AESTHETIC JUSTICE
Folks standing in front of the Aesthetic Justice wall at the Design Gym. We unveiled and read aloud together the Aesthetic Justice manifesto at our Spring Semester Opening on April 17. / Photo: Nohemi Rodriguez
This semester, we are deepening our collective study of aesthetic justice. We believe that communities of color have long been asked to live in other people’s spatial imaginaries. Now is the time to engage BIPOC communities as co-designers of new community infrastructures.
What do we mean by aesthetic justice?
At DS4SI, we think about aesthetics as the ways in which different people and cultures experience beauty, vitality, and meaning. In much of the U.S., for example, the accepted public aesthetic centers white norms of quiet and calm. When BIPOC and queer communities desire to bring our own sounds, smells, visuals, and other sensorial desires into the public realm, we are often condemned and policed. We consider this aesthetic injustice.
We believe that aesthetic justice is essential to the project of life. Even as we fight for our rights to affordable housing, quality education, livable wages, etc., we want to center our right to experience being moved–the shift in affective and emotional registers which bring exhilaration, joy, tears, and connection. We believe the fight for aesthetic justice is a fight for our lives and a fight for a life worth living.
Fighting for the right to experience life across all of our senses is a fight for a life worth living.
SIGN UP FOR CLASSES & WORKSHOPS
Dive into the world of human imagination with our Book Club—where books are on us! Get those brain-muscles pumping at Open Gym, where you are free to work out your creative design process with staff feedback and the use of our new toolkit. Explore the art of map-making in Mapping Public Infrastructures and deepen your personal understanding of creating change in our Civic Design class. Step up your sneaker game in our Sneaker Restoration and Customization class or get hands-on in our Screenprinting and Sewing classes, mastering the fundamentals of these practical and timeless arts. Find your groove in Taiko Drumming, or collect valuables for our Community Archive course—maybe your family history? Your neighborhood?
Click on the image to learn about each class.
We would like to deeply thank our friends and sponsors for making the Design Gym free and open to all: Barr Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Luce Foundation, Surdna Foundation, and Radical Imagination for Racial Justice (via the partnership with MassArt Foundation and the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture) and the City of Boston Cultural Investment Grant.