Repair: Sustainable Design Futures 9781032154053, 9781032154077, 9781003244028

A collection of timely new scholarship, Repair: Sustainable Design Futures investigates repair as a contemporary express

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Repair: Sustainable Design Futures
 9781032154053, 9781032154077, 9781003244028

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Endorsements
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Foreword
Introduction
Part 1_Reparative Thinking_Broken Worlds
Five Theses on Repair in Most of the World
Who Decides? Power, Brokenness, and Healing
Repairing the Cracked Concrete
Broken Urban: Repair as Postapocalyptic Design
Why Save This?
Repair and Imperfection through the Lens of the Spectral
For the rain, for the wind
Part 2_Reparative Practices_Wounds, Sutures, and Scars
Aesthetics of Visible Repair: The Challenge of Kintsugi
Repair and Design Futures: An Exhibition and Call to Action
Darning Over Renewal
Thinking Rubble: Ruin and Repair at War’s End
Open Dialogues and Material Memory
What Is the Work of Love Today? Repair, Care, and Carrying
Kurhirani no ambakiti (Burning the Devil): Since That’s the Only Way They Listen to Us
Part 3_Reparative Thinking_Alternative Ways
Borderlanders: A Political Concept for Repair
Repair on the Move
My Grandmother’s Mended Socks: Layered Design Thinking and Durability
Is Business Beyond Repair?
Repairing Imaginations: Rethinking the Ethics of Growth and Degrowth
Is Repair Repairing Architecture?
Trans-Repair: Emancipatory Techno-Poetics
Part 4_Reparative Practices_Patched and Reassembled
Community Repair in South Africa: An Interview with Kevin Kimwelle
Fixing as Learning
Make-Do-and-Mend: The Repair and Reuse of Existing Buildings
Hand Me Up
Recovering a Sense of Place
(Hi)Stories of Repair
Notions of Repair as a Pedagogical Dialogue
Toward Repairing the Social Fabric: Music Performance and Pedagogy at Work
Part 5
Epilogue: Stronger Futures—a Call to Action
Lexicon of Repair
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
List of Figures
Select Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Repair A collection of timely new scholarship, Repair: Sustainable Design Futures investigates repair as a contemporary expression of empowerment, agency, and resistance to our unmaking of the world and the environment. Repair is an act, metaphor, and foundation for opening up a dialogue about design’s role in proposing radically different social, environmental, and economic futures. Thematically expansive and richly illustrated, with over 125 visuals, this volume features an international, interdisciplinary group of contributors from across the design spectrum whose voices and artwork speak to how we might address our broken social and physical worlds. Organized around reparative thinking and practices, the book includes 30 long and short chapters, photo essays, and interviews that focus on multiple responses to fractured systems, relationships, cities, architecture, objects, and more. Repair will encourage students, academics, researchers, and practitioners in art, design and architecture practice and theory, cultural studies, environment and sustainability, to discuss, engage, and rethink the act of repair and its impact on our society and environment.

Markus Berger is Professor of Interior Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He is the founder and director of The Repair Atelier. Kate Irvin is Curator and Head of the Department of Costume and Textiles at the RISD Museum, an integral part of the Rhode Island School of Design.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

“There’s no hope for a sustainable future without ‘Care and Repair’ becoming as sexy and seductive as ‘Use and Lose’. In this very timely book we have some smart creative minds riffng on how to start this re-imagining. There’s a deliveryman at the door. On the cardboard box is written ‘HANDLE WITH CARE AND REPAIR.’" Peter Gabriel, musician, singer, songwriter, record producer and activist “Pulling together scholars and activists from around the world, this splendidly curated collection of essays forcefully reminds us how varied repair is, the remarkable skills such work requires, and the crucial role of such work in resistance to the unrelenting powers of decay and destruction.” Elizabeth V. Spelman, Professor of Philosophy, Smith College “This text makes an essential contribution to debates about repair now exploding across design, the fne arts, architectural studies, critical theory and many other spaces and places. Beautifully illustrated, carefully curated and containing a wide range of vital critical interventions from some of the leading thinkers and practitioners in the feld, this book will set the agenda for sustainable repair studies for years to come.” Damian White, Dean of Liberal Arts and Professor of Social Theory and Environmental Studies, RISD "Repair: Sustainable Design Futures is an important contribution to the ongoing discussion about repair, with a special focus on its signifcance and impact on society and the environment." Silke Langenberg, Editor of Repair. Encouragement to think and make (2018) and Upgrade. Making things better (2022) “'Repair' is a word that is simple yet complex. The authors show how different ways of thinking contribute to a broader notion of this simple word, one based in different ways of knowing. Through this exploration they develop more eclectic understandings of the world we live in, the processes and systems that surround us, how these inform what we do and fundamentally help us make sense of who we are. This book is an excellent example of how we can think and act to be better participants on this planet." Pradeep Sharma, Director of Arts|Culture|Heritage at the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation II

Repair

Sustainable Design Futures Edited by:

Markus Berger and Kate Irvin

Cover image: Ceiling, The Repair Atelier, 2021, Markus Berger First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Markus Berger and Kate Irvin; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Markus Berger and Kate Irvin to be identifed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifcation and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-032-15405-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-15407-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-24402-8 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003244028 Typeset in Prensa, Whitney, Tungsten; Cover in Frutiger This book has been prepared from camera-ready copy provided by the editors. Every effort has been made to contact and acknowledge copyright holders, but the author and publisher would be pleased to have any errors or omissions brought to their attention so that corrections may be published at a later printing.

To our children, and all children on this planet, who look critically at our own practices and challenge us every day to push for more sustainable habits, to be aware of our privileges, and to demand Sustainable Design Futures.

Contents

iX 1

PART 1

introduction by Markus Berger and Kate Irvin

_Reparative Thinking_Broken Worlds

14

Five Theses on Repair in Most of the World, Avishek Ganguly

18

Who Decides? Power, Brokenness, and Healing, Lorèn Spears

26

Repairing the Cracked Concrete, Nakeia Medcalf

30

Broken Urban: Repair as Postapocalyptic Design, Utku Balaban

38

Why Save This?, Anna Rose Keefe

42

Repair and Imperfection through the Lens of the Spectral, Jakko Kemper and Ellen Rutten

48

For the rain, for the wind, Brian Goldberg

PART 2

_Reparative Practices_Wounds, Sutures, and Scars

58

Aesthetics of Visible Repair: The Challenge of Kintsugi, Yuriko Saito

66

Repair and Design Futures: An Exhibition and Call to Action, Kate Irvin

76

Darning Over Renewal, Jeremy Lee Wolin

82

Thinking Rubble: Ruin and Repair at War’s End, Lynnette Widder

90

Open Dialogues and Material Memory, Ariel Wills

96

What Is the Work of Love Today? Repair, Care, and Carrying, Lu Heintz

104

VI

foreword by Arturo Escobar

Kurhirani no ambakiti (Burning the Devil): Since That’s the Only Way They Listen to Us, Adela Goldbard

PART 3

_Reparative Thinking_Alternative Ways

112

Borderlanders: A Political Concept for Repair, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar

120

Repair on the Move, Bec Barnett and Tristan Schultz

130

My Grandmother’s Mended Socks: Layered Design Thinking and Durability, Christina Kim

136

Is Business Beyond Repair? Gary Blythe

144

Repairing Imaginations: Rethinking the Ethics of Growth and Degrowth, Ijlal Muzaffar

150

Is Repair Repairing Architecture? Olga Ioannou

160

Trans-Repair: Emancipatory Techno-Poetics, Paula Gaetano-Adi

PART 4

_Reparative Practices_Patched and Reassembled

170

Community Repair in South Africa: An Interview with Kevin Kimwelle, Esther Akintoye and Markus Berger

180

Fixing as Learning, Steven Lubar

186

Make-Do-and-Mend: The Repair and Reuse of Existing Buildings, Sally Stone

196

Hand Me Up, Jussara Lee

202

Recovering a Sense of Place, Evelyn Eastmond, M Eifer, David Kim, and Joy Ko

206

(Hi)Stories of Repair, Lindsay French

214

Notions of Repair as a Pedagogical Dialogue, Clarisse Labro

220

Toward Repairing the Social Fabric: Music Performance and Pedagogy at Work, Sebastian Ruth

PART 5 228

epilogue: Stronger Futures—a Call to Action, Markus Berger and Kate Irvin

234

lexicon of repair, Markus Berger, Kate Irvin, and Ariel Wills

242

Acknowledgements

244

List of contributors

252

List of figures

256

select bibliography

264

index VII

c

FO R E WO RD VIII

Foreword Arturo Escobar

Repair on the Move I am happy and honored to have been asked to write the foreword to this important and genuinely creative book. It gives me the opportunity to convey my intellectual and political enthusiasm for the vision of design that it proposes. Organized around the conceptual rubric of “repair,” it addresses head-on the brokenness of the contemporary world brought on by dualist ontologies that enshrine human control over the Earth, socioeconomic orders that ensure that such control greatly benefits a small minority of the planet, and political systems intent on perpetuating this unsustainable state of affairs. “Brokenness” and “repair” are treated in this timely book as contrasting forms of ethics and politics—one is bent on continued destruction, while the other firmly centers on mending, reconstitution, and recomposition. Structured around the tropes of “reparative thinking” and “reparative practices,” successive chapters develop cogent analyses of both broken systems and alternative ways of constructing worlds; of making and designing otherwise. Repair: Sustainable Design Futures, in short, offers us “repair on the move” at its best, as one of the chapter titles announces. One could say that this volume presents a new lexicon for designing. Repairing, caring, healing, regenerating, mending, refashioning, reusing, repurposing, suturing, patching, reassembling, rewilding, re-placing, re-localizing, and so forth appear throughout the pages of the book in various guises and forms, from erudite analyses and theoretical frameworks, to ethnographies of concrete 0pposite Photo by Kate Irvin

repair spaces and practices, art initiatives, and pedagogies. There is no doubt that this emergent lexicon is a hopeful sign of the times, an antidote to the abhorrent forms of violence foisted upon the Earth and all its living beings, humans and not, by patriarchal capitalist colonial regimes that have become entrenched. The book partially stems from an exhibition at the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island, titled Repair and Design Futures, which was displayed from October 5, 2018 to June 30, 2019, which I was fortunate to attend. The exhibit’s introductory wall text read thus: “A humble act first born of necessity, repair is an expression of resistance to the unmaking of our world and the environment. ... Repair invites renewed forms of social exchange and offers alternative, holistic ways of facing environmental and social breakdown. [It considers] the ways in which mending can serve as a visual and emotional aid to socially engaged design thinking.” By framing repair as a set of localized, concrete, and diverse mending practices, both the exhibit and the volume invite designers to venture into a design-specific reflection on the (global) state of human society, encouraging them to imagine paths for alternative and renewed design praxes. I was attracted to the field of design having encountered in it an epistemic community that was engaged in discussions and debates that I did not find in the academic disciplines, or at least not with the same poignancy and sense of urgency. What I identified in the design realm was a sophisticated production of social, cultural, IX

