Pictograms for resistance: historicity and militant design research in Amazonian Ecuador

Abstract

This article focuses on the experiences of developing and using pictograms as visual devices to support Indigenous communities of Amazonian Ecuador. It recognizes the imbalances and contradictions amidst the complex histories and identities of a Latin American state such as Ecuador. The authors emphasize the need to decolonize the design activist imagination and highlight two key issues. The first is in appreciating how historicity operates in this context. The authors show how a non-teleological, historical consciousness is central to processes of deliberation and collaboration. Secondly, they introduce the concept of ‘militant design research’ to understand the role of the activist researcher in this context. These reflections challenge European and North American conceptions of design activism and social design. Consequently, the design-researcher’s subject position shifts away from an extractivist mode and, instead, commits to the tensions and Indigenous political processes within which the pictograms function.