Code of Ethics?
Participatory project, workshops, text, chocolate coins (2017-)
International and multidisciplinary platform by Future Heritage Lab
Code of Ethics? explores the intersection of aesthetics, ethics, and poetics in the humanitarian context. The project includes critical artistic investigations through participatory action research and transcultural workshops, offering a shared platform for dissemination of questions and critical reflections across cultural and disciplinary borders.
Gathering over shared meals, coffee, and chocolate, participants are asked to share their own experiences, concerns, and dilemmas of living and working in a humanitarian context. These range from the ethics of encounter, to power relationships between “humanitarians” and “beneficiaries,” to aesthetic versus social judgment of socially engaged art, among other concerns. These interactions are documented in audio and text, written over interactive table cloths. The participants receive bittersweet golden chocolate coins, indented with inscriptions “privilege” and “good intentions” on the one side, and “benefits” and “road to hell,” on the other side. The collected questions and stories are presented in the form of edited/rewritten tablecloths. Through participatory workshops and cross-institutional collaborations, the project juxtaposes refugees’ perspectives with the established norms for cultural interventions in art, academia, and the humanitarian sphere. FHL is currently working on the online platform, where the multitude of collected questions will be hyperlinked and disseminated worldwide. The first prototype for this platform has been tested with MIT students (www.codeofethics.online). The project is meant not to prescribe moral stances, but to disrupt them through critical questions asked from a variety of viewpoints.
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Project produced for the Amman Design Week (2017) and the Affordable Housing exhibition of the MIT Center for Advanced Urbanism (2018)
Materials: table cloths, wall graphics, golden bittersweet chocolate coins
Dimensions: mattresses, table cloths, and wall graphics: variable; chocolate coins: 3 cm diameter
Concept and artistic direction: Azra Akšamija
Research and development: Azra Akšamija, Melina Philippou, Zeid Madi. Phase I developed with: Noora Aljabi, Nicole Ashurian, Andrea Baena, Natalie Karin Bellefleur, Soumaya Difallah, Martin Joshua Elliott, Ciera Gordon, Rebecca Hui, Anthony Kawecki, Cindy Liu, Hugh Magee, Raafat Majzoub, Cherie Miot Abbanat, Alicia Noriega, Melina Philippou, Reva Ranka, Danniely Staback Rodriguez, Marco Rosero, Anna Kathryn Ryan, Brandon Sanchez, Marcas Smith, Joseph Michael Swerdlin, Megan Thai, MyDung Thi Nguyen, Sera Tolgay, Manuela Uribe Buitrago, Alaa Zuhra Quraishi, Calvin Zhong. Phase II developed with: Nolan Oswald Dennis, Soumaya Difallah, Erin Genia, Hannah Lienhard, Sujin Lim, Katherine Paseman, Riddhi Pankaj Shah, Melina Philippou, Marco Rosero, Homa Sarabi, Hazal Seval, Nneka Deandra Sobers, Lavender Rose Tessmer, MyDung Thi Nguyen, Josephine Turalba.
Production: Azra Akšamija, Melina Philippou
Sponsoring: MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, J-WEL Grant in Higher Education Innovation, MITx. The FHL work in Al Azraq Camp is supported by the HASS Research Grant, MISTI Global Seed Fund, MIT-Arab World Program, CAST Mellon Faculty Grant, Council for the Arts at MIT, MIT Center for International Studies, the German-Jordanian University (SABE), and CARE Jordan
Documentation: Hussain Al-Abdullah, Jamil Hameidy, Yassin Al-Yassin, Mohammad Al-Qo’airy, Mohammad Al-Mez’al (filming by Al Azraq journal team), Zacharia Jama, Zedi Madi, Zaid Qarout (editing)
Sponsoring: MIT Future Heritage Lab, CAST Mellon Faculty Grant, MIT Arab World Program, MISTI Global Seed Funds Program, and CARE Jordan.