Postcards from Inside the Practices

Abstract

PABLO CELIS

'We Made a World,' or How to Correspond with Cigarette Butts

Cigarette butts are residual entities that proliferate incessantly across the world. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted between November 2022 and August 2023 with a science-technology startup dedicated to the revalorization and transformation of cigarette butts, this article analyzes how a correspondence with this object is articulated. Taking the design of a cigarette butt container as a starting point, the aim is to understand how the act of corresponding constitutes a more-than-human entanglement that entails affectations and a desire to learn to coexist with this entity. Finally, it concludes that correspondence opens the possibility of articulating more-than-human coexistences that invite unfinished speculative gestures and practices, thus shaping shared worlds with the non-human.

ANDREA GASPAR

Speculations on the Role of Anthropology in Design

Through the description of my experience as an anthropologist participating in a speculative design workshop, I illustrate how the standardized design method that structures design practice becomes an obstacle to generating an original speculative output. The standard design method is a linear sequence of steps intended to provide a solution to a given problem. Speculative design, however, is supposed to be critical and aims to produce questions rather than solutions to problems. The linearity of the design method does not create space for questioning preconceived ideas and culturally entrenched normative views. Questioning what we take for granted is, however, fundamental for new ideas to emerge; that, I argue, could be the role of anthropology in design.

JOSÉ SÁNCHEZ-LAULHÉ & PAULA FERNÁNDEZ SAN MARCOS

Recovering Disused Infrastructures: The T11 Case and Agonism as the Hidden Face of These Operations

Industrial infrastructures inherited from the 19th and 20th centuries have become an 'obscure object of desire.' Brought out of oblivion by social and neighborhood movements at the end of the 20th century, these spaces for a time offered opportunities to restore, through autonomous self-governance, what was lacking in the urban environment. The New European Bauhaus and other programs have promoted greater dynamism in the recovery of these disused infrastructures, prompting many governments to explore initiatives that adopt this approach. This text draws on the experience of Tejares Once (T11) to shed light on the agonistic efforts involved in moving forward with these initiatives, especially when undertaken from non-hegemonic positions. But this agonistic struggle does not only have negative connotations―it also generates very compelling operations on presence for people with profiles such as that of Alastair Gow, an inseparable element of T11 who eludes any design prerogative that might be proposed.