Mushon Zer-Aviv
Senior Faculty Member at Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art
Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer, writer, educator, futurist, and activist. His work involves mapping and way-finding through physical, digital, and political landscapes. These are also the themes he explores in his current research titled ‘Friction and Flow – a design theory of change’, which explores new ways of understanding change and the future. It proposes approaches that embrace the uncertainty and ‘darkness’ of the future as a space for hope and possibility. His work often brings together provocation and action, addressing themes such as systemic bias. Mushon is a board member of the Israeli/Palestinian peace movement A Land For All – Two States, One Homeland. He is a senior faculty member at Shenkar College and an alumnus of Eyebeam, an art and technology centre in New York.
His creative work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and presented at many international festivals. Mushon’s writings have appeared in several books, as well as various online platforms. In the past, he has held adjunct teaching positions at NYU, The New School, and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
Mushon Zer-Aviv
Senior Faculty Member at Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art
Mushon Zer-Aviv is a designer, writer, educator, futurist, and activist. His work involves mapping and way-finding through physical, digital, and political landscapes. These are also the themes he explores in his current research titled ‘Friction and Flow – a design theory of change’, which explores new ways of understanding change and the future. It proposes approaches that embrace the uncertainty and ‘darkness’ of the future as a space for hope and possibility. His work often brings together provocation and action, addressing themes such as systemic bias. Mushon is a board member of the Israeli/Palestinian peace movement A Land For All – Two States, One Homeland. He is a senior faculty member at Shenkar College and an alumnus of Eyebeam, an art and technology centre in New York.
His creative work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and presented at many international festivals. Mushon’s writings have appeared in several books, as well as various online platforms. In the past, he has held adjunct teaching positions at NYU, The New School, and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design.
Sessions
How resilience stifles change
This interactive session invites critical reflection on Barcelona Design Week’s binding theme of Creative Resilience. The aim is to formulate three big groups of questions that are key for the design process that engages resilience. In many design settings, resilience is cast by default as a desirable specification. In the practice of service design, resilience is often used as a measure of success. We keep using that words ‘resilience' but does it really mean what we think it means?
BDW’s curator Alessandro Manetti, designer, artist and activist Mushon Zer-Aviv, and critical futures scholar Maya Van Leemput take a step back to ask what needs to be resilient? What does not? What threats do we see that resilience might be measured against? And what images of the future do we measure against? Plain and simple, what do you want to see in the future and what not? What might break and what not? And what is worth salvaging from the present?
You, the audience, will be asked to actively think with the panel throughout the conversation. Together we list the questions that matter.
Futures & foresightFuture Screenshots: Designing possible sustainable futures
In this futures design workshop, you will be introduced to the Future Screenshots methodology and acquire new design tools to imagine both futures to prefer and to prevent, to map their potential, and to expose critical opportunities for design action. This methodology has been developed and used in various contexts: design management, urban development, public policy, and in the context of the Israeli/Palestinian co-resistance and co-liberation struggle.
For this workshop, we will use climate change as a case study. While climate models provide crucial signals, they do not provide a map for us to draft a path forward. Climate urgency and climate determinism too often sound alarmingly the same. The workshop addresses this gap by equipping participants with tools to explore alternative futures and uncover actionable opportunities. Yes, even in the climate context.
For who
The futures-enthusiasts, the methodology-curious, the climate anxious, and the design-for-change type
Key takeaways
Broad collaborative perspective on (climate) futures worth promoting or preventing, key concepts in futures thinking, hands-on experience in rapid-futuring, introduction to the Future Screenshots methodology.
Futures & foresight