and political theory, even if rarely explicitly presented as such. This volume reaffirms this conviction, reinforcing my conviction that design/ing—as both a practice and a critical field of studies—is emerging as a fundamental domain for thinking about life itself and the making of worlds. My current view is that we may view designing as a praxis for the healing of the web of life, an important knowledge-action space against what some Indigenous women activists in South America call terricide.1 Relationality as a Foundation of Reality and a Principle of Designing Within this praxis, designing demands from us a shift in the cosmovision toward relationality. Relationality, or the radical interdependence of all that exists, is re/emerging as a compelling way of understanding reality, significantly different from the ontology of separation that became dominant with the modern West. The failure to recognize relationality is at the basis of many of the crises and destructive forces we currently face, including climate collapse. Shifting to a relational worldview may be key to creating a more livable future. Living life under the principle of interdependence and interbeing demands from us a significant reorientation of our actions towards the healing, caring, repairing, and sustaining of the web of interrelations that make up the places, communities, regions, and worlds that we are and inhabit. The shift will not happen overnight. Only over time will we discover the considerable potential of acting and designing from interdependence, care, and repair. This implies liberation from the straitjacket of our narrow conception of reality and the expansion of what we view as desirable and possible.2 A relational ethics and politics give us a different sense of being at home in a world that is fully alive, and to designing with this realization in mind. Repair: Sustainable Design Futures is a substantial and tangible step in the direction of designing relationally, since repair is mindful of, and enables, the remaking of relations. Historically, repairing was an intrinsic X

component of the quotidian task of weaving the web of life. Philosopher Elizabeth Spelman3 posits a veritable subjectivity of repair (homo reparans), effected on all kinds of materials, from objects and machines to bodies, nations, and even our souls. This reparative ethics is more clearly at play in women’s worlds and in those of poor people, peasants, Indigenous peoples, and ethnic minorities, than in the densely populated liberal worlds of the urban middle classes worldwide, where the cultures of individualism, consumption, and waste have percolated more thoroughly, but even in these latter worlds there seems to be a nascent concern with conserving, mending, and repairing as meaningful and valued activities in themselves. The fall into desuetude of the practice of repair was an unintended effect of the planned obsolescence that came along with advanced capitalism, with its technological rationality, features that were much discussed by critics such as Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm, Jacques Ellul, and Ivan Illich during the second half of the twentieth century. More recently, Tony Fry4 unveiled the profound implications of these critiques in design terms. For Fry, these traits of advanced industrial society are an aspect of defuturing, which is also the term he uses to define the complex onto-epistemic and material assemblages that create systemic unsustainability, which do away with any other possible future. For Fry, defuturing became a worldwide force with the rise of industrialism, productivism and Fordism in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It has become a veritable world-designing machine, indelibly associated with war and technology. To summon again the world-(re)building potential of an ontology of repair is thus at once to deconstruct the manifold ways in which it has been derailed. It is to provide elements for a reconstructive effort, an ontological re-arranging of the existing defutured and defuturing social orders beyond design as usual. This calls into being the need for a new foundation for design, one that recognizes “design’s powers of world-making” and that 0pposite DESASTRE street art, Medina, Mexico.

re/emerging as a compelling way of understanding reality

XI

techno-cultural infrastructures inhabiting any and all world-making practices. In this context, the praxis of repairing and caring for the web of interdependencies, which make up life, becomes a means to overcome the most destructive aspects of the technological drive to shape worlds. This is perhaps in tandem with social groups that are not yet fully instrumentalized by technoeconomic rationality, and alongside ongoing efforts worldwide to resist such instrumentalization The Artificial as a New Horizon for Being, for the purposes of enabling humans to make life with more autonomy. The existential Designing, and Repair Defuturing takes on new dimensions with the and political onto-epistemic conditions for moving towards this goal demands from us a full arrival of the artificial as an onto-episreappraisal of the constitutive relationality of temic force and a new horizon for being human, posing new challenges, and perhaps also all existence. It also calls for a broad understanding of care as an all-pervasive ethics opportunities, for designing in a way that and politics in defense of life.9 is understood in terms of relational healing 7 and repair. The retrieval of the world-making potential of care and repair must face Designing Pluriversally and Relationally the problematic established by the artificial, As this volume demonstrates, repair has an while avoiding its seductive traps. Navigating onto-epistemic dimension. It is not only this theoretical-political landscape requires, about reconstituting things and relations, on the one hand, grasping the ontologically but also about recomposing ways of being, and politically structuring role of the artiknowing, and doing. Reparative thinking and ficial as a horizon for being; on the other, it practice summon us to care for a whole array has to resist yielding to the naturalized and of worldmaking relations and practices that luring attempts at convincing us that this is have been marginalized, rendered invisible, or the only way forward, as glamorous media deemed inferior. In some cases, as in the case accounts of nanotechnology, synthetic biolof subaltern groups world-wide, what needs ogy, genomics, cognitive enhancement, roto be repaired or restored encompasses entire botics, space traveling, and AI suggest. These worlds, thus calling for a pluriversal approach technopatriarchal solutions require the de of designing based on the principle of a world facto continued devastation of the planet. of many worlds, or a world where many Can the salience of the artificial enable novel worlds fit.10 Let me mention a few features of forms of cultivating alternative futures, born designing with such a pluriversal approach, from the acknowledgment of our dependence as I conclude this short foreword. on the artificial, but open to different logics Designing pluriversally means designof becoming? Can it do so with complete ing from, with, and within a world of many awareness of the fact that this futuring needs worlds. It also implies designing on the to re-establish “biological interdependence premise that life is constituted by radical … as the underlying condition of all being”?8 interdependence among all existing entities; its goal is the reconstitution, healing This latter aspect is completely absent and caring for the web of interrelations that from the seductive narratives of the artifimake up the bodies, places, and landscapes cial-as-world; they preclude the reconnecthat we are and which we inhabit. Designing tion with body, place, and Earth. pluriversally contributes to the repair of the In other words, designing might be consocial, ecological, and existential, as well as strued as a domain for mutually enriching articulations between the biophysical and the the emotional damage caused by the relent“radically transforms what design is and does.”5 Such a foundation would enable the actualization of design’s ability to sustain the web of life, and to heal and repair such a web mindfully and effectively. By identifying the logic of defuturing, one can clear a path for futuring as the space for a redirective practice intended for making otherwise. At stake is nothing less than “the possibility of designing new conditions for being human.”6

XII

less individuation, de-localization, de-communalization, and de-placing effected by modern forces. Conversely, it aims to heal the ontological uprootedness from body, place, and landscape through forms of making that contribute to re-embodying, re-placing, and re-earthing life. Designing pluriversally entails regaining the capacity for making life autonomously, instead of outsourcing it to institutions, experts, the State, and the capitalist economy. It does so while fostering non-anthropocentric modes of being human, in connection with the rest of life. It creates spaces for re-imagining ourselves as a community; a pluriverse. Designing pluriversally contributes to a dismantling of the mandate of masculinity that is at the core of the dualistic and object-driven ontology of modernity. It emphasizes collective modes of making and acting, pragmatically privileging communitarian forms of social existence. It takes seriously the struggles for social justice, respect for the Earth, and the rights of human and non-human entities. This goal could be partially pursued by collaborating with those who are still nourished by relational existence, as they rise in defense of their life territories, strengthening their life projects and their autonomy.11 Designing pluriversally requires a renewed awareness of how the creation of conditions for life-sustaining co-existence will necessarily have to engage with the dominant logic of unsustainability and defuturing. It goes beyond the grammar of “problems” and “solutions,” particularly as it pertains to civilizational challenges such as climate change, which are “ontologically unframeable, unthinkable and incalculable.”12 Finally, one can surmise that designing pluriversally could become a key agency in the civilizational transitions from toxicity to healing existence. This reoriented way of designing will require much work. Yet, slowly, pluriversal designers will appreciate the considerable potential of acting from interdependence, repairing, and care.

NOTES: 1 The notion of terricide has been proposed by the Movi-

miento de Mujeres Indígenas por el Buen Vivir (Indigenous Women’s Movement for Good Living), initiated by Mapuche women in Argentina, including Moira Millan, https://www. facebook.com/movimientodemujeresindigenasporelbuenvivir/. It seems to me a more capacious term, in terms of intellectual-political action, than anthropocene, which lends itself to insuffcient and counter-productive managerial and technoscientifc strategies. 2 Escobar, Arturo, Michal Osterweil, and Kriti Sharma. Forth-

coming. Designing Relationally: Making and Restor(y)ing Life; Sharma, Kriti. 2015. Interdependence. Biology and Beyond. New York: Fordham University Press. 3 Spelman, Elizabeth V. 2002 Repair: The Impulse to Restore in

a Fragile World. Boston: Beacon Press. 4 Fry, Tony. 1999. A New Design Philosophy: An Introduction to

Defuturing. Sydney: UNSW Press; Fry, Tony. 2012. Becoming Human by Design. London: Berg. 5 Fry, Tony. 1999. A New Design Philosophy: An Introduction to Defuturing. Sydney: UNSW Press , pp. 289, 284. 6 Fry’s important 1999 book was republished recently as a volume in the Bloomsbury series, Radical Thinkers in Design, edited by Clive Dilnot and Eduardo Staszowski; Nocek, Adam, and Tony Fry. 2021. “Design in Crisis. Introducing a Problematic.” In T. Fry and A. Nocek, eds. Design in Crisis. London: Routledge, pp. 1–16. 7 Dilnot, Clive. 2021. “Designing in the World of a Naturalised Artifcial.” In T. Fry and A. Nocek, eds. Design in Crisis. London: Routledge, pp. 93–112. 8 Dilnot, Clive. 2021. “Designing in the World of a Natu-

ralised Artifcial.”, pp. 107 9 Puig de la Bellacasa, María. 2017. Matters of Care. Specula-

tive Ethics in More than Human Worlds. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 10 de la Cadena, Marisol, and Mario Blaser, eds. 2018. A World of Many Worlds. Durham: Duke University Press. 11 Manzini, Ezio. 2019. Politics of the Everyday. London: Bloomsbury. 12 Akomolafe, Bayo. C. 2020. “What Climate Collapse Asks of Us,” https://bayoakomolafe.net/project/what-climate-collapse-asks-of-us/.

