On September 21, we welcomed Elizabeth Guffey for a lecture on “Designing Disability.”
Elizabeth Guffey works at the intersection of art, design and disability studies. Her book Designing Disability: Symbols, Space and Society (Bloomsbury) argues that designs like the International Symbol of Access or “wheelchair symbol” can alter the environment, making people more disabled or less, depending on the design’s planning and use. She is also Founding Editor of the academic journal Design and Culture. Guffey currently heads the MA in Modern and Contemporary Art, Criticism and Theory at the State University of New York, Purchase College.
On September 14, we welcomed Sadie Red Wing for a lecture on “Designing for Sovereign Tribal Nations in Higher Education.”
Sadie Red Wing is a Lakota graphic designer and advocate from the Spirit Lake Nation of Fort Totten, North Dakota. Red Wing earned her BFA in New Media Arts and Interactive Design at the Institute of American Indian Arts. She received her Master of Graphic Design from North Carolina State University. Her research on cultural revitalization through design tools and strategies created a new demand for tribal competence in graphic design research. Red Wing urges Native American graphic designers to express visual sovereignty in their design work, as well as, encourages academia to include an indigenous perspective in design curriculum. Currently, Red Wing serves as a Student Success Coach for American Indian College Fund (Denver, CO) where she specializes in student retention and resource building for the Native American demographic in higher education spaces. Her work has been featured on AIGA’s Eye on Design: “Why Can’t the U.S. Decolonize Its Design Education?” (2017), Communication Arts: “Decolonizing Native American Design” (2017), and The World Policy Journal: “United Nation’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” (2018).
Shira Inbar is an independent graphic designer with an edge of motion graphics, working in the fields of entertainment, editorial design, and image-making. She worked as a designer and animator at MTV News and a senior designer at Pentagram Design. Since 2018 she has been maintaining an active practice of her own, making work for The New York Times, New Yorker Magazine, Medium, GIPHY, Quartz, Refinery29, Vice Media, Politico, AIGA Eye on Design, Red Bull Arts, and more. In addition to her practice, she teaches a variety of time-based design courses at Parsons School of Design, Pratt Institute, and The Cooper Union. Shira holds a BFA from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and an MFA from Yale University, New Haven.
On Wednesday 3/24, 10:00am EST, please join us for a conversation with Alice Wong and Professor Mindy Seu about the book and organization Disability Visibility. Link is available at spring2021-seminar.designforthe.net.
Closed captioning and sign language interpretation will be available.
Alice Wong is a disabled activist, media maker, and research consultant based in San Francisco, California. She is the founder and director of the Disability Visiblity Project, an online community dedicated to creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture. Alice is also the host and co-producer of the Disability Visibility podcast and co-partner of a number of collaborations such as #CriptheVote and Access Is Love. From 2013–2015, Alice served as a member of the Natioanl Council on Disability, an appointment by President Barack Obama. You can follow her on Twitter: @SFdirewolf. For more: disabilityvisibilityproject.com.
* Please note this time change from 10am to 11:30am!
Lauren Lee McCarthy (she/they) is an artist examining social relationships in the midst of surveillance, automation, and algorithmic living. She is a 2021 United States Artist Fellow, 2020 Sundance New Frontier Story Lab Fellow, 2020 Eyebeam Rapid Response Fellow, 2019 Creative Capital Grantee. She is the recipient of several grants, including the Knight Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google AMI, Sundance Institute, and Rhizome. Her work SOMEONE was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica and the Japan Media Arts Social Impact Award, and her work LAUREN was awarded the IDFA DocLab Award for Immersive Non-Fiction. Lauren’s work has been exhibited internationally, at places such as the Barbican Centre, SIGGRAPH, Seoul Museum of Art, among many others. Lauren is also the creator of p5.js, an open-source art and education platform that prioritizes access and diversity in learning to code, with over 1.5 million users. She expands on this work in her role as a Director of the Processing Foundation, whose mission is to serve those who have historically not had access to the fields of technology, code, and art in learning software and visual literacy. Lauren is an Associate Professor at UCLA Design Media Arts. She holds an MFA from UCLA and a BS Computer Science and BS Art and Design from MIT.
