In search of the Pluriverse
Warming Up to the Pluriverse
In the light of the pandemic and resulting travel restrictions, Wong and Krier start their quest for the pluriverse from home with Arturo Escobar's book, Designs for the Pluriverse in hand.
Through short, animated talks with thinkers and makers from different domains, they dive into four urgent themes taken from the book: autonomy, world-making, the vernacular, and (de)futuring. In this way, each talk will be connected to a specific passage of the book. Tempted to pick up this great read in preparation of future, physical travels?
You can find all Warming Up Talks here and you can access them via our instagram account that functions as a radio guide. You can also look for the talks on the podcast platform of your choice.
#1 On becoming networks
With Joke Robaard
In this first interview in this series of warm-up talks about different aspects of Arturo Escobar's Designs for the Pluriverse, we meet Joke Robaard, independent thinker and maker. Active since the 80s in the world of design, she is deeply involved in art and education and has developed a broad framework to reflect on design, materiality and weaving. She recently co-authored the book Archive Species with Camiel van Winkel on her ever-growing collection of (fashion) images. In short: she has always followed her own path. We ask her if the idea of the pluriverse, as set out by Escobar in his 2018 book, resonates with her versatile practice.
Bonus track
Pa Amb Tomàquet
#2 On letting things run by themselves
With Miquel Hervás Gómez
In this second warm-up talk, we meet Miquel Hervás Gómez. Catalan by birth, he has been living and working in Amsterdam for the past 10 years. As a graphic designer, Miquel embraces the idea of the collective. He is a member of design and research platform Fanfare and the online collaborative Carne Kids. In parallel to his design practice, Miquel teaches at both the Sandberg Instituut and the Rietveld Academie and manages the bookbinding workshop BBBBgraBB for both institutions.
#3 On imagining beginnings
With Mariana Pestana
In this third talk, we hear from Mariana Pestana, curator of the fifth Istanbul Design Biennale entitled Empathy Revisited: Designs For More Than One about the kind of 'radical design imagination' (Escobar 2018) the world needs today.
Pestana's critical social practice investigates "the role that fiction can play in re-imagining futures for an age marked by technological progress and an ecological crisis." Initially trained as an architect, she lives and works between Porto and London where she has taught at Royal College of Art and Central St Martins. She is one of the co-founders of The Decorators, a collective that produces collaborative public interventions and cultural programmes, such as Expedition Empathy (Azores, 2019). Publications she has (co)edited include The Future Starts Here (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2018) and Eco Visionaries: Towards an Interspecies Future (Matadero Madrid, 2019).
#4 On avoiding assumptions
In this fourth podcast, Wong and Krier talk to architectural researcher Kornelia Dimitrova and social designer Bernhard Lenger, co-founders of Foundation We Are, a collective of nine creative minds and makers that functions both as a playground for their different individual practices, and as a joint design consulting agency aiming to transform social and legal systems. How to keep your design practice close to the ground? Can we still have hope for Europe? And what do personal burn-out and the climate crisis have in common? Tune in to find out.
Bonus track
Designing collectively
#5 On celebrating smallness
With Sean Leonard
In the fifth talk we meet up online with architect/researcher Sean Leonard, part of Co-RD Limited, and co-founder of Alice Yard, a contemporary art space located in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, which hosts and facilitates an ongoing programme of artists and artists' projects, where networking, collaboration, improvisation and play are key. In 2020 Leonard was selected as the inaugural recipient of a research fellowship organised by Het Nieuwe Instituut and Tilting Axis. This position includes collaborations with the Amsterdam Museum, De Appel, The Black Archives and FKA Witte de With / Melly. This is also how 'In Search of the Pluriverse' and Leonard crossed paths. A vivid talk about heritage, the yard as a space of play and negotiation, swamp lodges and stilt walkers.
Bonus track
Stones Have Laws In addition to the main conversation with architect/researcher Sean Leonard Wong and Krier added a short audio clip about Stones Have Laws, a film made by Lonnie van Brummelen, Siebren de Haan en Tolin Erwin Alexander, in close cooperation with Saamaka and Okanisi communities along the Surinam River.
#6 On being plural
With Camila Marambio
In this sixth Warming Up talk, we meet Camila Marambio - a being as plural as the worlds she inhabits, falls in love with, and seeks to protect. Camila is the founder/director of Ensayos, a nomadic interdisciplinary research program that has been collectively unraveling the eco politics of the archipelago of Karokynka a.k.a. Tierra del Fuego for about a decade now. Camila completed her Phd in Curatorial Practice at Monash University, Melbourne with both a TV web series "DISTANCIA" and an exegesis (a critical explanation or interpretation of a text) with the title: 'DISTANCIA: A measure of intimacy.' Besides all this, Camila identifies and plays with the roles of private investigator, eco-sexual, permaculture enthusiast, and flautón chino player/dancer. Her home base is in Papudo, a coastal town two hours north of Santiago de Chile.
A mesmerising talk about cosmic changes, circular stories, a pluriversal owl and the notion of with-with.
On 18 February 2021 Sean Leonard presented his research project during Thursday Night Live!, with guests, under the title Building in, Around and in Association with Water. Watch a recording of the session here.
#7 On designing otherwise
With Arturo Escobar
In this seventh Warming Up talk we meet Arturo Escobar himself, author of 'Designs for the Pluriverse. Radical Interdependence, Autonomy and the Making of Worlds' (2018, Duke University Press). The book we use as a guide for our Pluriversal search. Escobar is currently Emeritus Professor of Antropology and Political Ecology at the University of North Carolina. Escobar was early to criticise the downside of 'development' from a Western capitalist perspective. His analysis evolved in a search for different ways to co-inhabit this planet. From early on, Arturo was inspired by Afro-Colombian social movements in the Colombian Pacific. He helped voice their plea for a 'pluriversal approach': to realise 'a world in which many worlds fit'. In this personal and pleasantly meandering conversation we talk about key elements in Escobar's thinking: radical interdependence and autonomy. Design is approached both as a system, and as a language and praxis to activate these notions of radical interdependence and - communal - autonomy.
#8 On making the yes and the no
With Jay Jordan and Isa Frémeaux
In this last - but much more to come, stay tuned! - Warming Up talk we meet Jay Jordan and Isa Frémeaux, co-founders of Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Labofii). This lab brings artists and activists together to design tools and acts of disobedience and resistance. Unhappy with the world of performance and art (Jay) and institutional education (Isa), they created their own practice and approach in which there is always a 'no' and a 'yes' present, after the Zapatista movement. Since 2015 Jay and Isa are residents of the zad (zone à défendre, zone to defend) in Notre-Dame-des-Landes, close to Nantes. From a reserved area for an airport, these 4000 acres evolved over the last 50 years in a beautiful life experiment. A place where the gaps between art, politics and daily life are dissolved. Listen to an electric talk about 'a world that exists today, because it wasn't allowed to exist to start with'. And if it is up to us, this is only part 1&