Lecture
Thursday 28 May 2026
New Auditorium Space, 2nd Floor of DAE
Making Worlds Otherwise
The Rodina
“Every design act is also an act of world-making.” So what are our roles, responsibilities, and capacities as situated world-makers? How can we design situations and environments that encourage activity and togetherness, leading toward transformation in a viewer or a social context.
Amsterdam-based designer and researcher Tereza Ruller (The Rodina) addresses these questions by introducing a range of methods and approaches—including performativity, embodiment, and processuality. These methods allow designers to go beyond the traditional boundaries of communication design to embrace inclusivity and surface previously marginalized stories. Making Worlds Otherwise asks what it means to design the conditions for shared reimagination. Join us to hear why and how Ruller positions communication design as a performative, world-making practice.
In her practice, The Rodina, she investigates the performative and critical approaches to communication design. Her transdisciplinary methods emphasize the agency of playfulness, active spectatorship, and relations between human and nonhuman actors. Engaging with the ecological and social issues of our time, she seeks to foster collective reimagination through graphic design.
Ruller’s work operates within cultural contexts—blending research, participatory events, spatial installations, virtual environments, and visual identities.
Tereza Ruller is a professor of Communication Design and Digital Practices at HfG Karlsruhe (DE), PhDArts candidate at Leiden University, and a Critical Narratives tutor in the MA Information Design at Design Academy Eindhoven.
