Poetries Politics

Poetry must be made by all. 

Not by one.

– Isidore Ducasse. Comte de Lautréamont

The book that you see on the shelf, Poetries – Politics: A Celebration of Language, Art, and Learning is recently published by Rutgers Press. It is the outcome of a collaboration between design students at Mason Gross and SAS students. Professor of French Literature Mary Shaw and I co-taught a practicum class in 2017 that then culminated as an exhibition at the Academic Building. The book features posters that display politically charged poems from around the world that are selected by SAS students and designed bilingually by Mason Gross students. 

Poetries – Politics is edited by Jenevieve DeLosSantos, Associate Teaching Professor & Director of Special Projects, and designed by Devon Monaghan, a design alum. I have included here a PDF of sample pages from the book along with Devon’s and my articles. All the students and other contributors are listed in the PDF. It is a coffee table book with good reproductions of great collaborative student work. It is available on amazon and at Barnes & Noble next to the train station in New Brunswick, in the faculty author section.

Design Lecture Series: Tega Brain

On November 30, we will welcome Tega Brain for a lecture presented as part of the Fall 2021 Rutgers Design Lecture Series, free and open to all. Register at art.rutgers.edu/design-lecture-series

Split image of image 1 contains text: Design Lecture Series flyer SPEAKER NAME, hosted online. Image 2 contains the speaker's headshot.
Tega Brain is an Australian-born artist and environmental engineer whose work examines issues of ecology, data systems and infrastructure. She has created wireless networks that respond to natural phenomena, systems for obfuscating fitness data, and an online smell-based dating service. Her work has been shown widely including in the Vienna Biennale for Change and the Guangzhou Triennial. Her first book, Code as Creative Medium, is co authored with Golan Levin and published with MIT Press.

Design Lecture Series: Nontsikelelo Mutiti

On November 16, we welcomed Nontsikelelo Mutiti for a lecture presented as part of the Fall 2021 Rutgers Design Lecture Series, free and open to all. Register at art.rutgers.edu/design-lecture-series

Split image of image 1 contains text: Design Lecture Series flyer SPEAKER NAME, hosted online. Image 2 contains the speaker's headshot.

Nontsikelelo Mutiti is a Zimbabwean-born visual artist and educator. She is invested in elevating the work and practices of Black peoples past, present, and future through a conceptual approach to design, publishing, archiving practices, and institution building. Mutiti holds a diploma in multimedia from the Zimbabwe Institute of Digital Arts and an MFA from the Yale School of Art, with a concentration in graphic design.

Design Lecture Series: Channel Studio

On November 16, we welcomed Channel Studio for a lecture presented as part of the Fall 2021 Rutgers Design Lecture Series, free and open to all. Register at art.rutgers.edu/design-lecture-series

Split image of image 1 contains text: Design Lecture Series flyer SPEAKER NAME, hosted online. Image 2 contains the speaker's headshot.
Channel is an independent design and technology studio based in New York City specializing in digital products, identities and archives. Channel Studio was founded by Will Denton and Seth Kranzler in 2017 with the intention of radically rethinking the ways we discover, explore, and interact with content. Today Channel partners with global brands, technology startups, and cultural institutions to imagine futuristic interfaces and build them at scale. Channel aims to preserve and democratize the world’s knowledge and culture by making them more accessible.

Design Lecture Series: Nika Simovich Fisher

On November 9, we welcomed Nika Simovich Fisher for a lecture presented as part of the Fall 2021 Rutgers Design Lecture Series, free and open to all. Register at art.rutgers.edu/design-lecture-series

Split image of image 1 contains text: Design Lecture Series flyer SPEAKER NAME, hosted online. Image 2 contains the speaker's headshot.
Nika Simovich Fisher is a designer, writer, and educator based in New York. She is a partner at Labud, a multi-disciplinary design and development studio.  As a design educator, Nika teaches interaction design at Parsons School of Design as well as at The University of Pennsylvania. She is passionate about helping students develop a clearer sense of themselves that informs their research and design work. Nika’s written work focuses on how design changes over time, particularly on the internet. Her work is published in The New York Times and AIGA Eye on Design. Nika was born in Belgrade, Serbia and grew up in the United States. She holds a BFA from Parsons School of Design and is completing her masters degree in journalism from Columbia University.