Tom Bieling
Dr. phil. Tom Bieling is a postdoc senior researcher and lecturer at Zentrum für Designforschung (HAW Hamburg), teaches Designwissenschaft at HAWK Hildesheim, and design theory / design history in Cairo and Berlin. He has held visiting professorships for design research at the University of Trento and the German University in Cairo, and lectureships worldwide. He was head of Social Design at Design Research Lab / Berlin University of the Arts (2010 – 2019), previously at T-Labs / TU Berlin (2007 – 2010). He has been editor-in-chief at Designforschung.org since 2008, co-editor of the book series Design Meanings (Mimesis), and the BIRD series (Birkhäuser) as part of the Board of International Research in Design, as well as a founding member of the Design Research Network. He is a regular member of juries, research and expert committees, including the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Institute for Human, Ethics and Science, and author of numerous publications. He was elected Young Innovator of the Year by the Falling Walls consortium. His work, which has received several awards, is exhibited worldwide. Recent books include Design (&) Activism (Mimesis, 2019), Gender (&) Design (Mimesis, 2020) and Inklusion als Entwurf (Birkhäuser, 2019).
Articles of Tom Bieling
Experiment und Versprechen – Über die Entgrenzung des Denkens
A speculative impulse is inherent in or precedes every experiment, presumably every thought. The hoped-for promise of an answer, a solution, a proof, is thus built on an idea of mental outgrowth. It is characterised by not-knowing, from which it takes its course (cf. Busch et al. 2020). The starting point of this paper is the experiment Vampyroteuthis infernalis (Flusser / Bec 1987) as a model of a fabulatory, creative epistemology (Bozzi 2007), which at the same time functions as a symbol of human existence in postmodernity. Part scientific treatise, part parody, part philosophical discourse, part fable, this work presents itself as an im/possible form of speculative research and exploratory speculation at the same time. Flusser thus provides fruitful impulses for the persistently discussed approaches of experimental and practice-based research in the formative disciplines, such as design, art or architecture, which are discussed in this paper as well as a possibly related disruption of knowledge hegemonies.