Test Kitchen: Resisting Algorithmic Futures

Test Kitchen is a one-day symposium exploring histories of the modern kitchen, disability design, and their relationship to emerging algorithmic futures. Moving from objects in the V&A Museum collection to emerging speculative prototypes, the programme traces connections between health, community, and technology. 

The event features keynote talks by Bess Williamson, David Serlin, and Sara Hendren, alongside object-based discussions centred on selected works from the V&A collections. 

At a time when technology is framed as inevitable, Test Kitchen asks what we might learn from the histories of disability design and the politics of presence. Rather than rushing towards algorithmic futures, how might we look to the more just worlds that disabled people have already imagined and built? What design philosophies, practices, and forms of care can be carried into the present, the near future, and the longer horizons ahead?

This event is accompanied by live captioning. BSL interpretation will be available.

Made possible with support from the Wellcome Trust.