OPHALEN IN JORWERT KAN OOK.
Despite being a constituent element of any social practice, gender often remains an excluded issue from design discourses and practices, yet it plays a significant, and at times transformative role at almost all levels of design, ranging from the identity of the designer and the designed object to the systems of representation and users’ perceptions. Seeing gender as a constituent element of design disciplines raises questions regarding the construction of the very boundaries of those disciplines. Contemporary gender debates, which can no longer be reduced to the woman/man binary, problematize the articulation of the concepts of femininity and masculinity with specific subjects, objects and power relations. Questions regarding the place of design in this web of complicated relationships involve such issues as the modes of articulation of different design areas with various aspects of gender constructs, and critiques of founding assumptions of design disciplines.
The aim of the eighth meeting of Turkish Design History Society is to discuss design theories and practices from gendered perspectives and to share comparative work involving different cultures, not necessarily limited to Turkey. Contributors are invited to address the following issues.
Subjects of design
The designer as a gendered identity
Designers’ negotiations with gender codes of given societies
Users’ positions in the design field as gendered subjects
Objects of design
Modes of gender coding in design objects
The role of gender codes in the use of design objects
The changing meanings of design objects in different contexts of gender relationships
Praxis of design
Gender relations in design practices and business
Gender issues in design Education
Issues of representation
Analyses of design discourses from gendered perspectives
Gender issues in visual representations (film, advertisements, etc.)
The role of gender in contemporary forms of representation (digitally based representations)