Towards intimacy in ecological uncertainty
My PhD research traced my attempts to re-orient my design practice from visual communication design to a more expanded participatory practice that supports intimacy in ecological uncertainty.
At the inception of the research I was deeply unsettled by the global ecological crisis and searching for a way to respond through design. I joined a small fledgling community called The Weekly Service, that was exploring what it means to be human in these times of transition through storytelling and curatorial practices. After two years of close collaboration with community members and a core team, I developed a deeply relational practice concerned with emergent social processes.
However, rather than focus on the outcome of this transition (the expanded participatory practice), this research attempts to reveal the messy, and sometimes painful, process of transition, what I refer to as designing in transition.
The following notes, speak directly to my former self and to other designers in transition by revealing some of the terrain that the research/practice journey entailed.
Notes to a designer in transition #1
You already have a practice. It might be visual communication design. It might be industrial design. Do not rush to replace these skills with others. Do not dematerialise your practice all too readily. And if you do, notice how you may feel adrift. Notice what materiality means to you. What does it enable you to know and do?
Notes to a designer in transition #2
As you turn towards the difficulties of these transitional times, do not underestimate how much fear surrounds this issue. In an environment in which predictions surrounding climate change are increasingly quite dire, uncertainty will likely provoke reactive thinking and polarised politics in yourself and others you work with. The idea of the end of modernity is not easy to grapple with. It can induce a type of fright, that is deeply unsettling.
Understand that what is being asked of you is not outward solutions, but ontological change. Resist the desire to move on, towards ‘action’. The ever evolving rhythms of your inquiry will be generative of meanings and forms in time. Do not presume to know what they will be. Direct your energy and attention to the process of keeping the inquiry going. This is all that is being asked of you, to sustain the inquiry, to sustain the rhythm, this is the art of designing in transition.
Notes to a designer in transition #3
Any engagement with ontology is an engagement with belief. Prepare to have your beliefs tested, shattered and then reformed. This may entail coming to terms with your own unfelt grief as you reconnect with parts of yourself that you may have forgotten in the rush towards progress. This is not a linear process, you will return here again and again. You will need to develop the capacity to critique the modern / colonial imaginary. This will help you to sustain your engagement with the ecological crisis and to find ways to bring people along with you.
Notes to a designer in transition #4
When you are lost or at the limit, you may not know where you are or why you are drawing / photographing / writing / cooking, but leave a trace for your future self, who will look from a different vantage point. You may notice how your ability to see changes. As your perspective shifts, the lines you weave into the fabric of the world will also. At times, it will be the traces themselves that help you to recognise that change is underway. Traces can make ontological change visible, when there’s little tangible evidence of the change. As you become ever more attuned to your traces, you may find that they become devices of orientation that can help you to move forwards – way-finders on the path to an unknown future.
Notes to a designer in transition #5
You will learn how to bring people into alignment through your capacity to invite. Collaboration needs structure, but you will learn through trial and error as to how much. Leave gaps for others to fill. Infrastructuring is, as Star and Ruhleder (1996) comment, like building a boat with others, while sailing it. However, on this journey you won’t know where you’re sailing, other than it will be different from the shore you left behind and that you are part of what is being changed. In this environment it’s vitally important that you enjoy the journey (as you may never arrive). You will learn that sustaining the cultivation of other life paths in practice, requires joy and care. Here atmospheres can be helpful. As elemental forces, atmospheres can fill us with wonder and energy that enables us to sacrifice a dominant ontology for the unknown. Through osmosis we can become re-enchanted with the world, in all its mystery, particularity, beauty and darkness. Atmospheres are alive with possibility and ever-changing, like the world itself. Stay attuned to this phenomena, it has something to teach you. Your practice may emerge from a greater attunement to it.
Notes to a designer in transition #6
To enable an opening into other ways of being-knowing-&-doing, you must be open to being in an intimate exchange with yourself, others and the more-than-human world. You cannot do this work alone (repeat x5). Your inquiry will grow roots as you improvise. You are growing an infrastructure with others, in which you will transform yourself.
Notes to a designer in transition #7
The art of designing in transition involves transforming and working in careful ways with one’s own inheritances, perspectives and life-orientations in the company of others. Remember, it takes courage to care, (and sometimes ruptures) to be altered.