Tense Webs and Supple Lines: Designing Posthuman Disentanglements

Web, mesh, network. These are figures that remind us of our interconnectedness with nonhumans. They are tools to help us unthink anthropocentric hierarchies with humans at the root of the tree of knowledge as well as at the apex of the species pyramid.

Calls for entanglement pervade the emerging field of more-than-human design: Let’s create interdependent and caring relations by moving closer to and becoming more intimate with the nonhuman other!

At the same time, millions of so called production animals are slaughtered every year in the meat, egg and dairy industries. Are tighter connections with these animals really the appropriate response? Becoming entangled, physically or discursively, in human matters, often seems to be a kiss of death for the animal. In a world where human activities often violently constrict the lives of others, how can designers creatively cultivate, seemingly negative, acts of withdrawal, foreclosure, and leaving be?

My talk starts at a pier in Malmö. Fishwatching is a reconfigured angling setup where you catch fish on a camera instead of on a hook. Using the concept of grace, actively not doing what you are able to do, I will begin sketching a designerly poetics of disentanglement, of slack lines. My ambition is to offer designers and design researchers – especially those that work to dismantle human mastery and possession of other living beings – an expanded palette of design moves for crafting vital, effective, and beautiful nos and nots.