Abstract
This position paper seeks to address the operational logic that created the conditions for the pandemic to take hold. Grasping the crisis as an opportunity for an anthropological inquiry across disciplines, this exploration firmly anchors design inside the social commitment required by breathing bodies and life-enabling atmospheres. By infusing the self-understanding of design with experiences and conceptions from Eastern and Western ‘breathwork’ practices the adaptation strategy in uncertainty shifts from perpetuating the status quo towards the creative reinterpretation of internal priorities. It also changes the nature of our projects, from making to enacting, from preprogrammed solutions to earthly engagement, from interfacing with inert matter to caring for living matters. Taking our universally shared breath as the resounding call for action, ‘breathful’ design is about the never-finished, perpetually opening task of persisting through bodily vigilance, diligence, and self-critical forsight for ‘knowing what to do when no one knows what to do’.
Highlights
This position paper explores atmospheres, a conceptual framework from the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold (2010), through which to consider the Covid-19 pandemic
We explore the potential for turning crises into opportunity from a process of perpetual openings through our breathing bodies; a strategy for new insights, words and storytelling towards ‘breathful’ design
The question that guides this exploration is, what are the implications for design when we evaluate our pandemic responses through the vantage of breathing and breathlessness? In doing so, “wicked problems” (Buchanan, 1992) are held close to our bodily needs for scrutinising social and technical decisions
Summary
This position paper explores atmospheres, a conceptual framework from the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold (2010), through which to consider the Covid-19 pandemic. Much of theory emphasises the solidified forms of our landscapes at the expense of the atmospheric dimension of bodily movement, exchanges and experience (Ingold, 2010) In his pandemic response, Bruno Latour (2020) asks “what protective measures can you think of so we don’t go back to the pre-crisis production model?” In his view, the prime learning from the crisis is not to perpetuate the predominant paradigm behind human organisation that created the conditions for Covid-19 to take hold. Many responses to Covid-19 tend to overly rely on ‘swift solutions’ by “designing new things into existence [...] rather than designing people-based systems of provision” as Cameron Tonkinwise (2014) points out This focus on resourcing through making things is perpetuating the logic that caused the crisis in the first place, preventing necessary paradigmatic change as Audre Lorde (1984:110-114) poignantly denotes: “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house”. Exploring atmospheres ontologically for orienting design theory and practice can guide such profound retooling
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