What are the possibilities of indisciplinarity for design practice? Gabriela is particularly interested in discovering ways to generate a space where designers are co-producers of knowledge. In the upcoming year, she will explore the implications of applying indisciplinarity (Rancière) to design practice–a framework that creates a common ground for specialists from various disciplines to learn and co-create ideas together, without hierarchical structures. In this approach, participants can truly collaborate by removing the labels of their specialization and with them also the related stereotypes.
She will be working in close collaboration with Lorenzo Gerbi, who’s researching the concept of indisciplinarity at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and in his practice at Baltan Laboratories, Eindhoven. In a few words, Lorenzo proposes indisciplinarity as a temporary emancipatory practice both opposing the discipline (that students undergo in a teaching environment) and the disciplines (the way they divide knowledge and who can contribute to it from who cannot).
Gabriela wants to participate in topic-centric indisciplinary learning environments, discovering new methods and applying it in her own design practice.
Gabriela Baka
Gabriela Baka is a Polish designer creating specially tailored solutions in digital experience UI/ UX, help businesses grow, excite user and customers by challenging the best practices of user-centered design. Currently she does great things with Owls Department.Previously she worked at Moby Digg studio as a senior designer. From 2015 to 2016, she was the Design Fellow at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, US. She is am a member of the editorial and design team at Fictional Journal—an online publication investigating design’s involvement within society. Baka holds a bachelor of Crossmedia Design from ArtEZ Academy of Art and Design and graduated with a Masters of Information Design from the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2014.
Lorenzo Gerbi
Lorenzo Gerbi is an art director, curator and educator based in Eindhoven (NL). He translates his strong interest in conceptual and speculative design in new scenarios and concepts not only for products but also for education, exhibitions, strategies for companies, creative formats and, occasionally, for artistic projects.
Since 2015, he has managed the internal design studio and education programmes of Baltan Laboratories, a Dutch cultural institution which initiates experimentation on the crossroads of art, design, science and technology. He’s external mentor in different Dutch universities (HKU Utrecht, Fontys Eindhoven, Avans Den Bosch, Sint Lucas Eindhoven, AKV Sint-Joost Den Bosch), for which he has developed and coached several education trajectories in collaboration with Baltan Laboratories. Since April 2019, he has also curated the content of the public events (festival, symposiums, exhibitions) and of the 3 research trajectories of Baltan Laboratories: Homo Sensorium (relationship human-tech), Homo Economicus (new alternative economic models) and Homo Socialis (new perspective on societal issues from the global south).
In November 2017, he joined Stordes, a strategic organisation design studio which helps corporate and public clients to develop their full potential, believing that each organisation is a work of art.
He is Editor-in-Chief of Fictional Journal, a platform and online publication investigating design’s involvement within society.