During the last decades we have seen a grown interest in understanding multi-stakeholder participation and human centeredness, if we are to survive the next decades I believe (following insights from feminist techno-sciences) that we wont get far away without ALSO taking serious what it is to negotiate our joint future with other ”beings” than simply with ourselves. We need to develop caring forms of collaborative art and design that include taking seriously tiny bacteria, yeast, cows, dogs, coconut plants and many others.
Moreover our understanding of the materials and materiality of our practice should be much more sophisticated than the limited statements of today, such as I work with ”wood” or ”plastic” or even ”software”. We will need such understanding to come to terms with the challenges that fields such as nanotechnology and synthetic biology, to mention but a few, are bringing about. We need these new understanding to develop an nurture for example: new forms of animal urban agriculture, sustain and renew cultural and knowledge production practices and all in all to have a viable world for all.
If there is a world that can be inhabited by 2030 I think Art and Design practices, specially (but not limited to) those that deal with information and communication technologies and practices, will be by then focusing on supporting multi-species collaboration and multiple forms of caring.
Andrea
Andrea wrote this short text for the Aalto School of Arts, Design and Architecture in 2015, when the dean of the school asked all staff to speculate on the main characteristics of their practice by 2030. Mariana thought it would be nice to share it also in here 