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14

IN TRO DU CTI0 N

Introduction Markus Berger and Kate Irvin

The World We Live In Around the globe in the opening decades of the twenty-first century, humanity encounters moments of reckoning with the responsibility we feel in a world fraught with cascading crises that are local, systemic, social, environmental, economic, and political. Historical loss, ecological catastrophe, financial despair, and institutional corruption have come to define a time of increasing uncertainty and unkept promises. Large countries are run by vocally racist, fascist, and hyper-nationalist leaders, and global economies are sustained by mass production and consumption. At the same time, corporations actually thrive as consumers proceed to replace one product with another, unaware or oblivious of unethical production systems, not to mention social and ecological disruptions, that are kept out of sight. This dangerous path of ignorance, falsities, substitutions, displacements, and discards has led to destruction and brokenness at the expense of countless societies and ecosystems. The voracious appetite of extractive policies, designed to sustain capitalist culture and global markets, have imperiled too many, causing risk and uncertainty; unprecedented growth and extraordinary destruction; rapid decay; fragmentation, dissolution, and breakdown. For many, these circumstances are, in fact, well past the point of imposing a threat and are actually a harrowing reality of 0pposite Markus Berger, 2019.

lost family, health, home, and livelihood. The global crisis is ominous and dire, yet also ripe with opportunities for redress, for effecting a revolution in our thinking, imagination, actions, and routines. To open ourselves to the radical changes required by this critical moment, we must reconsider the value of the crack, the fissure—the wound—as providing an opening and invitation for engaging with, tending to, and caring for the things and people around us, on an individual level, as well as in our civic and collective arenas, to connect the personal to the universal. With this collection of chapters, we aim to open up dialogues about methods that propose to imagine and design alternative futures with empowered ethical and ecological commitments. We propose that radical and reparative re-thinking is required to combat and deconstruct the crippling systemic structures of imperialism, white supremacy, wealth inequality, and socio-political and environmental injustice throughout the world. We present repair not only as a rejection of mass production and limitless consumption, a validation of undervalued and repressed labor, and a reimagined relationship to material quality, but, also, as an embodied act. It is a way of entering into and understanding design as a material-based practice that has the potential to foster renewed forms of social exchange at a global scale. 1

Finding Futures in Alternative Worlds In her book The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World, Elizabeth Spelman reminds us that humans have repaired since the beginning of their existence, fixing things, relationships, and ideas: “The homo sapiens is also homo reparans.”1 The history of human-made objects attests to this impulse. From the very first tools to the programming of artificial intelligence, ongoing adjustments have been required to aid in longevity and to further development. Despite the fact that objects, beings, systems, and ideas require continuous maintenance and repair as they break, decay, or fall into pieces, repair has been largely overlooked as an ontological and speculative topic outside of Spelman’s study. The act of repair is most often presented as a mundane task performed in the household or by the car mechanic, the shoe mender, or building maintenance person. In this context, repair is not seen as a creative and generative act but rather as a relief to a particular problem and as a way to keep going in the same vein, meaning life as usual. In the face of breakdown, deterioration, collapse, or obsolescence, capitalist societies have traditionally tended to react by avoiding the underlying systemic problem and aiming instead to return to an original state or trajectory. This response of dodging deep-seated transformation in favor of a quick fix—for instance, fixing and patching holes within a city street without making actual structural adjustments to the road itself—might be called “first-order repair.”2 In contrast, in a June 2021 New York Times opinion article written in response to the pandemic, David Brooks brought forward an argument made by Mancur Olson in his 1982 book The Rise and Decline of Nations in which he concluded that Germany and Japan enjoyed explosive growth precisely because their old arrangements had been disrupted.3 The devastation 2

itself, as well as the forces of American occupation and reconstruction, dislodged the interest groups that had held back innovation in each country. The old patterns that stifled experimentation were swept away, opening space for something new. Meaningfully engaging with the complexities of our world today—including the detrimental thinking, actions, and teachings that have led us to our present state of societal and environmental brokenness—demands profound change along the lines of what Olson noted in the aftermath of World War II. This shift necessitates large-scale, systemic amends that psychologist and philosopher Paul Watzlawick refers to as “second-order change.”4 Watzlawick, who worked extensively in the 1970s on ways of making positive social transformations, deemed first-order change to be a simplistic, “commonsense” approach, limited to making change within an existing system. Second-order change, on the other hand, required deep questioning of the very assumptions around the problems to be addressed.5 Conceptualizing repair as second-order change expands the task from making simple adjustments to enable a continuation of what occurred before (i.e., a car mechanic replacing a standardized part), to enacting thinking and practices that challenge the status quo. This practice involves engaging with the broken, discarded, and disrupted not as an intervention limited to adjustments within existing structures, but as a complete transformation of the thing, system, and relationship itself.

0pposite

Poncho Poema (detail), 2018. Carla Fernández, designer; Rosa Hernández Lucas, textile dyer and embroiderer; Mujeres Conservando Raíces (Hueyapan, Puebla, Mexico), dye workshop. Museum purchase, by exchange 2018.41. RISD Museum.

Repair and Sustainable Futures In the United States, each person throws away 4.5 pounds of detritus a day.6 This statistic is not only shocking as a marker of the gross amount of trash added into the waste stream on a daily basis, but is also reflective of a loss of connection with one’s history, personal objects, making practices, and craft techniques, as well as the many organic relationships that mending and reuse enable. The chapters in this book offer various perspectives on how we might interrupt the mindset that allows for such flagrant dismissal and disposal of meaningless goods, by making space for an expanded conceptualization of repair. It should be understood as an active, ongoing, and personal design practice that embodies ethical and social considerations for creating and fostering alternative worlds; a practice that suits the needs and particularities of specific communities within a pluriversal whole.7 We see the act and process of repair as providing entry points for sparking novel thinking and insights into how we might remake our social and physical worlds, as well as the systems that support our being and inner lives. Questions this volume aims to engage include: how might repair-thinking and repair practices challenge the ways in which we apply meaning and value to things, objects, and relationships? In what ways might this path lead to a more diverse and inclusive culture of shared and/or mutually respected values? How can we better understand the breakdown and failure of systems so that we can more effectively propose alternative forms of thinking through social and welfare systems and their economies? Can a deeper understanding of relationships in society and nature via brokenness and repair lead to less fear of uncertainty and the unknown? By prompting readers to think with

repair to envision sustainable design futures, we aim to push beyond the more prosaic understandings of sustainability, sustainable design, and green construction as approaches to finding solutions to environmental woes by innovating and creating anew. Here we seek to expand the meanings of “to sustain” and “to repair,” challenging their respective definitions—on the one hand, to maintain something at a certain rate or level, and on the other, to bring into another condition— by putting them together and witnessing the ways their meanings shift and bend in response to one another. If “sustain” refers to a practice meant to alleviate the depletion of natural resources and maintain an ecological balance, it cannot be disconnected from the need for change in the form of reparative/ restorative social justice, food security, and public health. Conceptualizing design futures via repair might bring us closer to achieving the UCLA Sustainability Committtee’s characterization of sustainability as “the balance between the environment, equity, and economy.”8 In this way, repair serves as an invitation to a renewed form of community and social exchange, as well as an alternative, holistic way of facing environmental and social breakdown.

3

Visible Repair of Mies Van Der Rohe Mr10 Chair, 2018. Sfoorti Sachdev and Markus Berger, The Repair Atelier.

Repair in Context In recent years, the topic of repair has surfaced in many contexts the world over, from US President Barack Obama’s 2015 Passover speech, which referenced the Jewish mitzvah of tikkun olam, repairing the world, to Naomi Klein’s conversation with author Johann Hari in 2020, which outlined their call “to engage in the work of repair, reconstruction, and reimagination” as an antidote to the ills we face at every level of society today. In our current global moment, spurred on by the Covid-19 pandemic, the concept of repair has surfaced as an anchoring theme across the academic landscape. Examples, to name just a few, include: “Repair 2020,” the title of the Fall 2020 Public Programs and Engagement at Columbia University School of the Arts; the lecture series “Care, Caring, and Repair in Cognitive Capitalism” at the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art; and the conversation series led by Professor Wayne Modest at the Research Center for Material Culture in Leiden, which focused on ethnographic museums and questions of redress/repair.9 Such invocations for systemic societal repair are mirrored in the resurgence of interest in mending, fixing, and the physical repair of the things that surround us, particularly during the rolling quarantines prompted by the pandemic. To wit, online searches for the term “repair” increased in 2020 to peak popularity in the US and worldwide, according to trends.google.com. There is a widespread and distinct hunger for an alternative, hopeful, and creative future, which concepts and practices of repair conjure.

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Art and Design In the past decade artists and designers have similarly embraced mending and visible repair. Such tangible repair illustrates intimate physical and philosophical engagement with brokenness and, thus, how we might approach repairing not only broken objects on a formal level, but also broken relationships and systems in our everyday lives. French-Algerian artist Kader Attia has engaged with this notion since 2012, if not earlier; in his words, “Repair and hybridization are the terrain where many cultures begin to take back their liberty.”10 Attia’s 2014 work Chaos + Repair = Universe points to what our world might look like if injuries were not in large part erased, disguised, and hidden. Instead, scratches, pain, and traumatic experiences are roughly patched up and covered with stitches that unabashedly hold together what would otherwise fall apart. Repair in a more general sense has also featured as a pointed theme of resistance in museum exhibitions within the past ten years: “Mend” was mounted at the Proteus

Gowanus Museum in Brooklyn in 2008 as a response to the global economic collapse; in 2009 the Amsterdam-based design incubator Platform 21 launched an installation and project series on the theme of repairing at the same time that it issued its wildly popular Repair Manifesto with the tagline, “Stop Recycling and Start Repairing”; Gallery S O, London, opened “Fix Fix Fix” in 2013; and a group known as the Repair Society mounted an installation in 2014 at the Istanbul Design Biennial. In the words of one of the Repair Society members, Gabriele Oropallo, the moment of brokenness is an “opportunity to rearrange things and rephrase one’s interface with the outside world.” He goes on to say that repair is “a countercultural material strategy.”11

Deconstruct Reconstruct, 2018. Markus Berger.

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repair, repair cafés, and the visible resurgence of the craft itself. As a reflection on larger debates on repair, and as a response to the conversations and pedagogical models emerging from the campus of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), the Repair and Design Futures exhibition (2018–2019) was initiated at the RISD Museum to encourage thinking relating to our world’s various states of brokenness. The presentation also sought to engage audiences to consider such issues differently and prompt action for rewriting futures through reparative ideas and practices. The exhibition showcased objects that proposed various definitions of repair: spanning the globe and Such installations are among a growing more than three centuries, the works on view number in which the theme and aesthetics revealed darns, patches, and stabilized areas of repair have arisen as leitmotifs—or, to that were meant to act as springboards for take it one step further, as calls to action— considering socially engaged design thinking in contemporary art and design culture. A today. As a whole, the show was also concephumble act born of necessity has become an tualized as a year-long multidisciplinary exexpression of resistance to our unmaking hibition and programming initiative, with the of the world and our environment. It has aim of investigating mending as material inalso become a way to bring us together, to tervention, metaphor, and as a call to action, re-engage with materiality, and to invite us as consumers back to understanding the con- particularly in relation to the position held by the museum, as a site integrated within texts of makers and making. Looking closely the campus of an art and design school. at repaired objects also offers an alternaThe display and its associated protive—that is, ethical and sustainable—path gramming were conceived to work together, forward for consumers and designers alike. moving the audience’s focus between historic Each of the aforementioned projects underscore the reality that objects, architecture, objects, the maker’s hand, and the care taken systems, and relationships continue to break, in the creation and life extension of singular, as they always have, but what has changed in meaningfully crafted functional objects, to the past century is the skills set and willing- overarching concerns of environmental and social repair. The physical installation was ness with which to repair them. Our readienhanced by a plethora of talks, workshops, ness to replace has led to a state of brokenand academic projects held in the space of ness; and this brokenness, when confronted, the gallery that were curated in order to has only recently prompted reflections on highlight innovative contemporary art and human behavior, in relation to material culture and nature, as well as to one another. Art design work, both of which were illuminated and electrified by repair-oriented practices. and design projects highlighting repair mark Here, repair was presented as a contempoa reactivated longing for authenticity and rary expression of empowerment, agency, quality, and a revival of interest in narratives and resistance to our unmaking of the world and experiences. In addition, increasingly widespread recognition of the environmental, and our environment; it was also shown to social, and geopolitical issues engendered by be an act and a foundation for opening up dialogues about design’s role in proposing our current throw-away society has cultialternative social, environmental, and ecovated renewed interest in repair, marked by nomic futures. scholarly research, new laws on the right to 0pposite

Kantha quilt (detail), 1800s. Bengal, India. Mary B. Jackson Fund 2016.57.4. RISD Museum.

