Utopias. London: Verso
[8] Eschmann, Aurel & Börries Nehe (2024). Beyond Authoritarianism – For an Anti-Fascism of the 21st Century. In International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategieskollektiv orangotango (eds. 2024). Beyond Molotovs – A Visual Handbook of Anti-Authoritarian Strategies. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag
[9] Simon, Herbert A. (1996). The Sciences of the Artificial, third edition. Cambridge: The MIT Press
Illustration by Federica di Pietro & Chiara Rovescala