Polycrisis and Design: Ethics, Intervention, Possibility

The term ‘polycrisis’ is a recent coinage (Morin, 1999; Tooze, 2022), intended to highlight the intersection of multiple crises that cause systemic risk to contemporary planetary ecosystems and social cohesion: from climate collapse, to the rise of far-right populism. Reflecting the growing recognition of both design’s complicity in (Fry and Nocek, 2021; Martin, 2022) and challenge to the polycrisis (Rawsthorn and Antonelli, 2022), this panel will explore designed objects and systems from any point in history, including the present, that have amplified or in part caused specific crises (for example, planned obsolescence and unsustainability) or have worked to help alleviate intersecting crises. We invite papers that consider either dimension—creating polycrisis or mitigating it—regardless of whether the paper focuses on the past, present, or future of design. Further, we encourage submissions that engage in the intersections of multiple crises. Designs and design practices may be formal or informal, global systems or locally produced, and may test the authoritative role of designers in addressing these challenges as professional practitioners.

Examples of the polycrisis and design relevant to the panel might include, but are not limited to:

• threats to democratic systems of governance
• the climate crisis (including food & water insecurity, resource depletion, migration)
• Information/disinformation/misinformation
• unstable economic systems and wealth inequality
• military conflict
• black markets
• Counterfeiting and fakes

The panel aims to raise complex ethical discussions about the role of design and designers in both creating and alleviating the seemingly numerous, intertwined global crises facing societies today and throughout history.