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Repair at an Art and Design School In the teaching and practice of art, design, and architecture, the radical decision to focus on remaking and repairing as an alternative to making something new requires a break with existing perceptions, structures, and values. Such critical inquiry, focused on academic fields, programs, curricula, and courses, entails looking at what is extant and creating new meaning, form, and expression, while retaining the purpose and integrity of a specific field. Attempts to rethink should start with addressing preconceptions, reexamining what might seem obvious, and investigating new outcomes. Through creative repair and remaking, faculty challenge students to find the potential in things, ideas, and usage, so that they might find ways to transform into something otherwise. In the studio, and as part of seminars, repair makes space for an alternative continuity in the form of creative making, community building, the rewriting of narratives, and designing change. The Department of Interior Architecture (INTAR) at RISD teaches innovative approaches to the reuse and transformation of existing buildings, emphasizing creativity, imagination, innovation and curiosity. Adaptive reuse, core to the department’s mission, is similar to repair and can be understood as a process of adapting existing structures for purposes other than those initially intended. Founded on the idea of creative engagement with change, the field encompasses the reuse of existing structures and materials, transformative interventions, continuation of cultural phenomena, connections across the fabric of time and space, and preservation of

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The Repair Atelier, 16 Church Street, Providence, Rhode Island 8

memory.12 A definition of adaptive reuse, as set out in a 2009 editorial within the newly created journal Int|AR (journal of interventions and adaptive reuse), brings together concepts of repair relating to preservation, alteration, reuse, and interventions, all positioned in the larger field of architecture that promotes alternative architectures that too often focus on demolition and new construction.

The Repair Atelier Established in 2019 as an art/design workshop that investigates and activates ideas of (adaptive) reuse, the Repair Atelier emerged from the work and discussions that took place in an advanced design studio in the department of interior architecture (INTAR). It is conceived as a collaborative space for artists, designers, engineers, repairers, and the community at large to rethink and reuse discarded and broken objects, transforming them and, in the process, repairing not just objects, but also the communities that form around them. Echoing the teaching in INTAR, the Repair Atelier engages reuse and repair as design concepts for innovatively remaking everyday objects, existing spaces, and buildings. Repair as a creative and generative tool in the context of art, design, and architecture can enhance and challenge our current material thinking, which is based on the new and the pristine. As an experimental and transformational project, it connects with the social and environmental mobilizations of our times. It also calls for a different approach to thinking, making, and practice, aiming to challenge past studio models that have been star-led, hierarchical, and mono-disciplinary. Instead, it proposes a community-centered, multidisciplinary design process around the discarded and broken in our societies.

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Repair Thinking and Practice The chapters are organized around two overarching topics and read as a call-and-response in many ways, intertwining and engaging with one another in unexpected ways. Texts grouped under the “Reparative Practices” rubric offer perspectives on concrete (conventional) forms of repair, with chapters exploring topics connected to the processes, places, cultures, poetics, and aesthetics of repair practices stemming from a reactivated longing for authenticity and quality, alongside a revival of interest in narratives and experiences. Those chapters falling under “Reparative Thinking” present speculations and arguments on the topic: they reflect upon large-scale issues that have engendered a state of brokenness, as well as those that might inspire us to rethink and repair. Repair thinking offers alternatives and opens opportunities, and provides insight in far less intrusive ways than traditional modes of making, building, purchasing, processing, and discarding. Thinking via repair allows us not only to tackle problems creatively, critically, directly, and minimally, but also enables an embracing of diversity and inclusivity in every respect. In this sense, physical repair acts as a springboard to philosophical, indeed reflective, musings that advance activist movements for structural change and repair (and vice-versa).

Many Voices “... and yet we are aware that the amount of voices is only a start” We would not be fully engaging with the content of the book if we did not face and question the fractures created by academic divisions, specialized fields, and tightly framed knowledge that constitute academic 10

curricula. It is not possible to think about futures if we do not engage with interconnecting “specialists,” decolonizing and disrupting Western-centric thinking and theory, and prioritizing collaborative, pluralistic, and diverse contributions. The voices and artwork of the international, interdisciplinary group of authors in this book speak to multiple forms of brokenness and repair as entry points for sparking novel insights into how we might attend to our broken social and physical worlds. As a constellation of reflections on repair thinking and practices, the chapters offer reparative responses to fractured systems, relationships, cities, architecture, and objects. Together they posit repair thinking as a way of addressing and nurturing our broken world. The contents include long and short chapters, photo essays, and interviews representing projects and research by artists, designers, architects, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, business analysts, and entrepreneurs, amongst others. As such, they bring a wide range of values and experiences to this volume, with authors originating from diverse backgrounds, various geographical regions, and a number of disciplines, including academia, art, and design. We are excited by the multiplicity of perspectives that the authors bring to the subject, while at the same time sharing an overall view of repair as an intimate physical and philosophical engagement with brokenness. By framing repair as a localized, concrete mending practice, as well as a global meta-concept that functions as a palliative aid to environmental and socio-political ruptures in the material world, we aspire to reach those who are seeking to act and respond to our broken planet, as well as those interested in intersectional topics such as race, indigeneity, health, economy, pedagogy, and human/nature relationships.

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Patchwork juban (under-kimono), mid-1800s. Japanese. Gift of Cynthia Shaver. RISD Museum.

NOTES: 1 Elizabeth V. Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a

Fragile World (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), p. 1. 2 “First-order repair” is based on “First-order change” by Paul

7 Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Independence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018).

Watzlawick, J.H. Weakland, and R. Fisch. Change: Principles of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (New York: Norton, 1974).

8 https://www.sustain.ucla.edu/what-is-sustainability/,

3 David Brooks, “The American Renaissance Has Begun,”

ences, as well as other programs, organized by the Research Center for Material Culture (RCMC) under the direction of Dr. Wayne Modest: https://www.materialculture.nl/en, accessed 8 August 2021.

New York Times (June 17, 2021). Mancur Olson, The Rise and Decline of Nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). 4 Paul Watzlawick, J.H. Weakland, R. Fisch. Change: Principles

of Problem Formation and Problem Resolution (New York: Norton, 1974). 5 Markus Berger, “Constructing Change: Developing a Theory for Adaptive Reuse,” The International Journal of the Constructed Environment (Vol. 2, no. 1, 2012). 6 EPA, https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-fgures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-fgures-materials, accessed June 2020.

accessed May 20, 2020. 9 See: “Caring Matters” and “Thinking With” ongoing confer-

10 Nazanin Lankarani, “French-Algerian Artist Explores Identity and Repair,” New York Times (June 11, 2013; accessed July 12, 2021). 11 Gabriele Oropallo, “Between Technological Utopia and Broken World Thinking: The Elevation of Repair,” in Guy Julier, et al., eds., Design Culture: Object and Approach (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), pp. 105–127. 12 Editorial, Int|AR Journal (Vol. 01, 2009).

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14 Five Theses on Repair in Most of the World Avishek Ganguly 18 Who Decides? Power, Brokenness, and Healing Lorèn Spears 26 Repairing the Cracked Concrete

Nakeia Medcalf 30 Broken Urban Repair as Postapocalyptic Design Utku Balaban 38 Why Save This? Anna Rose Keefe 42 Repair and Imperfection through the Lens of the Spectral Jakko Kemper and Ellen Rutten 48 For the rain, for the wind Brian Goldberg

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Reparative Thinking_ Broken Worlds

Meaningfully engaging with, and confronting, the complexities of the world today necessitates a deep consideration of entrenched ways of thinking, acting, making, and teaching, which contribute to the value systems responsible for our present state of global brokenness. In his essay, “Rethinking Repair,” Steven J. Jackson writes that broken world thinking “is an appreciation of the real limits and fragility of the worlds we inhabit.”1 Reparative Thinking posits an approach to understanding those limits and questions assumptions by revealing systemic issues and challenging the status quo via revelation, refection, and analysis.

1

Reparative Thinking_Broken Worlds refects upon the broad issues that have engendered a state of brokenness—including inequality, commodifcation, and exploitation at many levels—and provides insights into how reparative thinking can help us to confront and engage with these broken worlds. Texts explore issues such as broken societies, an economy that abandoned the poor, broken relationships, political ecologies, urban systems, and impermanence. Together, they explore the brokenness that we experience in everyday systems, from our urban and natural environments, to injustices and inequalities in social, racial, and labor relations. NOTES: 1 Jackson, Steven J. “Rethinking Repair,” in Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, eds. Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, and Kirsten Foot (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2014). 13

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Five Theses on Repair in Most of the World Avishek Ganguly

2 Repair is everywhere. Before the recent rise of “repair cafés” in Paris, “right to repair” movements in some high-income countries (Euro/US and Australia), and a newfound fascination with “repair” at elite art and design schools, repair was a way of life in countries of the Global South, as well as among some of the historically discriminated-against minority communities in the North. It is so ubiquitous that in some sense it is unremarkable. But repair, like jugaad, is often born out of scarcity. This tends to get lost when we attempt to uncritically valorize these practices. Repair in most of the world is also often unlike much of contemporary punk-inspired (still mostly male) DIY culture in advanced capitalist countries— societies that gave us “planned obsolence” and “use and throw” cultures in the first place—in so far as the latter presumes access to already existing tools and resources for fashioning a "resistant" selfhood and practice. The fact is that most repair most of the time takes place in settings where neither these features of advanced consumer culture nor conceptions of a “right” to repair have fully consolidated themselves, and violation of intellectual property rights go conveniently, even playfully, unnoticed. In scrambling the logics of capital and criminality, perhaps these small but widespread acts of repair approach the status of 0pposite Photo by Markus Berger, 2020.

