Abstract
Unknown Prospect is an assemblage and collaboration with Ochre that responds to extractive industry. I am exploring methods of design in relation with the more-than-human as an alternative to design research and practices that serve infinite production and capitalist culture. Ochres are not only mineral pigment, but terrestrial beings that have an ancient relationship with human culture. I enlist these geological interlocutors in creative work and printmaking to make drawings, maps, and books that extend beyond the colonial record. Ochre not only makes color material, it activates its own agency in world-making. It realizes the desert as more than barren, criminal wasteland or public commodity. Ochre confronts the misconception of land left over as recreational ‘play-ground’ where humans can have ‘no impact’ and take no account for the erasure and enslavement of Indigenous people. The desert is more than an abundant ecosystem with a staggering number of endemic species and access to millions of years of geological memory — these lands are the ancestral territory of sovereign indigenous tribes. This film reveals one view of the pluriverse, as seen from the desert, as told by ochre.
Keywords
Ochre, Design Research Paradigm, Design Process, Ecofeminism
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2021.0021
Citation
Tsoutsounakis, E.(2021) Tools for an Unknown Prospect, in Leitão, R.M., Men, I., Noel, L-A., Lima, J., Meninato, T. (eds.), Pivot 2021: Dismantling/Reassembling, 22-23 July, Toronto, Canada. https://doi.org/10.21606/pluriversal.2021.0021
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Tools for an Unknown Prospect
Unknown Prospect is an assemblage and collaboration with Ochre that responds to extractive industry. I am exploring methods of design in relation with the more-than-human as an alternative to design research and practices that serve infinite production and capitalist culture. Ochres are not only mineral pigment, but terrestrial beings that have an ancient relationship with human culture. I enlist these geological interlocutors in creative work and printmaking to make drawings, maps, and books that extend beyond the colonial record. Ochre not only makes color material, it activates its own agency in world-making. It realizes the desert as more than barren, criminal wasteland or public commodity. Ochre confronts the misconception of land left over as recreational ‘play-ground’ where humans can have ‘no impact’ and take no account for the erasure and enslavement of Indigenous people. The desert is more than an abundant ecosystem with a staggering number of endemic species and access to millions of years of geological memory — these lands are the ancestral territory of sovereign indigenous tribes. This film reveals one view of the pluriverse, as seen from the desert, as told by ochre.