Studio Roberto Pérez Gayo

WELCOME ZOMO!

A GLITCH IN THE SYSTEM

In queer communities, practices of safe(r) spaces are important, both online and offline. As am ongoing research, Welcome ZOMO investigates strategies to develop such spaces within the framework of existing technologies and software heavily coded withing existing norms and biases. As an online event, it allows participants to experience Zoom in a spatial way, and to challenge and [re]appropiate the conditions, embedded norms and ways of socializing in it. Further, it invites participants to consider ‘self’ making practices as relational processes, bound to community & colectivity.

“‘Contentious Cities’ offers unique interdisciplinary approaches to understanding gendered spatial equity in the urban enviroment. Positioning design as a central component in how cities produce, construct, represent and materialise gendered spatial practices, it brings together practice and theory to critique, question and enable solutions that can challenge the root causes of gender inequality in cities. Through a rich array of case-studies, practice-led interventions, and historical and theoretical perspectives, it examines important issues that affect the ways in which women and people of diverse gender and sexual identities experience and participate in cities.”

SPACES OF SOLIDARITY

I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS!

Within the context of Culture Lab Europe, ‘Spaces of Solidarity’ develops a mapping and archival methodology of cultural and artistic queer+ initiatives, investigating contemporary forms of solidarity and how they relate to an entangled and complex public space, in which the built enviroment, media infraestructures, information technologies & institutional spaces, among others, colide.

Comissioned by the Rietveld Academy & Sandberg Institute Students Union, ‘I Did Not Sign For This!’ is a series of online events in which practical foundations for a collective methodology of care are developed. By paying attention to the moments in which the question of ‘how to care’ arises, care is activated as a provocation and an analytical tool rather than a predetermined set of practices, setting up in this way conditions for grounded exercises on online connectivity, support & community building.

INFRAESTRUCTURES FOR PARTICIPATION

INFRAESTRUCTURES FOR OBJECTION

Building upon ‘projection’ – understood both as an architectural medium for representation and organization, as well as an act of speculation and imagination -, ‘Infraestructures for Objection’ is a multimedia installation exploring the relationship of this concept with the (re)production of identities, behaviours and social relationship in Strijp-S (Eindhoven). Altough in recent years there is a renwed intereste in approaching design and design practices from queer and feminist frameworks, still there is fairly little specific work developed in the field of architecture, and critical examinations of automated data collection, algorhytmic decission mking, and remote control of physical space. Furhter, within this media-architecture there is a lack of agency by which to directly engage, obect and transform these systems form the level of citizens

The gentrification and commercialization of public space, the convergence of urban and media space, and the use of information and algorithmic technologies in cities has been rapidly developing in the last years. To understand the impact that such processes have on the identities, behaviours and relationships of its inhabiants it is not sufficient to problematize current cultural or political debates. Instead, ‘Infraestructures for Participation’ researches the role of design accross the infraestructures through which contemporary urban space is produced, and puts forward a series of methodologies to transform it into more critical, reflective and participatory.

PEER 2 PEER

P.U.B.

CO|ORDINATED ACTIONS

COLLECTIVE ENNUNCIATIONS

Urban space articulates binary spaces of inclusion and exclusion. This is sustained by networks of political, social, comemrcial and residential interests whereby power differentials. Within these conditions, individuals are shaped by or re-shape public space. Taking the concept of the line as a starting point, Co – Ordinated Actions provides with critical and analytical methods to consider the effects of design(ing) on identities, bodies and social relationships.

Collective Enunciations speculate on how setting listening conditions prior to the act of speech can generate new forms of community and collectivity. By aooriaching the word Feminism as a technology, the work looks towards how this process can generate self-reflection, inviting to listen to itself from a queer and intersectional framework.

