What might a conceptual and methodological design toolkit look like that addresses the durational and anthropocenic materiality of the third millennium, radically prioritizing practices of maintenance, reuse, care, and co-option? Simone Ferracina explores this question and how human and non-human ecologies might be rethought and mobilized towards different worlds and imaginaries.
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In the first episode of William Kentridge’s documentary series “Self-Portrait as a Coffee-Pot,” the artist describes his studio as “a place of uncertainty” and “provisionality” that allows things to change “from one form into another.” Sitting across the table, Kentridge’s doppelganger protests, arguing for a grounding of art practice in evidence and productivity. As the dialogue between the artist and his double unfolds, and as Kentridge repeatedly refuses to abide by simple truths and commonsensical definitions, his other self eventually asks, exasperated: “Can we at least admit to the solidity of this table?” “The table is also a much-abused tree,” responds Kentridge, “it’s the memory of a tree. It’s also the premonition of a fire, the smoke, and the ash.”
“But this coffee pot,” retorts the doppelganger, “you will admit that that is a real coffee pot sitting on the table!” “This is not a coffee pot. It is a paint holder,” counters Kentridge, who was drawing while the conversation took place, periodically dipping the brush in the ink-filled espresso maker.
Provisional futures
The validity of Kentridge’s lesson, I would argue, exceeds the confines of the art studio, or the purview of artistic experimentation and creativity. Provisionality and uncertainty, that is, are no longer just clauses or byproducts of an artistic sensibility, but ethical and political stances for living together in times of environmental degradation and injustice. Like opacity in the work of philosopher Edouard Glissant, these words don’t denote mere qualities or conditions, but the ascription of rights and responsibilities – they pursue and protect the ability to be otherwise. What would a philosophy of design that accounts for this ability look like – one that is equipped to recognize, in the table, both the “memory of a tree” and the “premonition of a fire,” or to embrace the instability of technical objects and their tendency to drift across contexts, users, and uses (from coffee pot to paint holder)?
Instead of understanding design as an engine towards the production of materials, components, buildings, and cities, we could start by conceiving it as the potentializing (or rendering able) of them in relation to one another. Here, the end goal of a design would not be to bring forth (pro-ducere) new objects, but to invent languages and protocols through which objects, new and old, may communicate, be activated, or retain their value. The boundaries of what might be considered a ‘design unit’ (what I call ecologies of inception) would then shift away from the outline, name, or properties of single objects and components, from the goals and outputs of the associated projects considered in isolation, or from the authorial intents of their architects and designers. A unit of design, as well as its value and meaning, would be considered across wider spatio-temporal scripts and horizons, and include both constellations of communicating objects and the transformations, exchanges, and effects mobilized in unlocking their shared potentials (the table alongside the abusing and memory of the tree and the premonition of a fire).
Such units would be understood in their peregrinations across geographies, projects, and times, and include, for example, the progressive embodiment of energy and labor, the residues and remainders of extractive and manufacturing processes, and the damage these inflict on humans and non-humans. The refocusing of design towards potentials (as opposed to outputs or commodities) would aim to re-internalize externalities and, through them, to reframe questions concerning the value of buildings and materials, and the responsibility of architects.
Under construction
A ‘potential’ is the change or action latent in something – for example, my ability to stand up from a sitting position, a pianist’s capacity to play the piano, the solubility of sugar, or the turnability of wheels. Potentials depend both on the intrinsic properties of an object and on the relational unlocking of its capacities in space and time. For example, the solubility of a sugar cube relies both on its chemical structure – on the weak forces between sucrose molecules – and on my dunking of the cube in a glass of water, which promotes the formation of new chemical bonds.
In this sense, potentiality is fundamentally relational – it depends on the ability of disparate humans and non-humans to communicate and interact. The potential to ride, for instance, does not belong to either the rider or the bicycle in isolation. It relies, at a minimum, on suitable roads, paths, or lanes; on road signs, pumps, traffic laws, and bike mechanics; on dimensions and shapes that fit a human body and its muscular strength; and on the various components of the bike working together to produce movement, with a crank lever and drive arm transferring the force exerted by one’s legs to the wheels. One could think of this positive form of relationality as something akin to what James J. Gibson calls affordances, understood in the widest possible sense: as the collaborative unlocking of potentials across different actors, objects, materials, and landscapes – but also milieus, laws, customs, regulations, standards, certifications, contracts, et cetera.
And while most people understand that the ability to act is not intrinsic to the agent or to the patient but a function of their encounter, the cultural and economic systems that define Western life remain woefully concerned with the partial values and meanings attributable to single objects considered in relative isolation, or frozen in time. In this sense, rethinking cities in terms of kinship and care is paying attention to their spatio-temporal distribution and unfolding, upholding their continuity through time (past, present, and futures). Here, there is less a ‘built’ environment than one permanently and collaboratively under construction.
“Fragments of other landscapes”
Yet, design potentials are not simply attained through a vertical process of progressive transformation and increased interactivity, but through horizontal translations and displacements that transfer them across ecologies and systems. In other words, the abilities of a living tree to photosynthesize, to communicate through mycelial networks, or to provide birds with food and nesting grounds – just to name a few – have to be eradicated or interrupted in order to activate a different set of capacities, mobilizing the felled tree and harvested timber towards the construction of furniture or buildings. Jane Hutton’s exploration of materials in terms of reciprocity – materials as “fragments of other landscapes” – clearly and importantly foregrounds these exchanges and trade-offs, which are often unequal and unjust. Besides, the desired outcomes of this process (e.g., the 2”x 4”, the table, the shelter) establish new teleological and epistemological horizons for the system, drawing boundaries that separate internalities from externalities – that which is instrumentally good, proper, and productive (e.g., towards the making of a solid table or effective truss), from that which cannot be instrumentalized and is therefore deemed worthy of little use, value, or consideration (e.g., the nesting of birds). Here, paying attention to potentials means honoring not only those who collectively unlock them, but also the very powers that have been erased and obliterated for their benefit.
Now, I should conclude by noting that abilities can persist in-potentia, without needing to be actualized or expressed, thus exceeding the Latourian formulation according to which what matters are only actors or actions (what is visibly or tangibly “modified, transformed, perturbed, or created”). I am a pianist, or capable of playing the piano, regardless of whether I am playing the piano at this precise moment in time. Likewise, the ability of the piano keys to generate specific sounds persists even if the keys are not currently being pressed. Indeed, as Aristotle argued, being able to do something also entails or presumes the ability to not do something, to withhold action.
The potentials unlocked by clusters of humans and non-humans exist and are real even when they are temporarily inactive, or when the interaction is withheld or suspended. That is: my ability to sit on a chair persists even when I’m not seated, or when I leave the room. Similarly, philosopher Gilbert Ryle writes that the brittleness of glass does not depend on it “actually being shivered” but on the glass being “bound or liable” to being shivered if “struck or strained.” On one side, this boundedness may, in specific conditions, release violence and harm (one might think of the dangers associated with engineered quartz or asbestos), and paying attention to it extends the architect’s responsibility beyond the clear-cut edges of their projects and intentions. On the other, dispositions might foreshadow other worlds and uses – ones that are not being produced from scratch. After all, isn’t the coffee pot, to some extent, already a paint holder?
Editor’s note: The bibliography for this article can be found here.