Pivot 2021 - abstract
I present a new perspective of my PhD research, works-in-progress, textual, visual and digital
documentation. It is a partial perspective. One that is informed by the multiple and non-
western, living cartographies of the thesis work that can assist in materialising decoloniality
and interacting with the theme of dismantling and reassembling.
These studies look at a practice-led-phenomena, situated Bali perspectives of Design
practices located within the Global South, though not necessarily from it. The participant
stories emerge through the intersection of mobility and possibility. Whilst my participants
move out of design as we may know it, their stories are more about moving beyond abyssal
thinking, in design. The literature describes abyssal thinking [1] as that which does not allow the
co-presence of what is imaginable and not. Thus, the Beyonder participants found it
necessary to deliberately dismantling and unsettling their own design practices, and
themselves, to allow for new imaginaries. Beyonders2 is a term coined by Paul Torrance and
this work aims to extend its meaning by looking at the living experiences and willingness for
designers to re-map themselves; an intellectual activism that refuses to participate in
unequal epistemological relations.
My research findings illuminate Designer Beyonders [2] unique ability to integrate co-existing
epistemologies and actively invite difference and unsettlement to their lives; an important
perspective to materialise decoloniality into their ways of being. Creative actions that choose
to be otherwise. A reassembling of an interior landscape that enables the integration of
empathy, ethics, and social justice. Designing as an act of attitude and freedom; our bodies
understood as the counter rhythm that has a relational character to our thoughts, mental
health and creative actions.
This heuristic approach to my research led to experimenting with new methods in the field
driven by the questioning of how design can be used to engage the senses to materialise
decolonisation – how to facilitate ways in which we both think and act in the world? How to
utilise dialogical tools that enable a process of sense development? In this research, I
employed personalised storytelling through life stories and body mapping. I use the
conceptual framing of cartographies as maps have always been symbolic forms of control.
Seen in this context, design too is a knowledge of practice that takes place in different spatial
scales and according to different durations and rhythms within development and for these
reasons it is important to acknowledge that a life of global mobility is a privileged position.
Designers that practice within the different spatial scales and rhythms can also import and
export ideologies that may not align with the situated perspectives they find themselves in.
Without a realisation and conscious effort, creative actions and designing can further
perpetuate structures of inequality. Body mapping, an asset-based approach, facilitates an
understanding, within worlds, more deeply through our relationality within it. The body as
both site of power and change through movement and performing of resistance - making
complexity visible.
In my studies, the Designer Beyonder body maps are stories of both inner processes and acts
of resistance towards that which presupposes dualist structures – perspectives that integrate
spatial, cultural, and social perspectives. Drawing and selecting images meant the
participants had to search for meanings through their body – making the invisible visible to
represent whom they had become through the experiencing of different ecologies of
knowledges (de Sousa Santos et al., n.d.) which is described in the literature as being based
on the pragmatic idea that it is necessary to reassess the concrete interventions in society,
and in nature, which different knowledges can offer. Bali specific personal storytelling models
and place-sensitive narratives illuminate intimate, recent and embodied history rooted in
actions that shape people's lives. This contextualisation is an integral part of the findings that
demonstrate attitudes required by the multiple landscapes, experiences and place-based
associations.
For example, through her body mapping, Savitri (Body map and details below) describes the
specific life experiences that facilitated moving beyond a feeling of displacement and her
western-centric design education. As she discusses her identity, a Balinese that "doesn't know
Bali" (participant) she starts to connect parts of her living experiences to one that could
accommodate the complex we when she acknowledges that “I am not alone”.
Body Mapping integration: Bali, February 2020
Body map created under International Creative Commons license
Footnotes
[1] De Sousa Santos** describes modern western thinking as abyssal thinking with visible and invisible distinctions. The invisible ones being the foundation of the visible ones.
[2] Paul Torrance described the phenomenon of the Beyonder as "doing your best; going beyond where you have been before, and going beyond where others have gone"(Torrance, 1993)
**Critical Feminist footnote of a footnote
Since learning of the allegations of Professor Boaventura de Sousa Santos's abuse of power, and harm to women, through the same ‘whisper network’ that Lieselotte Viaene, Catarina Laranjeiro, and Miye Nadya Tom describe, I have felt troubled and continue to self-reflect on the disappointment and feelings of “frustration, doubts, hopelessness, anger” (Suzina, 2023) at the continued patriarchy. If you would like to read more, below is the original chapter and a well written article that I have trusted to help make sense.
Suzina, A. C. (2023, April 14). The Midas Touch - Ana Cristina Suzina - Medium. Medium.
Viaene, L., Laranjeiro, C., & Nadya Tom, M. (2023). The walls spoke when no one else would.
Autoethnographic notes on sexual-power gatekeeping within avant-garde Academia. In
Sexual misconduct in academia (1st Edition). Routledge.
Original References
de la Cadena, M. (2019). An Invitation to Live Together Making the “Complex We.”
de Sousa Santos, B., Phipps, A., Christodoulidis, E., Schneiderman, D., Cutler, C., Baxi, U., Harrington, J. (n.d.). Beyond Abyssal Thinking: From Global Lines to Ecologies of Knowledges*(Published in Review, XXX-1-2007).
Liboiron, M. (2021). Pollution Is Colonialism (1st ed.). Durham & London: Duke University Press.
Torrance, E. P. (1993). The beyonders in a thirty year longitudinal study of creative achievement. Roeper Review, 15(3), 131–135. https://doi.org/10.1080/02783199309553486
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