De-stirilizing Design: Towards non-Anthropocentric strategies beyond the inert скачать в хорошем качестве

De-stirilizing Design: Towards non-Anthropocentric strategies beyond the inert

Research essay and video by the Institute of Postnatural Studies for the international conference The Ecological Turn. Design, architecture and aesthetics beyond “Anthropocene,” presented by Bologna University. https://eventi.unibo.it/theecological... Music Credit: Suso Saiz (used by permission) Text written by: Elena Brea, Maria Buey, Gabriel Alonso, Pablo Ferreira Navone. Video edit and design: Matteo Guarnaccia Video assistance: Elena Brea, Maria Buey, Gabriel Alonso, Pablo Ferreira Navone. Voice by: Elena Brea Abstract: From pasteurized milk to ventilation and drainage systems, from spotless-white furniture to models of hygienic living-rooms and even the first Chinese menu introduced to London society; these designs were equally the result of scientific research, vague concepts like “contagion”, “miasma” and “dirt” and discourses around race, gender and sexuality which pervaded fin-de-siécle society. The sterilization campaign ran parallel to a project of making the invisible visible. The narrative of sterilization has generated a series of dichotomies for the classification of bodies and spaces - inside/outside, pure/contaminated, wild/domesticated - which prevent our appreciation of the complex relationships that human beings establish with other non-human agents constituting our bodies and our environments. The pursuit of sterilization as a facilitator of modern human life promoted an architecture and industrial design of highly processed, neutralized, and synthetic materials. This investigation proposes a taxonomy of design beyond the sterile, serving as a critical tool and turning point from which to raise a set of questions, rather than certainties, that may lead to new multiscalar non-anthropocentric strategies.