At the announcement of the international Debrecen Artist in Residence 2018 programme, two concepts, which are already complex on their own, were forced into a non-existent compound. We intend to make these concepts affect each other with more intensity through concentration and radicalise the train of thoughts that began a year ago. In the 2017 edition of the AIRD, which focused on the \u201cDesigned Artwork\u201d, we asked: what the relationship between design and artwork as well as design and visual art is. The response of a part of the artists has proved that the design \u2013 the rational problem-solving planning \u2013 is extremely attractive in the everyday craftsmanship and visual art as well; nevertheless, some of them considered the independent self-expression as remedy for the all-embracing practice of design.<\/p>
In 2018 our starting point was the resistance against design with the key issue of how the visual art resists against design. But during collective thinking, the relationship between design and resistance has increased with several additional layers: the designed object or the process itself can be resistant against time and use. And the resistance itself can be designed as well: even protests have choreography. Part of the objects also can be resistant, for instance to a simple and evident use. The man-focused design has become the essential paradigm for today \u2013 it is enough to refer to the practices of the User Experience (UX) and User Interface (UI) that design user experience \u2013 however, rationality is always found behind the planning. The question is whether we would like to live in a perfectly rational world. Moreover, design is often a technology-driven issue, which raises the question: are we still able to rule the technology that shapes our world? Is it still possible to offer resistance?<\/p>