Waterways

Project Leads:  Paddy Hartung, Eleni Papazoglou

Participants: 12

Number of Days: 3

Project Outline: Waterways is a three-day collaborative workshop exploring the boundaries of regulations. Specifically looking at the peculiar legal aspects of water ownership and their affect, it aims to critically deconstruct abstract notions through hands-on approaches and speculate on the future of water: that being environmental, socio-political, economic etc.

The focus of this project is absurdity of constructed systems in an experiential manner. It aspires to make invisible scales, limitations, and paradoxes visible to a broad audience through unorthodox outcomes. Design is a tool for the production of provocations, speculations, and alternative interpretations of the social world as well as new sets of relationships.

Who owns the ocean, rivers and aquifers? Or better, who should own it and who shouldn’t? Why does the ownership of water alter when its over or underground? Such will be the starting point for the questioning of legality, as one of the ambiguous systems that govern our future everyday.

Responses may take a multitude of forms ranging form narrative, artifactual, data driven to performative. However, the emphasis is not outcome, but process. Ranging from rapid idea generation and prototyping, to speculation, and world building the workshop is a platform for sharing methods for conceptualizing future scenarios.

Through the deconstruction of laws regarding water issues, this workshop aims is to humanise one’s daunting perception of law and understand legislation through resourcesful, playful and critical methods.

Timetable:

Day 1: The workshop kicks off with an introduction between everyone in the group, followed by a discussion accommodated by visual and written material (but also maybe guest, possibly a lawyer), to take place within the college grounds. The second half of the first day consists of a series of short tasks in both making and thinking, with current factual details (or research in such) as starting points.

Day 2: Teams of 3 are asked to work on a longer form task. Starting off at college the group will work around and in relation to the ponds of Hyde Park for a day, by creating interventions and scenarios.

Day 3: The first half of the day is for teams to finalise their piece, may this be a performance, a product launch, screening etc. Lunch break (communal lunch) Presentations / exhibitions.