Noam Youngrak Son ~ Keywords: design, queer publishing, speculation, attention, facilitation, collective organizing, more-than-human, financialization, extractivism

Noam Youngrak Son is a communication designer, design theorist, and cultural worker. Their design work encompasses small-scale publishing projects, workshops, lectures, writing, net.art, and occasional performative interventions. As a cultural worker, they have co-organized the Ghent-based queer publishing collective Bebe Books since 2021. Son has expanded their focus from design to theory in order to critically engage with the ontology of the design industry, media, and broader material culture. This turn is informed by their observations of cultural assemblages that echo the extractive operations of capitalism on racialized and more-than-human populations. They are particularly attentive to the interconnected notions of speculation—both as an open artistic approach and as a process of value increase in capitalism. They research the tendency of the former in design to be subjugated by the latter and explore alternative methods for speculative design practices to realize their transindividual potential through collective organization and workshop facilitation. In this process, Son utilizes queer publishing as a technology for mobilizing attention beyond the financialized “scarce resource” of the attention economy. In this context, publishing extends beyond mere printed matter to encompass the maintenance of communities and the cultivation of interspecies relationships. The term "queer" here is not used as a statement of identity but as a process—small yet collective strategies of publishing that challenge the modern myth of the heroic designer.

Learn more about Noam Youngrak Son's 20 minute performance The School of Speculation for Chameleon Orbit ~ DAI's Aeroponic Acts 2024 at Centrale Fies in Italy. 

Learn more about Noam Youngrak Son's written MA thesis (DAI, 2024): coming soon

Noam Youngrak Son was an esteemed 2023-2024 member of the DAI's COUNCIL