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MDEFest

MDEFest – Exploring Alternative Presents

MDEFest is a not-for-profit event with the goal of increasing futures literacy, powering collective power of creatives, and raising awareness about the climate and environmental urgency.

The first festival organized by the Master in Design for Emergent Futures, celebrating the final projects of the MDEF students. MDEFest will take place between the 17th and the 23rd of June 2021, in different locations in Barcelona and online.

The festival is organized and curated by the students from the Master’s 3rd edition, in collaboration with the curator and MDEF faculty Daniel Charny. 

The MDEFest is curated under key topics such as systems change, decolonizing sustainability and climate science from a first-person perspective. Check the program to explore the radical topics behind the festival:

Planetary Mutualism

Natural Beauty Mask | Workshop
The workshop is part of our project named OND. Our desire is to rethink cosmetic products by offering an alternative to the sheet mask with the use of natural ingredients as well as healthy leftovers from your kitchen. What is important for us is to empower our community and create more awareness around waste while encouraging collaborations. During this workshop, you will be able to experiment with this concept as well as enjoy the garden that will host the event.
When → TBD
Where → TBD 

Alternative Food Presents | Interactive Session
Alternative Food Present, an exhibition with the main aim/goal of promoting and demonstrating the amazing potential of duckweed, and generate a discussion/debate around the future of food and agriculture.
When → Tue, 22.06.2021, 12:15-13:45
Where → IAAC, room 303

Sensing Matter | Workshop
The enhancement through active meditation of sensorial perception of our material reality allows us to bring awareness to it, and our relationship with it. The new materials reveal the emergence of nature in the process of confirmation of this new artificiality. Naturally shaped by the forces of the environment, such as light, humidity, temperature and gravity, the materials deform, shrink and grow out of our control. We have explored inverting the roles of power by attempting to submit our bodies to the materials agency, and in this process recognize them also as other bodies, subject to possible collaboration and co-creation.
When → Tue, 22.06.2021, 10:00 to 11:45
Where → IAAC, 103

Mycelium Board | Workshop
A workshop where participants can build a small object/furniture using mycelium boards and get to know the process of creating the composite material, and talk about future applications.
When → Wed, 23.06.2021, 15:00 – 18:00
Where → IAAC/Fab Lab

215: Art Build & Memorial | Workshop
A response to the recent discovery of the mass grave of 215 Indigenous children who attended a residential school in British Columbia. This event aims to explore the history of removal of children from families and alienation of Indigenous peoples from traditional homelands. Participants in the (IAAC internal) art build will create artifacts for a public memorial and speak out to create awareness about attitudes around education, traditional knowledge, and decolonization.
When → Tues., 22.06.2021, 14:00 – 16:00
Where → IAAC/Fab Lab (limited) & Online (open)

Posthuman Awakening

Autonomous Tree | Interactive Session
HYPOTHETICAL AUTHORITIES, a project that reframes our relationship with authorities, who shapes them, and the types of challenges they focus on, presents the Autonomous Tree®: a living agent and representative for non-human life within our society. All people are welcome to schedule time with Autonomous Tree® to review their yearly consumption and impact assessment and to engage with a non-human with augmented capacity.
When → Mon, 21.06.2021, 10:00 – 17:00
Where → Parc Central del Poblenou, C. d’Espronceda, 142-146, near MUHBA Oliva Artés

Nomadic Box | Round Table 
The event will be the presentation and launch of the project. We will be joined by some participants of the project to discuss, with interventions from the public, their experience and perspectives on the exercise posed to them. An open debate to better understand their pieces and question how we understand the agency of design and its inscription in the world.
When → Mon, 21.06.2021, 18:30 – 20:00
Where → Disseny Hub Barcelona

Phygital Awakenings | Workshop
What is it that I don’t see but feel?
What kind of impact can the amplification and awareness of a human sense generate? This guided meditation uses technology and materials as tools to augment and enhance our perception – to increase and make ‘visible’ what is usually not. We will connect to the sonification of the heartbeat and tactile grounding with mycelium as forms of connecting to ourselves, others, and the natural world.
When → Wed, 23.06.2021, 10:00-10:30, 10:40 – 11:10, 11:20 – 11:50
Where → Frizzant

