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Without A Center, With Many — Designing Across Diasporas, Languages &Times

Date: 26 May 2026, 09:30 – 27 May 2026, 18:00 Location: Brussels Research Seminar

As part of her PhD research at Sint Lucas Antwerpen — KdG and ARIA — Antwerp Research Institute for the Arts (University of Antwerp), **Garine Gokceyan **invites you to a two-day public research seminar.

The seminar will start on Tuesday the 26th of May, with a full day of presentations and discussions, bringing together diverse and multilingual voices, around authorship and ownership in collaborative design practices. This seminar day addresses the politics of accessible resource-making alongside approaches to unlearning the language of design. It is also a good occasion to celebrate the launch of the Alphabettes Soup book by Bikini Books, featuring contributions from many of our guests.

On Wednesday the 27th of May, we will gather around a workshop led by Khajag Apelian and Naïma Ben Ayed, entitled "Revivals Reconsidered" to discuss the question of what constitutes a Typeface revival. Does its significance shift across time and geography? What politics are embedded within it? Together with the participants, we will critically rethink this practice and explore possible futures by creating a shared set of revival-making guidelines.

We have curated a line-up featuring 'doula' publisher and feminist designer Nina Paim; writer and artist-researcher Ayoh Kré Duchâtelet; type designers Naïma Ben Ayed and Khajag Apelian; architect and translator Movses Der Kevorkian; designers and educators Ludi Loiseau and Loraine Furter; and, from The Kitchen, researchers and arts workers Reem Shilleh and Joachim Ben Yakoub.

Programme

For more information on the programme, the workshop, and the invited speakers, click  ༺HERE༻

Registration

Registration is required for all types of participation: whether in person or online, and for day 1 or day 2 (workshop). → Register via this link

Locations

● Day 1 (26.05.26) → Paramour, Rue d’Arlon 104, 1040 Brussels
● Day 2 (27.05.26) → Les îles Mardi, Rue Jacques de Lalaing 13, 1040 Brussels



Garine's research project “Exploring the Diasporic Life of Armenian Script: A multiscript design Laboratory”, seeks varied approaches to creating typo-graphic resources that disrupt dominant paradigms of design education. She tries to reimagine both the language and practice of design through a critical, feminist and decolonial lens where different writing systems and voices could unite as allies (and not rivals) against uniformisation, standardisation and erasure.

This is a multilingual event. Most presentations and discussions will be in English, but speakers and the audience are free to switch between languages as needed. We’ll do our best to offer partial translation when possible. The final presentation of the program will be in French.

The event is supported by ARIA (Sint Lucas Antwerpen and University of Antwerp) as well as Subsidie Omkadering Jonge Onderzoekers OJO (Antwerp Doctoral School).