Kikko Paradela is a Detroit-based graphic designer and researcher. He is an active member of OmniCorpDetroit, a local hackerspace collective, and an activist who serves on the steering committee for the Democratic Socialists of America’s Detroit chapter. He is currently the creative director for MEANS TV, a post-capitalist entertainment provider, and runs his own independent practice, You VS Jesus, focusing on interactive, identity, and installation work for the arts and cultural sector. In 2019, Kikko was awarded a Kresge Artist Fellowship in the Visual Arts.
Kikko received his BFA in Graphic Design from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, where his curiosity about the city and personal experience led him to reside at the Detroit Zen Center during his studies. He has worked at 2×4 and Base Design in New York, with projects ranging from fashion to cultural and educational institutions. In 2012, he returned to Detroit to teach interaction design in the graphic design department at CCS.
The UIC School of Design public seminar series serves as a research platform for the school’s MDES program, stimulating broad intellectual inquiry about the values guiding the designer by promoting discourse across industrial and graphic design.
Where does upending end up?
2019–20 public seminar series
When the “up” becomes the “end” so that the “end” becomes the “up,” will we eventually end up in the same place we were before? What is in between “the end” and “the up” and how might these points of reference shift?
Context and space matter: viewing a subject, object, or method from a different perspective can serve as a rich starting point for upending. There are countless ways to interact, sniff, touch, look, and listen. Makers, thinkers, maker/thinkers, and thinker/makers may come to similar topics of speculation through their own lenses — work that encourages not only contemplation and discussion, but action.
What are the practical consequences and applications of speculation? Where does upending end up? This year’s UIC School of Design graduate public seminar series aims to critically examine flipping, twisting, tipping, inverting, reversing, overturning, and upending — inviting speculation on the potentiality of ending up.
— Grace Dyer and Hilary Short, 2019–20 UIC School of Design graduate public seminar series directors, MDes class of 2020
* Free and open to the public.
