KraalD’s joyfull plastic things are wishing you all a balanced consumption in 2021!

KraalD Workshop 2020: Upcycle Plastic Bottles and Transform them into Xmass Tree Bubbles and Garlands

KraalD 2020. COVID – 19 Disease. Victorian plum tree, with the fungal disease stands in the midst of my garden without the cure. Infectious, mutilated branches are transposed and wrapped in rainbow colour plastic self-disposal. Plasticised, the virus is preserved in the dormant tree trunk for a thousand human years. Rochester, Kent cite-specific art installation #mygarden #worksinprogress #Designedisposal #Designtransposal #PlasticPlasticise

Here I am taking a refuge in Braidotti’s bio-centred egalitarianism, that challenges the prevailing standard of post-anthropocentric agenda and the assertion of advanced technologies that mean ‘man is the measure of all things’. The ‘bio-centred egalitarianism is a philosophy of affirmative becoming, which activates a nomadic subject into sustainable processes of transformation’ (Braidotti, 2006, p. 110). For the sake of clarity, I interpret Braidotti’s bio-centred egalitarianism as the way to define the eco-feminist environmental justice, a she-fox wake-up call for the planetary and equality rights for all life. I resonate well with the profound acknowledgement that ‘life’ is a slippery concept, especially animal life. Multispecies relations and interactions are central and placed along the ‘materialist lines of becoming as deep transformations of self and society’ (Braidotti, 2006, p. 109).

From pagan god Pan to panic from transposons pandemic: Greek word panikos, meaning sudden fear, combined with a pandemic which is a disease epidemic that has spread across a vast region, for instance, multiple continents. Pan, the pagan god, is among the dancing spirits in Dionysus’ entourage. Pan is the god of the wild, shepherds, flocks, nature of mountain wilds, father of Fauna. His energy is bawdy, lustful and mischievous. For clarity Fauna meaning the animal of the geological period, for example, I/We live in the human-made geological time of the Anthropocene. So I count my body as an animal representative to put it a complex bacterial, fungal and bio cell meta cluster of myself.

On another unwashed hand, a virus or transposons, also known as jumping genes, can represent a small parasite that cannot reproduce by itself. Once it infects a susceptible cell, however, a virus can direct the cell machinery to produce more viruses, like SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 and his cousins SARS and MERS. Back to the word ‘panic’ which stems from Pan’s name and why I/We have the collective feeling of losing control because the ecstasy generated by his energetic presence can be too much to assimilate. Thus, in hope, I am fearless. Wish you all good health.

#StayAtHome #day9of quarantine

KraalD, 2019, Practice-based Projects Overview Diagram 2014-2019, (on the left) Green design engagements; (on the right and top) Blue design series, DIWO and DIY mode.

Edited by Kate Fletcher, Louise St. Pierre, Mathilda Tham

Proud to make the contribution, See SECTION III: Standing: Standing to achieve a view: Living Landfill Katarina Dimitrijevic https://routledge.com/Design-and-Nature-A-Partnership/Fletcher-Pierre-Tham/p/book/9780815362746… via @routledgebooks

Organised as a dialogue between nature and design, this book explores design ideas, opportunities, visions and practices through relating and uncovering experience of the natural world.

Presented as an edited collection of 25 wide-ranging short chapters, the book explores the possibility of new relations between design and nature, beyond human mastery and understandings of nature as resource and by calling into question the longstanding role for design as agent of capitalism. The book puts forward ways in which design can form partnerships with living species and examines designers’ capacities for direct experience, awe, integrated relationships and new ways of knowing. It covers:

• New design ethics of care

• Indigenous perspectives

• Prototyping with nature

• Methods for new design and nature relations

• A history of design and nature

• Animist beliefs

• De-centering human-centered design

• Understanding nature has power and agency

Design and Nature: A Partnership is a rich resource for designers who wish to learn to engage with sustainability from the ground up.