Security & Surveillance
Satellite Project’s annual online exhibition, with the theme of Security & Surveillance this year, is created by the randr research institute for the educative use of design in political language. The design collective is curated by Rio Jiunyu Chen, a Taiwanese designer. It additionally features Pakistani designers Rahma Shahid (co-founder of randr) and Musa Ghaznavi, Chinese artist Hailing Liu, Italian designer Cinzia Bongino, U.S. based Taiwanese artist yhW, and Kashmiri designer Sidra Khawaja.
Satellite Project: Security & Surveillance focuses on regional political events and national security concerns. The initial workshop that spawned this endeavor brought together designers from around the globe to explore modern societal concerns based on cultural and geographical diversity. After Chen’s research project “The Last Tomorrowland” was displayed at Terrain Biennial 2021, he began constructing a website and workshop for the project. Creators with backgrounds in art, fashion, sculpture, graphic, and product design have gathered for randr and Chicago designer Eric Hotchkiss’s online discussions and lectures.
According to Chen, the objective of the Satellite Project is to solve societal concerns from a design standpoint. He has underlined the importance of citizens’ responses to global sociopolitical events. It is vital to document and archive how the design industry responds to shifting geopolitical dynamics and how individuals are impacted by regional and global events. Rahma Shahid’s River City contribution to the exhibition shared her religious perspective on the struggle between local residents and land grabbers in South Asia; Cinzia Bongino’s Satellite Charts explored the contemporary infrastructure of outer space with a comprehensive infographic; and yhW’s Untitled (our side) was a distorted-symbolic display made with a borrowed object and stolen power.
Since 2021, randr research institute has built an online space for political design education and career navigation. With the annual call for submissions from Satellite Project, designers can participate in future workshops and public engagements. Already, the initiative has attracted considerable interest. Chen thinks that the Satellite Project will serve as a model for future interactions with designers from all across the world. He and the randr research institute have recently linked with Avsar Gunipar and Cansu Curgen from Ambiguous Standards Institute to create a new dialogue about residual effects of engrained ideologies of colonization in common terms and standards. randr research institute’s Satellite Project appears to be at the vanguard of the nascent field of political design.