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reparativ e t hink ing _ brok en wo rl ds

1. There is a striking refrain in Arziyan, a Sufi-inspired qawwali from the critically acclaimed soundtrack of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s 2009 Hindi-language film Delhi 6 that says: “dararein dararein hain maathey pe Maula/marammat muqaddar ki kar do Maula”; beautifully shot in the backdrop of the majestic Jama Masjid in Old Delhi, the refrain is an alliterative entreaty to the Divine Master to “repair” one’s destiny—literally, the furrows on one’s forehead, the place where it is believed one’s fate is inscribed—conveyed by the use of the Hindi-Urdu word “marammat,” which comes by way of Persian and Arabic. But this unusual evocation of repair is not merely metaphorical. Street-side stores that would do a marammat of anything from a damaged clock to a broken bicycle and, of course now, the proverbial mobile phone, abound in the towns and cities of the subcontinent. Cognate words for the Latin root “reparare” do exist in South Asian languages and attest to the widespread nature of the practice in the sense of mending and restoring: take the word “rafu/rafoo/rifu” for darning, for instance; but, if we want to engage with an idea and a practice on a truly “equal” comparative scale without repeating, yet again, the gesture of Euro-US-centrism, and since we are yet to “model a method of doing things philosophically with words in any language,” we at least need to start from here: repair is not only not just English; it is also much more than Latin.

what Michel Foucault, in a slightly different context, had described as “popular illegalisms”?1 Modifying the words with which Raymond Williams had described culture many decades ago, we could say yet again: repair is ordinary.2 3. It might be helpful to think of repair after translation, that other great instrument of re-making, as an act that exists within what Gayatri Spivak calls a double bind of being “necessary yet impossible.”3 The thinking together of reparation and translation, or rather reparative understandings of translation, often come to the fore during large, public acts of reconciliation. Mark Sanders, drawing upon Melanie Klein’s psychoanalytic theories of love, guilt, and reparation, has talked about translation and reparation in the context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after the end of Apartheid.4 In the United States a revitalized Poor People’s Campaign, among others, talking of a “Third Reconstruction, in the spirit of W.E.B Du Bois, to achieve the unfulfilled promises of the first two moments of Black Reconstruction.5 Since translation can also enable violation, Emily Apter has recently written about the possibilities of just translation in an attempt to test “the hypothesis that language—and the critical faculty of translation (which trains the ear to hear injustice)—has a role to play in the politics of reparations.”6 In order to think justice, it is imperative to think reparation. But repair, like translation, is always not enough.7 4. Repair is not necessarily improvement. Understood as maintenance, repair can be a signal of, as well as a response to, the condition that queer theorist Jasbir Puar calls “debility,” neither capacity nor disability, but a slow, unremitting decline.8 The incidence of repair is often thought to be a symptom of a failure, a breakdown, a crisis, but when used as a measure of quick fix, a response to discontent, repair can end up restoring the status quo. Speaking from within design pedagogy, Alexandra Crosby and Jesse Adams Stein have recently offered a compelling take on this “neither progressive/nor conservative” character of repair: in place of this dominant notion of repair as fixing, they argue for thinking about the interlinked trajectories of “repair as design” and “design(ing) for repair.”9 But in the volume that brings together some of the deliberations of the study gathering that accompanied Ankersentrum (“surviving in the ruinous ruin”), Natascha Sadr Haghighian’s contribution for the German Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, the artist remarks: “One thing that fascism seems to do is promise that it can repair things;” repair, like translation, again, can be disquietingly double-edged.10 5. Repair must always take place in view of that which cannot be repaired. In his attempt to “reorient our thinking about New World slavery in the direction of a moral and reparatory history” anthropologist David Scott draws our attention to the politics of reparation that attends upon historical evils that “remain unrepaired in the present, whose wrongs continue to disfigure generations, and which, in consequence, call out now for a just response.”11 The irreparable haunts all politics of reparation. Perhaps, before we could begin to imagine new emancipatory futures, we need to honor what Scott calls the “permanent racial debt” even as we acknowledge that it can never be fully repaid. Perhaps, even as we urge for reparations for generational wrongs and injustice, we should begin to learn how to live and think and feel “through the brokenness”?12 Because there are things beyond repair.

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Repair stalls. Photo courtesy the author. NOTES: 1 For more on this framework of thinking repair and repara-

tion, see Jovan Scott Lewis, Scammer’s Yard: The Crime of Black Repair in Jamaica (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2020). Foucault’s notion of illégalismes was initially translated as “illegalities” in the English version of Discipline and Punish; for an argument about how using “illegalisms” instead could help us think about “a political economy of punishment that criminalizes the poor and minorities,” see: Bernard E. Harcourt, "Introducing the Punitive Society." 2 Raymond Williams, “Culture is Ordinary,” in ed. John

Mcguigan, Raymond Williams: On Culture and Society: Essential Writings (London: Sage Publishing, 2014). 3 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Translation as Culture,” paral-

lax, 6:1 (2000): 13–24.

the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 6 Emily Apter, “What Is Just Translation?” Public Culture, 33:1 (2021): 89–111. 7 For more on this see “Translation is always not enough …," Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in conversation with Avishek Ganguly,” in Avishek Ganguly and Kélina Gotman, eds. Translation and Performance in a Global Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming in 2022). 8 See Jasbir K. Puar, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity,

Disability (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2017).

4 Mark Sanders, Ambiguities of Witnessing: Law and Literature

9 Alexandra Crosby and Jesse Adams Stein, “Repair,” Environmental Humanities, 12, 1 (May 2020): 179–185.

in the Time of a Truth Commission (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007).

10 Ernest Ah and Natascha Sadr Haghighian, ed. Beyond Repair (Berlin: Archive Books, 2020), 134.

5 See https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/join-us-aswe-build-the-third-reconstruction/. Also, W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of

11 David Scott, “Preface: Evil Beyond Repair” Small Axe 22:1, March 2018 (No. 55): pp. vii–x. 12 Ah and Haghighian, Beyond Repair, 134.

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RECLAIMING SOVEREIGNTY OF MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT. 18

Who Decides?

Power, Brokenness, and Healing

The United States was founded through breakages imposed by conquest—through power and destruction. Conquest entails greed, power, entitlement, censure, fear, hate, and destruction of people, culture, language, lifeways, and community. Conquest introduces power structures that self-reinforce in military, police, economic, political, education, media, and other institutional designs. Conquest generates elite social structures well defined by classism. Conquest and colonization bring diseases, warfare, displacement, land dispossession, violence, genocide, and militarization; and they force assimilation, acculturation, adaptation, and reorganization. Colonization is forged on greed for land and its resources: food, water, tools, minerals, fossil fuels, animals, humans—anything that can be commodified. The conqueror feels entitled and justified to take based on the power they hold and have imposed. This greed and entitlement encourage commercialism, industrialism, and the commodification of people, resources, land, and water. This system is inherently broken as it destroys the unity of humanity. It uses and abuses the gifts of Mother Earth. In search of abject riches, these people have no qualms about destroying other humans, as well as all living things, the land, water, air, Earth, and the universe. Our Indigenous Elders tell

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Still Here (detail), 2018. Gaia. Street mural in Providence featuring Lynsea Montanari, an educator at the Tomaquag Museum, holding an image of Princess Red Wing.

us, “We are all connected. What one does to the Earth, one does to oneself.” This world view is in stark contrast to the ideologies of land-ownership, imperialism, wealth, and resource control (including the control of humans) that the colonies imposed on Indigenous people, which devastated Indigenous lifeways. Due to the rampant destruction caused by conquest, colonization, warfare, industrialization, urbanization, commercialism, and gentrification, the cycles of subjugation, inequity, segregation, poverty, disintegration of family, community, state, nation, and the individual spirit continue. This tyrannical greed values wealth and commercialism over health, welfare, education, spirituality, and alternative lifeways. “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” requires equitable use of resources to ensure everyone has what they need. Mind you, the founding doctrine of the United States, the Declaration of Independence, from which this promise is quoted, also describes Indigenous people as “merciless Indian savages whose known rules of warfare are an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.” The propaganda that was put forth in 1776 when the United States Government was formed has continued to subjugate Indigenous people and other diverse communities into the twenty-first century. These strategies of conquest and the implementation of imposed structures continue to oppress people— mind, body, and spirit. The American federal government has tried to eradicate the Indigenous people through germ warfare, genocide, armed con19

reparativ e t hink ing _ brok en wo rl ds

Lorén Spears

flicts, and massacres. When those strategies were unsuccessful, new policies and strategies were implemented to address the “Indian problem.” Despite signed treaties understood to maintain Indigenous peoples’ rights, the Indian Removal Act of 1830 set into motion the forced removal of Indian populations of the Southeast, including Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, and Creek. Under extreme conditions they were forcibly marched to “Indian territory,” later known as Oklahoma. There were many other forced removals throughout the first 250 years of conquest, including enslavement to the Caribbean, displacement within tribal nations’ own homeland, and the “Trail of Tears” and “Long Walk of the Navajo.” Thus began the reservation system in the United States, comparable to internment camps, a violent means of subjugation. Another strategy implemented when complete genocide was unsuccessful was forced assimilation through Christianity and education. “Kill the Indian, save the man”—the brutal command of Captain Richard Pratt, the architect of the notorious Carlisle Boarding School—guided the federal boarding school policy. This campaign literally aimed to “de-Indianize” the people by stripping children of their families, communities, cultures, lifeways, religions, languages, clothing, hair choice, and dignity. Despite that onslaught, our communities persist, resist, and exist today, passing down traditions, culture, ecological knowledge, language, and ceremony. All of the policies and strategies implemented over the last 400 years were meant to obliterate the sovereignty of the First Nations. As each policy failed to fully eradicate the “Indian,” those in power created new strategies to gain control of the land they valued only as an economic resource. The Dawes Act of 1887, also known as the Allotment Act, was another means of accessing the land held by tribal nations: it broke up reservations by allotting land to individuals within the tribe based on blood quantum, a government construct. The law says it was to protect Indian 20

lands, but the truth is that it was enacted to gain access to their lands through taxation, debt, and other nefarious means, including, but not limited to, the negation of Treaty Rights. Other tribal nations, including the Narragansett, were outright detribalized in the 1880s, with the added injury of having their remaining reservation lands stolen and sold out from under them. All Indigenous nations continue to fight for their sovereignty, treaty, land, water and other rights. Their resistance has generated new laws enacted over the last one hundred years that support Indigenous rights, including: the Indian Citizenship Act, Indian Reorganization Act, Indian Civil Rights Act, Land Claim Settlement Acts, Indian Child Welfare Act, Indian Religious Freedom Act, Native American Graves Repatriation Act, and Federal Recognition Acts. Despite ongoing exploitation of conquest and colonization, tribal nations are resilient and culturally strong, and they continue to fight against the oppressions imposed against them and their people. The strategies of conquest are visible in the structures and policies of many contemporary systems, including education, healthcare, policing, military, government, academic, corporate, museum, and other cultural institutions. The aforementioned tenets of conquest are reflected in museums and galleries, often the venue for presenting art, history, and culture from diverse communities. Reflecting on the museum field induces imperative questions of storytelling and storytellers: Who decides? Who decides what is exhibited? How is it exhibited? What message is expressed? Who is expressing it? Whose perspective is shared? What time period is prioritized? Where are the cultural belongings shown: in the natural history museum, fine art museum, or primitive art museum? Why is the art being shown? What do the labels say? What does the docent, educator, or “expert” say? The answers to these questions are rooted in the history of conquest. The gatekeepers in museums and galleries are often from the conquering victor

