How are larger systems – norms, values, assumptions – embedded and reproduced through public transport design? How does an object facilitate or restrict our freedom of movement?

This workshop questions and reinvents the objects, spaces, and territories of how we stay in transit. By studying the body and space interaction, we ask workshop participants to observe, analyze, and reflect upon their own and others’ experiences.

Gesture in Transit approaches several understandings of space through an intersectional framework and considers its choreographies, spatial settings, and social and political outcomes. For this, this workshop asks participants to position their body as a research tool, using play, embodiment, and the reenactment of (un)written social rules to explore the staged context of social behavior in public space.

In this workshop, we pay special attention to an understanding of space as the product of a carefully designed plan, which privileges and excludes certain social relations and exerts soft and rigid power forms. Topics discussed in this way will include gender, race, class privilege, queerness, and processes of inclusion/exclusion.

Please note that the following assignments are collective exercises. Assignments A1, A2, and A3 are joint exercises that the whole class can do together. Likewise, a small group (ideally a group of 3) can do assignments A4 and A5 together.

• A1. Introduction video
  Link to the video:
  https://vimeo.com/614306108
  This video plays a 10-minute script that introduces the general theme of the workshop, giving examples of potential case studies participants could decide to explore. The video plays out a conversation between two people. Two participants can activate the dialogue script by playing the video with the sound off and reading the subtitles aloud. This exercise is an example of how students can activate a text performatively.

• A2. Deep Listening exercise
  Link to the 12-minute sound piece:
  https://soundcloud.com/gabriel-fontana-526899133/public-transport-4wav-1
  This listening exercise invites participants to reflect and share their experiences of public transportation and understand how their individual experiences might differ from their classmates due to their identity, body, privilege, etc.

• • What is Deep Listening?
    In 1989, composer Pauline Oliveros coined the term Deep Listening to describe a practice of radical attentiveness. She explains that listening is not the same as hearing, and hearing is not the same as listening. To hear is the physical means that enables perception. To listen is to give meaning to what is perceived acoustically. Therefore, deep listening comes from listening to your listening and discerning the effects on your body. As you listen, notice the impact and effects of sound throughout the body. Notice when you feel sound in your body.

• • Keep in mind the following questions while listening to the piece:
    • How does the soundscape make you feel?
    • Which elements do you recognize in the soundscape?
    • Which sound attracts your attention the most? How? And why?
    • Are there moments when you are not listening?
    • Do you have an assumption? Why?
    • Does the sound piece remind you of some specific situation you have experienced?
    • Do you recognize any dominant voices?

• A3. Seating choreography
  Link to the 9-minute video:
  https://vimeo.com/614315998
  This exercise explores how the body functions as an archive of memories, political and personal, collective and individual. It questions how we attach meanings to gestures and seating positions, such as the one of manspreading in public space.
  Participants are invited to repeat and copy instantly the different seating positions performed by the person on the video. A discussion follows the exercise, where participants share their observations, experiences, and understandings of behavioral gestures and public space.

• • Here are questions for the discussion:
    • Are there some of these seating positions you embody in your daily life?
    • Do some of these positions feel unusual?
    • Do you have a specific body in mind?
    • How do you think some of these gestures influence the organization of bodies within space?
    • Does your sitting position change depending on the space where you find yourself?

• A4. Gesture exercise
  This assignment investigates particular histories of the body, examining how power is inscribed through choreographic signs. To gesture, from the Latin ‘gerare,’ means to carry the body in a way as to convey meaning. Gestures can be unconscious and unintentional but also mimetic and linguistic. Gestures express but also are impressed upon us. As mimetic creatures, we consciously and unconsciously appropriate information from our social, spatial, and cultural contexts.

• • STEP 1:
    Choose with your group one specific gesture or body position found in a transportation network (e.g., queueing, carrying luggage, punching a ticket, typing on a phone, a particular seating position, etc.). For this, take time to discuss with your group which gesture you think has a strong potential for further investigation. Then, with your group, research the social implication, political symbolism, and cultural histories around this gesture and its evolution in time. Finally, prepare a 5-minute presentation that presents a storyline about your gesture. Keep it visual. Keep text only minimal (titles and captions).

• • Questions to investigate:
    • Where & when does this gesture appear?
    • What is the history of this gesture? Did it evolve through time?
    • What is the cultural meaning of this gesture? Did it evolve through time?
    • In which other contexts does this gesture appear?
    • How did the gesture travel from one body (human, more-than-human, or machinic) to another?
    • How does the gesture have different meanings depending on the body that performs it (age, body ability, gender, race, class)?

• • STEP 2:
    Make a 1-minute video that presents your gesture performed in 10 different ways. Here are some ideas:
    • very slow/very fast
    • very big / very small
    • interact with another person
    • reversed
    • gentle/aggressive
    • interact with a more-than-human body (animals, plants, objects)
    • repetition/loop

• A5. Object Embodiment
  This assignment helps participants understand how power structures are inscribed in design objects. In addition, it invites the participants to look at design from a different perspective: What are an object’s attitude and body language? And which meaning does it communicate?

• • Instruction:
    Choose an object or a system you find in public transport networks (or public space) that restricts or favors freedom of movement. Develop an embodiment sequence (a video of 1-minute length) related to the object (embodiment of its mechanisms, functionality.)

• My Body Doesn’t Exist by Paul B. Preciado. In The Documenta Reader, 2016.
• Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez. See chapter ‘Can Snow-Clearing be Sexist?’.
• Design Justice, A.I., and Escape from the Matrix of Domination by Sasha Costanza-Chock.
  https://jods.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/costanza-chock/
• Architecture and the Norm: The Violence of a Continuous Reciprocity by Leopold Lambert. In The Funambulist Magazine, Sep-Oct 2017.
• https://www.dezeen.com/2018/01/04/design-terrorism-talk-eindhoven-pioneers-use-scent-light-influence-behaviour-people-in-crowds/

The authors are Gabriel Fontana and Vivien Tauchmann.

The assignment has been tested at:
Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam (NL) with Master design students, February 2021.
Willem De Kooning Academie, Rotterdam, (NL) with Bachelor art and design students, November 2021. Social Aspects, Nijmegen, 2020.

Author’s Encouragement
The assignment gives students specific examples of how design reproduces power structures. Therefore, it looks at the design discipline critically and makes students think and reflect on their social responsibilities as designers or artists. In addition, with a playful approach, it uses play, embodiment, and the reenactment of (un)written social rules to explore the staged context of social behavior in public space.

Prior Knowledge and Preparation
Please watch the introduction video as a first preparation step for the assignment. The video introduces the topic of freedom of movement and gives examples of relevant case studies that workshop participants could potentially deconstruct through the assignment. Before beginning the workshop, reading the texts on the reading list is also recommended.

Accessibility:
Assistance for Learners
The tasks of the assignment are accessible to a diverse range of bodies.

Additional Tools

• Vimeo
• Soundcloud
• This assignment does not require any specific space and can be facilitated remotely using online meeting tools such as Microsoft Teams and Zoom. It does, however, require access to the following online platforms: Vimeo and Soundcloud.