This film essay forms part of an ongoing research project. The work brings together conversations with cultural practitioners, assembling a range of perspectives to explore how design operates within specific social, political and ecological contexts.

The film is the first in a series developed in cities with strong historical layers, examining the intersections of migration, climate change and cultural history. Produced during a residency in Palermo, it centres on local practitioners whose work is closely embedded in their surroundings and everyday realities. Through these conversations, the film reveals how histories of coexistence, displacement, and transformation continue to shape the present. Rather than offering a singular narrative, the work foregrounds knowledge and asks how visual knowledge production is tied to lived experience. In this context, design is understood not as a neutral discipline, but as a practice of care, belonging and engagement with complex societal conditions.

Dimitri Reist is a multidisciplinary designer and researcher based in Bern and Brussels. His work focuses on questions of responsibility and value creation in visual knowledge production, often developing collaborative formats to challenge dominant narratives and foreground diverse perspectives within the field of design.