communities. They may choose to be inclusive, or they may choose to continue the salvage paradigm. Yet either way, it is up to them. They may continue to represent diverse cultures and communities from their viewpoint. They may continue to voice the notion of their privileged perspective and reinforce stereotypes, misconceptions, and inaccuracies that uphold biases and racism. They may promote the idea that Indigenous cultures have disappeared and that the “artifacts,” antiquities, and relics are being presented in these museums and galleries because the people have “vanished” and these items must be saved. This ensures Indigenous voices are silenced and that the oppressors are uplifted. It is part of the institutional power structure of white supremacy to make certain that gatekeepers can suppress the full history, voice, and true narrative of the censured people, communities, and nations in order to maintain their stronghold and continue systemic racist policies. Education is another tool of conquest. It forcibly assimilates us all. The idea of the melting pot entails acculturating each new immigrant wave that came to this country so that they become “American.” This was done by silencing individuality, cultural uniqueness, language, dress, visible ethnic markers, foods, and ceremonial remembrances connected to identity. This is just the first layer of indoctrination. They (the immigrants) are then forced to learn history as it pertains to the power structure, which transforms their identity at the same time that it subjugates them by giving them the hope of climbing out of the social and economic class they find themselves forced into. Some immigrant communities of the Caucasian race are able to find ways to improve or preserve their station in life by blending into the stew that is the United States. They gain power in the same way as the conqueror. To this day education is used to assimilate Indigenous and other people. The education system is broken and does not meet the needs of diverse communities. It is a system for continuing the structure of power for the elite. Those who do not fit that mold are

subjugated into educational systems and programs that leave them behind. Children from underserved communities are in schools with inadequate educational resources and under-educated teachers, which results in continued oppression. Students of color are often tracked toward vocational education or special education. They have a disproportionate rate of suspension, disciplinary action, expulsion, special education designation, and failure to graduate. These are contemporary extensions of the oppressors’ tools that work to continue the subjugation of a large population of this country within a system that drives them from inadequate K-12 educational experiences to incarceration (the school to jail pipeline). This country was founded on white supremacy and continues to work toward subjugation of all other people. Education serves a role in the system of racism, assimilation, and subjugation. To repair this system we must re-educate and restructure our education system so that it includes the experiences of all communities that make up and contribute to this country. We must hold up the history, art, literature, science, and cultures of all people within this country as worthy of study, as well as demonstrate the important contributions of all people to the fabric of this country. The histories of Indigenous people and nations reach back to a time long before the United States became a country, and our history of resilience is woven through the last 400 years of conquest, colonization, nationhood, industrialization, urbanization, modernization, and gentrification. There is no US history without Indigenous history. Educational course work should integrate Native American culture throughout the curriculum. Education should also integrate the contributions of all diverse peoples who are now part of the United States. That would be a positive step toward educational repair that would most definitely influence race and class reconciliation and restoration for our country. Communities of color cannot simply change their languages, hair styles, clothing, food, and religions and “melt” into the 21

Longhouse, Tomaquag Museum, 2017. Photo courtesy Tomaquag Museum. 22

American identity upon which this country was founded. As noted above, Indigenous people were forced to assimilate via educational structures such as industrial schools, mission schools, and boarding schools. However, this project of white supremacy did not work. It may have broken the spirit of the ancestors who went through this torture, but Indigenous people continue to rise above and survive the horrors of conquest, assimilation, acculturation, and indoctrination. To heal there must be acknowledgment of the harm caused to Indigenous communities through the terrorism tactics carried out under the guise of education. Reconciliation, reparations, and repair to our people, communities, cultures, and languages will improve our relationship with the educational system. In a country that is one of the wealthiest in the world it is a sure sign of brokenness when we do not have healthcare that truly cares for the populace. The system was created for the wealthy, those with the resources to demand and receive the best and most innovative health and wellness care, which effectively ensures and sustains their grip on power. This system excludes underserved communities that have continuously been subjugated over the last 250 years of this country, as well as during the colonial time period before that. These communities have received inadequate healthcare often based on racist and classist tenets and have been subjected to inhumane treatment. Think of the Tuskegee men and the atrocities that took place with the syphilis study: so-called “free” healthcare was provided yet those black men were not given the known cure of penicillin. Think of the Indigenous women who were forcibly sterilized. Think of those women given poor healthcare based on their gender, with information withheld by people in the power structure who are making intimate choices for others. Think of the poor and the lack of access to full and meaningful healthcare. The list goes on regarding the myriad ways people are underrepresented in healthcare. When healthcare is offered as a privilege rather than a right, those people in

power retain it and those without power and resources are further weakened through lack of access to healthcare, healthy foods, safe homes, jobs, and decent living environments. The Covid-19 pandemic is certainly an ugly illustration of the drastic inequities in health and wellness that Indigenous, African-American, Asian-American, and Latino populations are suffering through due to the systemic biases of power structures in the United States. Though these individuals are often front-line workers, their jobs and lives are often in inhospitable, unhealthy environments. They survive in food deserts and face food insecurities, while access to clean air, water, and soil is minimal, if even existent. They are often forced to live in places now deemed Superfund sites because of the pollutants poisoning their neighborhoods. This inequity is part of the systemic violence perpetrated against communities of color that upholds the systemic racism and classism within the United States and global commercialist economies. Healing and repair translates to all humans living and working in societies that allow for integrated wellness, including: healthy homes, jobs, and communities; comprehensive healthcare and education (including special education services); the eradication of poverty, hunger, and food deserts; and equitable access to clean air, water, and soil. Health and wellness are holistic—mind, body, spirit, family, community, and environment are all part of our ecosystem. We are all interconnected. This is Indigenizing healthcare. The power system is layered throughout society not only in education and healthcare, but also in policing and the judicial system, which is not only extraordinarily inequitable but broken through and through. The charging and sentencing of people from communities of color are disproportionate. They are often given extreme consequences for minor infractions, while, for the same negative behaviors, people within the power structure are given a slap on the wrist or no consequence at all. White-collar criminals are given mild to no sentences; sometimes they are even pardoned from their “friends” 23

in high places. The judicial system dehumanizes and devalues people of color, who are given the harshest sentences. The death and murder of Indigenous people are rarely given attention. Missing and murdered Indigenous women rarely find justice within the police and court systems. They are victims of violent crime from white-majority assailants, who are rarely prosecuted, let alone convicted, for those crimes. The criminalization of communities of color is another strategy of the conquering powers to ensure that the elite maintain control by removing their rights as citizens to vote, build careers, and change their economic status. To repair the criminal justice system, we must humanize it; we must utilize education, remediation, and community building as strategies to heal. When consequences are applied, they must be equally applied to all citizens, and juries must truly be made up of peers. The criminal justice system must not be for profit and built to support the dominant class, nor can it be used to create another form of a caste system ensuring racial and economic subjugation. Those with power have recently put forth the notion of “white fragility,” which in fact puts the onus on oppressed and victimized communities to solve the problems of racism, classism, and other systems of inequity. Comments, like “Why can’t they pull themselves up by their bootstraps?” or “If I can do it, so can they” act as mirages to put the responsibility on victimized communities and absolve responsibility from those with historical power and control. Despite the fact that every barrier and obstacle has been put in place to ensure that the elite retain their control, the oppressed community is often blamed for the atrocities that they’ve suffered. They are somehow held responsible for the historical and lateral trauma caused by the conquest, colonization, industrialization, urbanization, and unequal distribution of the resources within this country (and the world) that is reinforced by inadequate education, healthcare, jobs, and housing. When people are blamed for their struggle to survive in a system intentionally built 24

to sustain certain people at the expense of others, the details of how such a system thrives are concealed. When communities are blamed for the difficulty that ensues should they not fit into narrow definitions of “success,” we lose sight of the validity and essential variety of each person’s lived experience. When every obstacle and barrier has been put into place from birth, one’s identity is perceived as a detriment and experienced as a danger instead of a source of pride. Identity from birth is just the start as more barriers are added depending on where you live, or are forced to live, based on, for example, ethnicity, class, gender, or sexual orientation. Such intergenerational barriers may be unknown to the populous but thorough documentation demonstrates how certain communities of color have been blocked from housing, banking, jobs, educational institutions, and other opportunities, ensuring that the community as a whole cannot gain wealth and power within this system. Some would call this an unwritten caste-system, where certain people sit at the top and hold the power. Change threatens their reality. It threatens their privilege, security and entitled view. But it is time for humanity to change, NOW. It is important for us to continue the work of repair and reparations, and address the brokenness in our systems that continue to uphold racism, classism, and other forms of separation, subjugation, and injustice. Arts and design are integral in all humanity, for utilitarian purposes, aesthetic expression, and for the communication of our deepest thoughts and emotions. This expression is part of the healing of historical and lateral traumas that have befallen oppressed communities. Art and design often lead social movements by teaching truth through expression that promotes dialogue regarding injustice, systemic racism, and other inequities that in turn affect the world beyond humans. We must redesign our systems to ensure healing, to create equity and wellness across humanity; we must envision systems that guarantee personal, familial, community, national, and global wellbeing. These rede-

signed systems must secure healthy lives, homes, and jobs; prioritize clean environments with equitable access to food, water, and healthcare; and operate collaboratively with a global mindset that aims to protect humanity. Repair restores balance, indigenizes the way humanity plans for the future, cares for our Earth Mother, and gives thanks for the gifts that enable life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—an Indigenous viewpoint. To effect this change, the Tomaquag Museum teaches the tenets of conquest described above, as we see education as the first step in the evolution of change and healing. We share how happiness has been denied us over the last 400 years, as well as how we have traditionally pursued it and continue to do so to this day. We provide cultural competency, decolonization, and antiracism professional development for school districts, museums, and other cultural and environmental organizations. The Tomaquag Museum supports organizations in their creation of Land Acknowledgements, stressing that they understand that writing such a statement is just the first step. Each person and organization must put actions behind words to create equity and justice and thus repair our systems. How can you use your power to ensure positive, inclusive, equitable change? In answer to this question, we established the Indigenous Empowerment Network (IEN), and we create museum exhibits and programs from a first-person Indigenous perspective via internships, fellowships, and an artist-in-residency program. Through the IEN we work to eradicate poverty within the Indigenous communities of Rhode Island and offer opportunities for education, traditional ecological knowledge, job training, employment, entrepreneurship, environmental justice, and overall advocacy. Together these initiatives disrupt the harmful systems of the conqueror’s version of a history of the “vanished peoples.” By highlighting the lives of Indigenous peoples in the twenty-first century we give our community voice and agency in the representation of ourselves,

history, culture, lifeways, arts, and ecological knowledge. IEN provides opportunities for Indigenous artists to represent their perspectives on their lives, communities, and histories through art exhibitions, shows, markets, and collaborative projects. We also foster leadership and mentoring through passing down traditional ecological knowledge which includes the arts. Through the Arts and Wellness program, we have artists, elders and culture-bearers share their knowledge to ensure that the next generations have access to these traditional skills such as basketmaking, quill embroidery, pottery, tool-making, weaving, carving, music, language, wampum making, beading, canoe-making, and wetu or home building. We also share ecological knowledge of shellfishing, gardening, and the art of gathering plants as edibles, medicinals, and cultural belongings, as well as for ceremonial and other practical use. This continuation of traditional knowledge, leadership development, education regarding historical and intergenerational trauma, inclusive history, empowerment, and voice fosters healing and repair. We thank our ancestors who survived and our Elders who continued and passed down this knowledge. It is our responsibility to ensure the continuation of our people, culture, and identity. We pray that the next generations who come will have completed the circle, woven the cordage of our lives, mending the hurts, healing the wounds of injustice, and creating wholeness by reclaiming the sovereignty of the mind, body, and spirit.

