Cosmotechnic Encounters: Designing with foodwaste, landscapes, and livelihoods

Abstract

Organic wastes are vital for farming, energy generation, and carbon capture—embodying naturally the ideal of circularity. However, due to their messiness and weight, organic matter arrives with biological and sociotechnical challenges. What kind of imaginaries, recovery practices, and contingencies are required to reclaim and revalue such lively material? Pursuing this, how can we mitigate the detriment of urban food waste, and, in turn, regenerate regions impacted by climatic and economic precarity? In response, we conducted a series of collaborative encounters with farmers, chefs, retailers, and biotech entrepreneurs in rural Hong Kong to explore what a reverse supply chain might involve that redirects organic wastes from the city to agricultural landscapes. We took insight from Yuk Hui’s cosmotechnics vision, design studies, and diverse economies for differentiating a broader spectrum of economic possibilities. Following this embeddedness with interdependent livelihoods enables us to live in fullness with the world, particularly with organic waste as the foundation for contributing to a circularity that tangibly interlinks humans, nonhumans, cities, and the countryside to different futures. Such constellations can manifest varied instances of economisation—the mutually regenerative and stabilising relationships which facilitate exchange. They also embody a cosmological imaginary that reconfigures local economies predicated on designing with the shapelessness of contingency: staying put with what easily is ignored while relinquishing determinist categories, fragmentation, and totalising systems.