Rehearsing Rituals for Unlearning

This lecture draws on decades of working with repairing, caring, composting and other worldmaking practices. Over the years we have come to see these practices as ways of hospicing modernity (Machado de Oliveira 2021), cultivating the arts of living (Tsing et al 2017), and keeping possibilities open (Stengers 2023). We’ve been conducting our design research in the Un/Making Studio, a Tiny House on Wheels in Holding Surplus House and through gathering around Hope and Grief. Our participatory design approach has predominantly been involving publics.    Drawing on our more recent work in the research environment Design after Progress: Reimaging design histories and futures, we will turn these questions and challenges towards design practices and design education.  We particularly seek to carefully untie design’s entanglement with progress and to craft concrete imaginaries of a more socio-ecologically just design after progress. This includes developing and articulating skills, competencies, capabilities, and concepts necessary for designing after progress.  Along with others who work with education on regeneration we want to emphasise the need for taking care of the losses and letting go in the transition and transformation processes. This entails to not just add, but also cherish that which we want to hold on to and take care of what we’re letting go of in various affective ways.