25

Blackdom, New Mexico, 33°09’49”N 104°30’32” W. Nakeia Medcalf. 26

Repairing the Cracked Concrete Nakeia Medcalf

She stood there. Surrounded by what seemed to be a lost and foreign land, a land once known, occupied and owned by her kinfolk. A kingdom of Black descendants and deities who designed a world in response to the world around them. Standing there, on a foundation of ancestry, a ground of generations woven together by hand, she waited. She waited for the hands of her brothers and sisters to appear, her guides to outline the terrain ahead. She stared. Her eyes synergized the past surroundings, apertures of a community bound together by trust and tradition. The same traditions passed down through generations to preserve, to build and to weave together the quilt of Black life. This land is her land. Though now it is repossessed by a family she’s never known. She walked for miles and miles pondering the vast landscape, the barbed wire of protection, the dried-up existence revealed in the cracked, chipped dust of the ground she stood on. 27

She turns around. Behind her, the land passed on to her from her ancestors, barren but fertile, a blank slate for a new community. In front of her, an industrial world, revolutionary, all new—mindsets, people, movements, laws and cultures. A new fabric to seam together a fresh reality. The built environment ahead presented its challenges. What used to be woods now form hoods: a stark visual of the fate and plight placed upon her people. The cracks in the concrete revealed the spaces and gaps of a community that no longer works together, a society that fills them in with temporary remedies, only to resurface as brittle, cracked and broken. She had a vision. A vision to repair what was broken. The reparations owed to her ancestors lied in the potential to connect past environments, present relationships and future establishments. The legacy before her had the innate ability to retool the presence that once was. She knew all could be restored. Gray, dense, hard, visceral.

Barbara Jordan II, Providence, RI, 41.81297387728153, -71.42063147318024. Nakeia Medcalf. 28

It is the mark of division, boundary and prescribed protection. It is a reminder of sameness and marginalized presence, reserved for those lost in the cycle. It’s promise—structure, strength and an ability to be restored. It’s denial—borders of opposition, rips in the seams of society and a fractured community. The cracked infrastructures of our built environment are the open wounds of an architectural catastrophe. At every scale, the breaks in the grounds we walk on reveal a larger need for intervention. A pothole halts movement, a highway divides space, breaches at any scale that to unify must be remedied. A bond, not a bandage, must be formed. Excess must be removed and refined, a cautious process should be applied. The repair of the cracked concrete is not simply a remedy but an opportunity. To repair is to see what has been broken— how we view the Band-Aid is how we interpret its freedom.

This land is my land. Passed down through generations of stewards eager to cultivate a new landscape. It is the progress of healing the wounds made from the blows of assumed control. A new reality that covers each hole. The cracks in the concrete form lines that collide and connect our past, present and futures. They are the blemishes of acceptance of what is broken, and the invitations to heal the scars through a unified mission—to repair. Road to Freedom, US Hwy 285. Nakeia Medcalf. 29

30

Broken Urban:

Repair as Postapocalyptic Design

Postapocalypse as an Oxymoron The world we live in is a postapocalyptic relic. Many of us are reluctant to acknowledge this tragic fact, refusing to accept that we live amidst a disaster site. We are becoming increasingly anxious about the possibility of an imminent apocalypse, while, ironically, we are just sitting on it. Postapocalypse is an oxymoron. Our apocalypse was not a spectacle. It was not the consequence of a total war or a global pandemic. It was a slow and multi-generational process. It defied any eschatology that hailed the imminence of “the day of judgment” or “the end of civilization.” The end result was not anything particularly epic, but broken. It was “broken urban.” In this chapter, I contemplate the object to be repaired. The urban is broken in all dimensions and the way in which it became broken could tell us a story of what the urban is and what it could be. Belying the optimism of modernists, the city in fact failed to encourage idiosyncrasy à la Simmel, establish pluralism à la Park, and end inequity à la Lefebvre. Park’s city was a Rawlsian fraternity of peacefully coexisting ethnic, racial, and economic groups—a catalog of identities proving the possibility of a pluralist democracy.1 Simmel’s metropolis was a space of freedom, which sought to help the (urban) individual with her fight for idiosyncrasy.2 Lefebvre’s urban society was a site of complexification that ultimately aimed to generate conditions that would lead 0pposite Photo by Markus Berger, 2020.

to equity.3 However, in the postapocalyptic urban we inhabit and reproduce, idiosyncrasy is estrangement, as in sacred and profane themed environments; pluralism is fragmentation, as in the post-Fordist metropolis and slum; and complexification is banalization in money form. Take social media. The urban that was once supposed to be an emancipatory agora of politics and aesthetics is now a site of cacophony that turns (once-celebrated) anonymity into an instrument of repressive tolerance.4 In fact, contemporary modes of urban connectivity now take Simmel’s blasé attitude to a new level, by leaving no room for freedom, which he expected the city to deliver. In an effort to fight the cacophony, we “gang up” against the trolls, and, thereby, label ourselves as members of social groups, which we would not identify ourselves with under different circumstances. The end result is that we lose every single bit of idiosyncrasy that defines us as unique citizens. We become a mass. Or take Los Angeles and Dhaka. Despite their distinct morphological characteristics, they are exposed to similar forces of fragmentation. Celebrated as megacities,5 these growing “spatial agglomerations” are gradually losing the elements that once defined them as cities.6 It is harder than ever to justify Louis Wirth’s definition of the city as “a relatively large, dense, and permanent settlement of socially heterogeneous individuals.”7 These mega settlements are, yes, 31

re parat ive t hin k ing_ b rok en wor l ds

Utku Balaban

large, dense, and permanent. They also house too many individuals. Yet it is questionable if these features, in their current configuration, are enough to make up a form that resembles what Wirth originally had in mind. What has been lost is not limited to bodies and places. It is also about the symbolic diversity that we, as humans, have created for many millennia. Cities are no longer the control hubs of expansive symbolic networks. Challenging the optimism directed towards “the global cities” in the 1990s,8 these agglomerations are increasingly enslaved to the almost erratic flows of capital. McDonaldization of urban spaces at a global scale is the outcome of the competition among cities to seize a portion of those capital flows. The ugly uniformity among the patterns of urban design is a maddening, but also unsurprising, consequence of the decimation of profoundly complex and diverse local symbolic webs of stratification and collaboration, by the binary logic of money economy. To be exact, the urban is now a junkie craving for its next “spatial fix.”9 There is no “urban crisis.” The urban itself is the crisis. Design as Repairing Bodies, Places, and Symbols Its postapocalyptic nature makes the crisis perpetual. What we have witnessed for at least the last half-century proves that we can no longer treat the city as a “growth machine.”10 If we pursue this metaphor, the cogs of this machine are wearing each other down, its components are slowly wearing out, and its hum is wearing off. Urban is losing its form, urban interactions are increasingly discrete, and the embedded power relations are denied their history. How to understand this formless, discrete, and ahistorical object, then; how do we make use of it? Read Marx’s magnum opus as a theory of design and you will see that urban is a process of homogenization, of bodies, places, and symbols, in totalizing spatial forms, via fragmentation, estrangement, and deprivation.11 In following volumes of Das Kapital, Marx tells three complementary stories of how bodies, places, and symbols are stripped 32

of their particularities, estranged from their histories and biographies, and subdued to the money form. At the service of capital, bodies of human beings are redefined as spaces in an embarrassingly small number of categories based on their family origin, sexual orientation, skin color, or language. The places we inhabit and reproduce are now either in the Global North or the Global South, a spatial binary reflecting Marx’s two departments of production. The symbols we express and define ourselves with can now survive only if we can find a way to relate them to the symbolic pitfall of money. In short, this is a process of reducing the multiplicity of human existence into finite spatial categories and, in many cases, into binaries. Urban is consequently broken in this story because there is not much left to reduce it into something abstract and ahistorical. It is a violent, apocalyptic process. It denies people the capacity to produce their essence. Repair as Negation What is to be done to unbreak the urban? To address this question, let us now use a microscopic approach and focus on the unfolding of the little apocalypses that lie at the core of the design: the deformation of commodities. In the postapocalyptic world of mechanical reproduction,12 the response to deformation aims not to repair a dysfunctional or unaesthetic object, but to maintain the commodity. Repair is merely the final step of the maintenance process. It is a (highly undesirable) last resort. If repair fails, the commodity needs to “replaced.”13 In other words, objects are repaired to keep their commodity status intact. Otherwise, they are simply decimated and “replaced” with another commodity. In this world, repair and replacement are merely successive steps in the imminent decimation of objects as commodities. However, (re)placement and (re)pair are inherently antithetical activities. Replacement is the swapping of one commodity for its mechanically reproduced copy in place, while repair is the manual progression of an object in time that grants the object a history. The

repaired object cannot be new because it is paired with its earlier form. No type of repair can be completely mechanical, because the basis of the activity lies in the uncertainties embedded within it and that surround the object, which resist any form of (mechanically induced or not) routine. Repair is complete only once a human proclaims it to be. Thus, repairing a commodity essentially entails elements of its decommodification. In fact, it is a rare human activity that breaks the spell of commodification. A repaired object is never the same as its mechanically reproduced cousins. Even if it is repaired to keep its commodity status intact, it is now only one step away from being replaced by a new and, hence, unrepaired commodity. At that point in its progression, the object is very close to decommodification by decimation. What if an object is repaired after its owner (dis)poses of it? At this stage, the repairer emancipates the nearly decimated object from its apocalyptic past. It is now paired with (but never reduced into) its former and commodified state. At this very moment, we see the traces of a new opportunity brought on by Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History.14 Emancipated from its oblivion, the repaired object is now decommodified. Despite its similarity to its earlier (commodified) form, the object is, in fact, the perfect anti-commodity. It negates the commodity form. What if its repairer decides to send this object back to its hell? What if she wants to place it back in the market? In that case, it is still not the commodity it used to be. Its potential buyer cannot treat this object as if it were identical to its earlier state of existence as a mechanically reproduced copy. The potential buyer would like to make sure that she would receive the “value” in exchange for the sum she is willing to pay for this object. At this point, she is eager to learn more about its history, as well as its repairer. Due to this personal involvement, her connection to this unique object is now categorically different from her mundane exposure to (unrepaired) commodities. The repaired object is no longer just another copy, a mere imitation

