School for Designing a Society

The School for Designing a Society

Winter/Spring Semester: February 6 - April 27 2012
Urbana, Illinois

To apply to participate, fill out our questionnaire below or visit this link

Tunis, Cairo, Sanaa, Madison, New York, San Francisco, Santiago de Chile, San Juan, Washington, London, Madrid, Milan, Rome, Des Moines, Lisbon, Athens, Denver, Jakarta, Kansas City, LA, Seoul, Sarasota, Kolkata, Austin, Riadh, Detroit, St. Louis, Tel Aviv, Chicago, Santa Fe, Johannesburg, Barcelona, Atlanta, Tokyo, Champaign-Urbana...

Around the world, collective expressions of discontent with the current system are blooming in an unprecedented way this year. Stark inequalities of wealth, power and privilege maintained by the system cannot be ignored. And we all are gradually learning not only that a surprising variety of us are refusing to go along with this status quo, but also that the status quo cannot continue without our consent. So we’re changing things—but changing how? Which changes do we wish to see and be in the world?—legitimate, crucial, not-yet-completely-answered questions.

School for Designing a Society, Summer 2011 at Gesundheit in West Virginia

The School for Designing a Society was formed 20 years ago to foster thoughtful and creative answers to such questions. The school offers time, space, tools, company, concepts, courses, discussions toward answering the questions: What would I consider a desirable society? What do experimental composition, design, activism, systems theory, political economy, performance, and bi-directional care have to offer each other ... and me ... and my desires? In addition, the school hosts a nursery of projects—facilitated by a core group of composers, activists, designers—a place to design the work that you want to do to make a difference; to acquire skills, experiences, and new frameworks as ways of remaining actively curious and connecting.

Who is invited? Since we all live with the consequences of the current design of society, everyone is invited to participate in designing a different one. No particular educational background is required; the prerequisite is the desire to participate in designing a society.

To apply to participate, fill out our questionnaire:

You will be contacted by Austin or Melanie, who you can also email questions to: applications@designingasociety.net

Core Curriculum

In addition to participating in the Core Curriculum of the school, students will be invited to choose their course of study and action from the following clusters:

Ecological Design:

• Liberation Ecology;
• Tell Me What Justice Looks Like, or, The Criminal.....Justice.....System

Performance as Social Design:

• The Material Life of an Idea. For an idea to have a material life, its project must do more that apply or manage it.

Living in Community:

• Living Such that there is Community (in connection with participants living in group housing)

Designing Disagreements

• (4 sessions): co-presented by Cristina Finotti (Milano, Italy, via skype) and Ya'aqov Ziso, Urbana.
• This course will engage articulation of moments of arguments and disagreements in our daily life whereby we intend these disagreements to forge diversity of understandings, and maintain differences of opinions.

Odd Music, Experimental Music, and Microtonal Design and Performance:

• The Roles of Listening/Gazing, and Their Circularities---under what conditions does an acoustic event turn into a musical event? a visual event turn into a social event?
• Udderbot Marching Choir: Occupy the Udderbot!!

Connecting Cybernetics and Social Change: Alternatives to Hierarchy

Design Groups: Intellectual Genealogy of the School for Designing a Society

Feminist Composition, Design and Performance:

• Activist Projects with Danielle Chynoweth and with the Urbana Accordion Club
• "You are here"--yeah, but what if we were 'there'? composing Poetry, Music, Theater, Dance, Performance in order to take a quick look into a desirable future;
• Voicing Practicing, and Theater Lab---using improvisation as research.

Faculty

Spring semester 2012 will be taught by faculty of the School for Designing a Society, by visiting faculty from Indiana East University, by members of OddMusic-UC, by members of the Champaign-Urbana community.

What Happens at this School?

Participants are asked to put their desires into words and their words into actions in design projects. Seminars and workshops meet regularly.

Beginning Participants: are invited to study the ideas and distinctions offered and to learn how to make your own ideas and draw your own distinctions; look systems; desire what is not yet and come to rely on yourself as a desirer; articulate, create your eloquence; compose, design, try things;create support and solidarity with other participants; move back and forth through the domains of cybernetics, social change, desire, design, composition, performance.

Second year participants: are invited to design a project or composition that connects your desires, to social change; study other projects; participate as a humble helper in projects designed by other people; learn how to do the practical work of giving ideas a material life; experience yourself as a fine worker.

Third year participants: are invited to organize and initiate your project, your design, your composition. Keep documenting how you are, how it is.

Fourth year participants: are invited to return to the school as a teacher and organizer of what you now know and care.

Designing a Society is a project that intersects the formats of classroom, commune, performance ensemble, activist group. Designing a Society requires classrooms to be places of solidarity among students, so that friction, conflict, and uncertainty can flourish and be distinguished from contexts of violence, confusion, and conformity; Designing a Society requires communal living to be intellectual, so that being an individual is valued and distinct from being individualistic; is a project that requires performance ensembles to have the experience of coordinating with one another rather than competing; is a project that asks activists to protest old forms of protest, so that messages and methods of contemporary relevance can be created.

How Do I Apply?

To apply to participate, fill out our questionnaire above or visit this link

You will be contacted by Austin or Melanie, who you can also email questions to: applications@designingasociety.net

Tuition Fees

Spring Semester 2012: $3200 for 3 months, including dormitory room. Sliding scale available. We turn no one away for lack of funds.

Scholarship & Tuition Reductions

To request financial assistance, please indicate your situation on the application form or in the telephone interview.

Room & Board

Spring semester of the School for Designing a Society is in Urbana, Illinois. We will arrange modest rooming for participants, with orientation on living in community.