Agata Szymanek (*1990) lives and works in Mysłowice, Poland. She studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, where she obtained a doctorate. Currently she is a certificate student at the New Centre for Research and Practice.

Following Nettrice R. Gaskins “technologies are not mere tools that we use, but active forces in the world.”, Agata organized a workshop on vernacular thinking. Through a series of creative exercises such as imagining, designing, drawing or telling stories, the workshop helped to explore the idea of vernacular thinking and vernacular strategies for approaching technology. In a next step, speculative tools were designed as models of the connection of different organisms.

This project is part of the i-Portunus Houses pilot scheme which is implemented, on behalf of the European Commission.