Aesthetic advocacy: An interview with designer and scholar sara hendren

ABSTRACT

In this interview, media studies professor Christopher Smit discusses the politics and aesthetics of design with artist and design researcher Sara Hendren. Hendren is perhaps best known for her nationally recognized project to reimagine the handicapped sign, an enterprise NPR identified as a ‘guerrilla street art project’. She is also the editor and main writer of the website Abler, a storehouse of some of the smartest commentaries available on issues of bodies, prosthetics, disability politics and design. In this interview she discusses issues of aesthetic advocacy, the life of things/objects, the promise of multiplicity and sensory estrangement. In particular, she discusses her Slope: Intercept project that she did as a fellow at the metaLAB at Harvard. Images from that project follow.

Christopher Smit: I want to start by talking about the origins of your Slope: Intercept project at Harvard. You're looking at what you referred to as an ‘overlooked technology’—the ramp, or the inclined plane. Why this interest in ramps, in this thing that, according to you, has multiple ‘elevations, which are mathematical as well as cultural’? Why the ramp?

KEYWORDS:

• universal design
• disability
• aesthetics
• advocacy
• ramps
• technology