Empowering Care

Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga | Practice
The word ‘yoga’ is derived from Sanskrit and means ‘union’ of the individual consciousness with the universal. This union results in a perfect harmony of body, mind and spirit, man and nature. We invite you to join a morning Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga practice to get in touch with your 7 energetic bodies (chakras) so that you can start your day with lots of energy! Please bring your mat and comfortable clothes!
When → Fri, 18.06.2021, 09:00 – 10:00
Where → IAAC, Rooftop 

Silent Playscape Game | Interactive Session 
The Silent Playscape is an upscaled version of the Silent Board Game (by Ines Burdiles and Morgane Shaban). The Silent Game was originally designed by John Habraken and Mark D Gross and can be found in the 1987 book; Concept Design Games. It is a co-creation game that uses implicit communication. Players sculpt, build, make their own play in a collaborative silence. The game is spatial and active. The Silent Playscape consists of different pieces made from different biodegradable materials including bioplastics, wood and canvas, to foster a critical view of the material world around us. It is an undirected, free play tool, where the rules and pieces are adaptable and where you can use your entire body to move, place and be a part of the final sculpture.
When → Sat, 19.06.2021, 10:00 – 17:00
Where → Passatge Trullas, Jardin de las Mariposas

Mental Health Memes | Exhibition + Conversation
An exhibition composed of the outcomes of the workshop “new languages and mental health”, memes curated by an online mental patients community, and memes from my personal mental health diary.
When → Mon, 21.06.2021, 14:00 – 15:00
Where → IAAC, Fab Lab

How to bridge the digital Gender Gap in the “New Normal” | Panel
When → Mon, 21.06.2021, 17:00 – 19:00
Where → IAAC, FCH

Resilience through Responsibility | Panel
While the pandemic isn’t over, we’re gradually returning to a semblance of normality. What’s left in the wake is a clear sense that we need systemic change, and while the “why’s” are often clear, the “how’s” aren’t always so.
It is our role as creatives and entrepreneurs to develop a holistic understanding of the causes and consequences of the climate emergency. And it is our responsibility to push for social innovation by recognizing emerging ideas and lifestyles that cultivate a healthier social and planetary ecosystem. In this panel, we’ll engage with local change-makers to explore how cultivating a community of scientists, designers, social entrepreneurs, and change-makers can lead to regenerative solutions for today’s problems.
When → Tue, 22.06.2021, 17:00 – 19:00
Where → Casa Taos

Spatial Justice

Dérive Collective | Workshop
We invite you to join us on a dérive (non-guided walk) through Barcelona, starting in front of IAAC (102 Pujades). We are re-engaging psychogeography to expose and embrace the affective and political dimensions of urban space. Rather than pretending to offer an objective stance, we will embrace our subjectivity and first-person perspective. The dérive will be followed by a collective reflection on what we learnt from the process.
When → Fri, 18.06.2021, 12:00 – 15:00
Where → IAAC

Spatial Justice | Roundtable
Creating conversations to bridge the urban-rural divide. Join us on a roundtable exploring the themes of fair mobility, placemaking and rural futures.
When → Fri, 18.06.2021, 17:00 – 18:00
Where → Passatge Trullas, Jardin de las Mariposas

Conscious human’ guide to rural life | Presentation
Conscious human guide to rural life is a co-designed magazine trying to bridge the technosocial gap between cities and rural areas by eliciting a sustainable and thoughtful transition on people reaching the countryside from metropolitan areas.
When → Fri, 18.06.2021, 18:00 – 19:00
Where → Camping BCN

Aquí: collaborative placemaking | Interactive Session 
For two days, join the neighbors of c/ Sancho de Ávila in building open-source, modular urban furniture out of recycled materials. We will then rearrange the modules in the public space and collectively decide on the best configuration. The furniture will be deployed in the street for the rest of June to prefigure a pacified vision for the street.
When →  Sun, 20.06.2021, 10:00 – 19:00
Where → Carrer Sancho de Avila

#SISTERLOBACHALLENGE | Interactive Session 
The #SISTERLOBACHALLENGE is a sisterhood movement for cyclist women to map the safety and their interactions with the city. All participants are encouraged to share their own experiences with the game and to find ways to bring their own information and ideas into the development of fair mobility practices.
When → Sun, 20.06.2021, 11:30 – 16:00
Where → Start at Biciclot 

Check out the full agenda here!