Interview: Marina Otero Verzier, Head of DAEs Social Design MA

Jeannette Petrik: How can social designers engage beyond participatory projects, working with communities in a way that is educational, or spreading information?

Marina Otero: With the department of Social Design, one of our primary concerns is to envision a design practice that is not necessarily human-centred. There is a strong interest and focus on ecology and climate justice, which stems from a desire to reconfigure society in a way that is less extractive and exploitative. We consider that social and ecological injustices are inevitably connected.

The department consists of a heterogeneous group of people. Students come from a design background, but also from cooking, performing, theatre-making, activism, political science, anthropology, philosophy, art, architecture, dance, etc. It is through all these perspectives, experiences, and embodied knowledges that we can imagine and practice society otherwise.

Our graduates engage with different communities and contexts during their studies. For instance, last year Juliette Vandermosten worked with support groups for dementia; Manuel Steitz collaborated with investigative journalists collecting war crime evidence in Ukraine, and Chen Yu Wang with Foxconn factory workers in Asia. In Eindhoven, Marte Mei van Haaster developed a situated practice at the intersection of law and design that advocates for restorative relations between humans and non-humans. In France, Valentin Patis collaborated with winemakers in the region of Champagne to encourage new types of cultivation that protect the land and biodiversity, while Margarita Coelho worked with local craft women from her hometown in Portugal to refashioning traditional aprons and pouches through a feminist lens.

“An exhibition is often an excuse to think through topics in a space and open them up for public discussion… It assembles a community around a project”

→JP: What is your personal take on your practice as a social designer?

MO: I’ve developed a socio-political practice which relates to architecture and design. Although I have devoted most of my career to alternative models of instituting alongside universities, museums, and archives, at this moment I am particularly interested in non-normative, non-institutional practices. For instance, I have collaborated with Netherlands’ squatting community, who are not professionally trained as designers, but nevertheless, have played a fundamental role in protecting cities from neoliberal housing policies and gentrification processes.

I also work alongside communities fighting resource extractivism in Chile, Portugal and Spain. These experiences triggered an interest in the post-anthropocentric turn in design, which puts in crisis a design organised around human comfort and instead considers the lives of other beings as equally important. Through more-than-human thinking, for instance, we challenge the notion that mountains are lifeless entities and resources from which to extract to create design objects. This sensitivity completely transforms our way of thinking about design.

→JP: What kind of form does your research take in those cases?

MO: I embrace public research and open-ended processes at the intersection of ethics, politics, and ecology. Many times, I start with setting up exhibitions. Instead of being the end of the project, an exhibition is often an excuse to think through topics in a space and open them up for public discussion. The exhibition then becomes a space for gathering, collaborating, sharing and questioning ideas. It assembles a community around a project.

Let’s take the example of lithium. I am curating an exhibition called “Compulsive Desires: On Lithium Extraction and Unruly Mountains.” The exhibition creates the framework for collaboration with activists and architects of the communities who are fighting lithium mines in the North of Portugal. In preparation for the exhibition, we have organised site visits, assemblies, public programmes and spaces for sharing knowledge. In addition to important alliances, these gatherings allow for a public debate nationally and internationally. At the same time, the exhibition provides resources that are mobilized to serve and support these communities and their ongoing struggles, which in the end is my primary aim.

“We consider failure as part of the process of making because it encourages us to explore without fear”

→JP: It sounds like you prefer to avoid focusing on a single skill, or a single interest.

MO: I am a bit obsessive! When I start looking very deeply into one subject, I also get excited about its multiple ramifications. To me, it is important to keep projects open-ended. With my students, we always imagine that projects are, by definition, incomplete, and part of larger trajectories. This means that you can contradict yourself, challenge initial hypotheses, and be open to revisiting your own ideas and methodologies.

My current work on lithium has its origins back in 2016 when I was researching how automation was transforming labour markets, workers and territories. This research on labour conditions led me to focus on burnout as a condition affecting bodies and the planet. Through Burnout I learned about the relationship between pharmacology, extraction and mental health, and that’s where lithium came to focus.

Similarly, lithium – which is an element used for batteries in phones, laptops, and electric vehicles - made me intrigued about the materiality of digital infrastructures. I started conducting field research to analyse how elements and spaces are entangled: from phones to the data centres, to the fibre optic cables, to the mine where materials are extracted, to the factories where batteries are produced and the energy plants that generate the power for our devices. And of course, along the way, I also engaged with the communities fighting power plants, mines and data centres.

→JP: How has your practice as an educator impacted your design and research practice?

MO: I’ve been involved in education since I was 16 years old, first in dance and gymnastics [laughs] and later in architecture and design. I can’t conceive my life without engaging in education. I thrive in environments where the exchanging of ideas is the fundamental element that brings people together. Central to this experience is creating alliances, and advancing knowledge together. Unfortunately, there aren’t many spaces in society where we can be critical yet vulnerable; where we share ideas still in formation, express doubts, truly experiment and make mistakes. Our course is a space where students learn not to be scared of failure. We consider failure as part of the process of making because it encourages us to explore without fear. I cannot imagine my practice without it.