LEVEL[ING][ED] PLAYFIELD

THE OTHER SELF

Visual dissertation & performative research on war games. Development of open ended systems for self-positioning and contestation. Approaching war games both as systems of power and as cultural objects, the work exists both as an exhibition and a participatory system that allows the physicalization and (re)enactment of the reserach. As a result, participants are offered the possibility to collectively reflect and excersise in real time concepts such as control, agency and power.

By attempting to return visual data from a publicly abandoned hard-disk, through the creation of a persona of Facebook, this performance and design research maps the sytems by which contemporary capitalism mass produces subjectivities.

STREET SUPPORT PROJECT

ABSTRACT MACHINES

Street Suport is a European project aimed at offering service providers and local goverments with tools, methods and models with which to support people experiencing homelessness, people who use drugs, and other underserved community in public space.

Ongoing visual research on gamification and its relationship to contemporary forms of governance. Diagrammatic spaces as a site of resistance.

| Design Research | Gamification | Physicalization of Research |

MOVEMENT | SPACE | IDENTITY | TERRITORIALIZATION

REFLECTIVE SELF|ORIENTATION[S]

Movement | Space | Indentity | Territorialization

Orientation can be understood as a mutually constitutive process and a metastable relatonship between space and the body. This workshop explores this double configuration, and provides participants with conceptual and methodological tools that enable them to inquire into the relationship of design with systems of power through process of [self]orientation.

S&S

MAPPING OF DIFFERENCES

“It’s because feminism has become a fashionable commodity now, that we’re in need of a more inclusive and varied reflection on contemporary girlhood, gender equality stuggles, and their relationship to politics and philosophy. This books documents the production and thoght process of six engagin artists and designers regarding the theme, and featyures a collection of essafys by artists, academics, writers and rioters, curators, and jorunalists.”

Mapping of Differences is a close examination to notions of public space and collectivity through the lense of migration. Building upon qualitative research and data visualization, Mappinging of Differences, challenges ideas about territorialization of identity.

| Design Research | Publication | Feminist Methodologies |

MAPPING DOMESTICITIES | PERFORMATIVE METHODOLOGIES

GEOGRAPHY OF SAFE SPACES

This workshop offers tools through which to experience, analyze and conceptualize the domestic as an intersecting space in which material and cultural forces inform each other. As such, it focuses on the relationship between identity and power by exploring what set of relationships are (re)produced within the realm of the dweeling, its mechanisms, and material manifestations.

Geography of Safe Spaces is a cross-disciplnary project with the goal of critically analyze the political and institutional context of DCR’s and how it relates to the architectural physicalization of ideals, values and pratices of care and safety. The project positions itself in an overlapping space accross contemporary social & health policy, identity, and public opinion in relationship to poverty, drug use, sex work and homelessness.

GUESS WHO

COMMUNITY BASED HCV PROGRAMMES

Guess Who? is a three-channel, multimedia installation that explores the role that a-signifying semiotics have in the production of subjectivities and social relationships. The work critically examines how game systems operate as a force that moves between the singularization of subjectivities, and the creation and alteration of other lives and worlds. By deconstructing the elements of a rules-based performance, and rearranging all of the piece critically in a diagrammatic space, ‘Guess who?’ generates a socio-technological space in which the visitor is endowed with a capacity for self-affection, self-affirmation and self-position withing a field of power relationships.

This study analyses more than 60 examples of community based HCV services in 27 European countries, and provides policy makers, social and health proffesionals with relevant information and tools with which to develop new community based programs, or to improve existing ones.

WALKM*N

POLICY BRIEFING ON CIVIL SOCIETY INVOLVEMENT

Technologies of intimacy, memory & resistance. Investigating the use of portable music devices as a tactic for negotiating urban public space.

| Design Research | Multimedia Installation |

This publication is aimed at supporting Civil Society Organizations working in the field of drugs policies. It provides an overview of the mechanisms for meaningful involvmenet in policy making processes, an analysis of the EU Action Plan, and recommendations for the development of national advocacy activities.