Symposium The Design of History and the History of Design


London College of Communication
15 September, 2025



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SpeakerS and Abstracts:

Huda Almazroua
Alberto Atalla Filho
Russ Bestley
Kevin Biderman
Silvia Bombardini
David Cross
Dora Souza Dias
Sam Gathercole
Ian Horton and Ian Hague
Jennifer Hankin
Zarna Hart
John-Patrick Hartnett
Fenella Hitchcock
Abbie Vickress and Sakis Kyratzis
Christopher Lacy
Timothy Miller
Danah Nassief
Jesse O’Neill
Nina O’Reilly
Patrick O’Shea
David Preston
Cheryl Roberts
Rebecca Ross
Antoin Sharkey
Andrew Slatter
Kate Trant
Vanessa Vanden Berghe
Judy Willcocks
Christin Yu



A symposium for UAL’s Design History research community


The Design of History and the History of Design is a one-day symposium that maps research into, through or at the boundaries of design history at UAL. While design history may underpin our teaching across different disciplines, research in design history across UAL is somewhat hidden. This symposium aims to share and make visible the work of researchers (staff and students) at all career stages across all UAL colleges.

Exploring the intersections of historical narrative and design practice, it examines how history is constructed, represented, and mediated through design, and how the discipline of design itself is shaped by its evolving historiography.

The symposium will serve as the starting point for a Design History Network at UAL, bringing together researchers from across the university. It also lays the foundation for a welcoming research community in design history, with potential for ongoing events, collaboration, publications, and curriculum development.

If you have any questions or would like to be involved in future activities, please get in touch with the convenors:

Rujana Rebernjak
r.rebernjak@lcc.arts.ac.ukTai Cossich
t.cossich@lcc.arts.ac.uk
Please also sign up for the UAL Design Histories Newsletter




    Kevin Biderman
    Everything to sell live—Subsumption, surveillance and the protest livestream


    This presentation examines the radical technology created to livestream anticapitalist protests and how this innovation and the cooperative labour involved were absorbed by capital. It asks the question: How does anticapitalist labour get co-opted into the accumulation and reproduction of capital? Karl Marx had a very specific concept that allows us to consider how human labour is brought into the capitalist sphere. He termed this subsumption. In this presentation I argue the subsumption process uses surveillance to absorb anticapitalist labour and organisational forms into the capitalist sphere. To illustrate this I examine the history of the protest livestream in England, how its organisational forms mixed human labour and technology and how surveillance aided the subsumption of this labour under capital. As I explain what started out as a means to circulate moving images of anticapitalist protests became a means to circulate capital. 

     The first livestream of a protest in England took place in the City of London in 1999. It documented part of a global anti-capitalist protest on 18 June known as the Carnival Against Capital or the J18. The J18 livestream was closely observed and extended by capitalist organisations. Twelve years later in 2011 technological activists from the J18 supported the livestreaming of Occupy LSX another global anti-capitalist protest in the Square Mile. At Occupy LSX, activists connected to the proprietary livestreaming service Bambuser. Founded as a ‘participatory design’ project that aimed to include users in the design process, Bambuser continually monitored and adjusted its platform in relation to user experience. By 2023 Bambuser shifted to exclusively provide livestreaming solutions for ‘video shopping’, under the slogan ‘everything to sell live’. Here, a technological common and the labour involved in its production were surveilled so as to be subsumed into the sphere of circulation.



    — Kevin Biderman

    Kevin Biderman is a community organiser, trade unionist, theorist and educator. As well as lecturing at UAL he also organises food co-ops in Tower Hamlets with Cooperation Town. He previously taught Critical and Historical Studies at the Royal College of Art and film-making at Goldsmiths, in addition to lecturing in Further Education. In 2005 his work was published in the book Londres en Mouvement and more recently he has written for the Journal of Visual Culture amongst others. In 2017 he undertook an AHRC-funded research residency at the MayDay Rooms archive. In 2020 he completed his doctoral thesis at the RCA.