Myth and Matter

If we deny enlightenment narratives, instead embrace and fully inhabit an intwined relational understanding of space, unveiling a temporal conception of ourselves as process not object, and in this tear down the linguistic support of subject-object dualism, how might we begin to design? The Myth & Matter research project has been exploring this question through multiple pathways, and an exploration of disruptive practice is shared here.

All architecture is fiction at its inception and as such holds within the potential of constructing alternative futures. Design starts before pen is put to paper, its outline pre-scripted by pre-cognitive thought sculpted by the stories we inhabit as reality. Whether examined or not our stories are an active tool in sculpting our future. Key drivers of design, they literally build their myths around us, playing them back to us. This is of particular concern when seen in the light of the problematic consequences of dominant stories of the global north that undermine ambitions for sustainable futures. My work begins with the premise that if we are to address these global challenges a radical rethinking of design is required that begins with its ontological foundation.

This element of the Myth and Matter research project explores disruptive practice as a means to interrupt stayed thought patterns, through experimenting with processes that might rewrite my mind. The process enacts a relational perspective; a page understood as an extension of the mind, a pencil a tool to think through. All items shown here are relics of an ongoing process rather than ends in themselves.

A daily experimental practice explored the question of how might I draw if I abandon the notion of boundaries and fixed objects. Here drawing is understood as a verb, an ongoing process I stepped into and then away from. Drawing the glass I was drinking from enabled reflection, furthering understanding from the inside. The method was then applied to contemplating the wider space. Displaying the drawings here furthers this practice as this space gently writes itself into them. The pencil crayon is not lightfast and the paper is not acid free. They are subject to ongoing change and enforce an acceptance of this reality. Dry point was trialled as a means to share authorship with the time and place. These drawings of light, a phenomenon not understood as fixed form, reflect on the absurdity of boundaries.

Escobar neatly writes we live in a world of many worlds. The second mode of disruptive practice shared here searches for other stories hidden within plain site. A daily collage practice using only found material in its found form sort previously unseen connections that might hold silent significance. These Maps to the Relational speak of other stories hidden and overlooked within debris of the day to day. They open other possible readings, questioning the given.

These practices aim to offer the affordance of a workspace in the mind for the evolution of speculative design that might open portals to alternative relational futures; full of the wonder of the indeterminate, ambiguous, impermanent and temporal.