Many Places, Many Design Histories

Registration
Programme
Getting here

Location: Project Studio, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå Arts Campus

Design as a practice is undergoing substantial transformations. Ideas about what is considered to be design, as well as who designs, and where design is done, have expanded. How is this expanded understanding of design reflected in how we comprehend, write and exhibit design’s history? In this symposium, we hope to bring together and explore which other stories can become visible when design histories are made from diverse places, with multiple materials, and through interdisciplinary perspectives. 

Sidestepping the binary oppositions that long formed a leitmotif in design history – between design or craft, urban or rural, center or periphery, industrial or handmade, modern or traditional – this symposium encourages participants to think about and discuss design from viewpoints of inclusion, and as a development through a variety of histories. 

As this is the first time the Nordic Forum for Design History convenes in Sápmi, it offers an alternative vantage point to conventional perspectives within ‘Nordic design’, which have been situated, formulated, and institutionalized in metropolitan areas of the global North. It is there that the ‘modern’ and the ‘innovative’ have been sought and found, defining the economic and cultural capital that has come to shape design history as a discipline. As a result, complexities, power struggles and practices from other geographies have disappeared, creating design historical blind spots. 

Also, being in Sápmi, it becomes unavoidable to call attention to the darker side of Western modernity where histories of colonialism seldom have been included in the understanding of design history from the Nordic region. This offers a unique vantage point to challenge conventional narratives of “Nordic design” and address overlooked histories, including those shaped by colonialism.

A previously issued call for papers can be downloaded as a PDF here, for those who wish to revisit the original invitation to contribute.

About the symposium

This is the 19th symposium arranged by the Nordic Forum for Design History. It will be held at the Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, gathering scholars, design practitioners, museum curators, students, teachers, and anyone with an interest in design and design history. 

Starting at lunchtime on May 6, we invite participants to engage in conversations on how emerging design practices and shifts in perspectives reshape the way we write, exhibit and understand design history. The first 1,5 days are dedicated to presentations, keynote talks, posters, papers and panels exploring and expanding the outlooks, issues, stories and complexities of Nordic design histories. The last day of the symposium will offer study visits. 

Keynote speakers

The invited keynote speakers both turn our attention to histories and practices from the circumpolar region, perspectives that have been less common in Nordic design histories and that challenge assumptions that we might tend to take for granted about design, history and the Nordic.

Gunvor Guttorm, Professor in duodji (Sámi arts and crafts, traditional art, applied art) at Sámi allaskuvla/Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino in Norway. 

Guttorm’s research is interconnected with cultural expression in the Sámi and indigenous societies, especially duodji. The focus of her research deals with duodji in a contemporary setting, and indigenous people’s context. She has written extensively about how the traditional knowledge of Sámi art and craft is transformed to the modern lifestyle. In an Indigenous world, she has participated as invited speaker at Indigenous research congresses and participated in exhibitions in Sápmi and abroad. From 2016 -2018 she worked in a reference group for the exhibition “Let the River Flow”, organized by the Office for Contemporary Art, Oslo. She has also been editor together with Harald Gaski and Katya Garcia Antón of Let the River Flow, An Indigenous Uprising and its Legacy in Art, Ecology and Politics (2020).

Bart Pushaw, Assistant Professor of art history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA. 

Pushaw received their PhD in Art History from the University of Maryland and then was a driving member of the international research collective “The Art of Nordic Colonialism: Writing Transcultural Art Histories” based at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. Pushaw’s teaching, research, and curatorial work focus on art histories of the Circumpolar North, with emphasis on the global dimensions of the Indigenous Arctic. They deploy their research to advance rematriation campaigns of cultural heritage back to Indigenous stewardship, especially in Kalaallit Nunaat, Alaska, as well in the Caribbean. They recently served as curatorial consultant on the advisory board for The Wider World and Scrimshaw, an exhibition on the relationship between U.S. whaling and global Indigenous Pacific arts at the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The exhibition Art in the Age of the Anthropocene, where Pushaw curated a section on global Arctic arts at the National Gallery of Estonia, won “Exhibition of the Year” in 2023. They are at work on their first book Colonial Inuit Art and the Atlantic World.