of a Platonic essence. Now, finally, it has a unique existence of its own that defies the very existence of that essence.15 In fact, a repaired object reveals the dual nature of commodities. Firstly, a commodity needs to be a copy of an essence, usually an “authentic” form such as a prototype or a work of art. The raison d’être of that commodity lies in its similarity to that form in function and/or appearance. Thus, commodification denies idiosyncrasy to individual objects and their producers. Rather, it sacralizes the essential form and its designer. A commodity is merely an approximation of that essence. What commodity production does, then, is to copy a sacralized original. Thus, commodity is an idol. Commodity production is idolatry. Secondly, insofar as essence is sacralized, repair becomes a toxic activity. Many commodities are exposed to various forms of post-production manipulation. As David Graeber says, “we ‘produce’ [a coffee cup] once. We wash it a thousand times.”16 What is the symbolic significance of this activity? What do our hygienic urges have to do with the existential state of that cup? When we clean a commodity, we manipulate its form. It is no longer dirty. But what is the criterion we use to define cleanliness? We assert that the closer the object gets to being “brand new”—the closer it becomes to its original state—the cleaner it is. Repair is different, though. It is not uncommon for people to know the name of their tailor or mechanic. These figures are not glorified as artists or engineers, but nonetheless have a name, unlike sweatshop workers. More importantly, even under the most ideal circumstances, repair facilitates change. In some cases, the mass can remain the same, but the form changes. In others, the mass should be replaced in order for the object to “hold onto” its form. Once repaired, the object is no longer an approximation of the essence, but rather an impure deviation from it. An object’s value arises in relation to its similarity with another commodity. Rather than the quality of idiosyncrasy, which all 33

King Midas with His Daughter, illustration in A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (Hawthorne 1893). Walter Crane.

repaired objects enjoy to different degrees, the state of commensurability is what enables us to judge the value of a particular object. In fact, our notion of value is a reflection of a particular aesthetic preference. Commensurability among objects is, therefore, not just an economic but also aesthetic measure of commodification. It is a succinct aesthetic principle guiding the market economy. Repair challenges this measure, as it turns the commodification binary into a continuum. Regardless of how the object is treated afterward, the repairing process, at least to some extent, decommodifies the object. If it has any intellectual merit, this reading offers a methodological prospect. Repair can potentially convert the broken urban into its opposite, comparable to the way its victims like all the slender bodies produced by fashion industry, sacred sites are sold by the real estate industry, and cryptocurrencies are disseminated by the financial industry. Midas Touch Although a rewarding exercise, it is a challenge to reveal this potential because repair is conceptually in a liminal space, between design and production. It is generally treated as a mostly futile effort in the broader realm of maintenance. This marginalization of repair from within the larger cluster of human activities is not only a mishap, as repair challenges the sacrality of the essence of the copies, but a nuisance for defenders of commodity production. It should be treated as a statistical detail, an unwelcome burden on family budgets, an excuse for new tax breaks, an irrelevance. One way to overcome this intellectual barrier is to look back to history, to trace the story of objects that have their origins of production in the pre-apocalypse period. The metamorphosis of a beautiful object that originates from the second millennium 34

BC, which we inherited from one of the most famous figures in history, makes for an ideal case study. When archeologists discovered the tomb of Midas (or his father, Gordios; a detail bearing fascinating implications that are too extensive to discuss here) almost three millennia after his death, they did not find any gold in the main chamber of this roughly 60-yard-tall tumulus. This was odd because, even though it was possibly an arid land like it is today, Midas’s kingdom, Phrygia, was famously rich. Furthermore, the kingdom’s capital, Gordion, was just 300 miles away from Lydia, a region that famously invented money thanks to its vast holdings of gold. To add to this, Midas’s lust for this shiny metal was legendary. In other words, Midas could have decorated his (or his father’s) tomb in Midas Mound with the Lydian gold, but, surprisingly, he instead chose wood. The wood is likely to have been sourced from Bithynia, an area of land the nomadic Turkic tribes two millennia later called the Sea of Forest, in awe of its sublime nature. This curious

choice of decorative material for his own (or his father’s) tomb demands its own story and there is no reason why a compilation of tales, myths, and archeological findings cannot be suggested for the purposes of this chapter. In one of his numerous mythical biographies, Midas was not the son of mighty and wise King Gordios, but just a self-made man. Born to a poor family, he was appointed as the Phrygian king in order to end the civil discord, which he heroically did.17 He unsurprisingly had a strong lust for gold. Thus, he was not careful of what he wished for when he asked Dionysus, the god of fertility, to give him the power to turn everything he touched into gold. Midas was now a man enslaved to his deepest obsessions. Among those who worried about Midas’s sanity was his daughter, Zoë, who wanted to cure her poor father with her generous affection. In order to bring him back to his senses, she delicately complained to her father that the roses Midas had turned to gold were now void of any fragrance. To comfort his upset daughter, Midas instinctively embraced her, which tragically resulted in him finding a beautifully crafted golden statue in his arms.18

Midas later chose a rustic life, likely in a bid to confront his material obsessions. In this phase, he found his inner peace through worshipping Pan, the god of the forest. However, he was apparently still not absolved of his original sin. When Pan and Apollo had a musical contest, Midas found himself to be the only one in the audience siding with Pan. Apollo’s punishment was severe: Midas received the ears of an ass for his poor political choices, which eventually led to him lying to everyone about his new body design.19 And, as all of us know, Midas was a bad liar. Even if this tale only provides us with a suggestion of what might have occurred some 2,800 years ago, we can now appreciate why Midas avoided having any traces of gold in the royal tomb. However, this decision by no means meant compromising his love for good design, embodied by the aesthetic quality of the artifacts preserved in the tomb. One piece in particular tells us a lot about Midas’s almost lethal search for beauty: the Pagoda Table. Once owned by royalty, this table is now displayed in the Anatolian Civilizations Museum in Ankara, Turkey. It was discovered in

Inlaid table from Tumulus MM, Gordion. Reconstructed for display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilzations, Ankara. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Simpson. 35

good condition in Midas’s tomb, along with 13 pieces of wooden furniture, in 1957. The repair undertaken to restore this table makes for a remarkable story. The table was stored in the basement of the museum until 1981, when Elizabeth Simpson, a PhD candidate at the time, began working on the item along with other researchers. In line with previous reparative attempts, the table was a puzzle to construct. Simpson and her colleagues succeeded in putting the table back on its feet with an interesting material, plexiglass.20 This material proved to be a good choice, because the bad liar’s table is now transparent enough to reveal all of the table’s design features to its spectators, while the alien material pretends not to exist. The cheap artificiality of plexiglass is so unassuming that it, in effect, becomes a genuine component of the artifact. Repair is therefore not replacement. A fascinating detail emerged that only the repairer would bother to contemplate and disseminate: However much we may now know about the “Pagoda” Table, we still don’t know everything. Why were there so many extra cuttings and patches in the top, legs, and frame? They might be mistakes, or perhaps they indicate repair. Why is the missing “Pagoda” strut so different from the other struts of its type? It looks like a replacement. What was once inlaid into the four handles, and when and why was it removed? Was the tomb robbed before it was sealed and piled with the earth of the tumulus? Or was the table put into the chamber in its damaged state?21 Given that we have embarked on tales and myths, let us continue speculating: maybe this table meant so much to Midas that he wanted this piece of furniture in the royal tomb, even though it had been broken. But why did he want it to be repaired? It would have had no value whatsoever in that dark tomb for anyone but the dead liar (or his dead father). He had resources. Why did he not ask for the broken original to be 36

replaced? Maybe Pan had finally taught him that he could overcome his fetish for gold— a crass and dull obsession for the shiny— with a refined love for high craftsmanship. Midas got over his obsession with gold and repaired his broken soul with a broken table. The repaired table embodied the notion of use-value, even three millennia after its design, while being completely bereft of any kind of exchange value. Hence, its repair not only ensured its practical use, but also effectively decommodified it. What later happened, in our age, was not that different. This item could have been a major commodity of exchange among individuals or museums, yet its second repair relied on the transparency of plexiglass to keep it invisible to necrophages prying every inch of every object for the commodification of cosmos. The second repair happened thousands of years after initial attempts, but the fate of the chair luckily did not change at all. It was forgotten, kept in a dark alley only to be remembered for a good reason. Absolution for the Fetish Broken urban is engraved in identical bodies, ahistorical places, and uncontextualized symbols. In this cosmos, one particular fetish vandalizes all others. This is because the object of this fetish is not actually a thing, but a relationship. It is the fetish of value— the unfounded belief that objects around us have values commensurate to other objects. This fetish, we are told, is the reason for our civilization. However, this is a lie, which the liar king’s intriguing story warns us about. The fetish of value is, in fact, what breaks down the urban. In this regard, repair is emancipatory because it not only decommodifies the object, but also potentially challenges the otherwise obvious “logic” of commensurability and, thence, the fetish of value. The states of broken and repaired can never be reduced into each other, because they are separated in time. They cannot be alienated from each other, either, because they are paired in space. Broken urban can be repaired just as a broken object that died as a commodity, and

which was resurrected as an un-commodity. Unlike a relic (re)stored to make us forget the apocalypse, the object (re)paired with its original is the negation of its original. Unlike Benjamin’s (mechanically) reproduced objects and in defiance of Baudrillard’s simulacra,22 the repaired object can remind us of the disaster we experience and endure. In its

body, the notion of teleology is dismissed: apocalypse ceases to be a point of departure for heaven and instead becomes the moment ready to be (re)paired with and as the heaven. Design of the urban, then, is a (re)pairing process of negation. Repair can unbreak the broken urban.

NOTES: 1 Robert E. Park, “The City: Suggestions for the Investigation

of Human Behavior in the City Environment,” American Journal of Sociology 20, no. 5 (1915): 577–612; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). 2 Georg Simmel, “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” in The

Sociology of Georg Simmel, by Kurt H. Wolff (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1950), 409–426. 3 Henri Lefebvre, The Urban Revolution (Minneapolis, MN:

The University of Minnesota Press, 2003). 4 Herbert Marcuse, “Repressive Tolerance,” in A Critique of

Pure Tolerance, by Robert P. Wolff, Barrington Jr. Moore, and Herbert Marcuse (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1969), 95–137. 5 Reyner Banham, Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecol-

ogies (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2001); Ashraf Dewan and Robert Corner, eds., Dhaka Megacity: Geospatial Perspectives on Urbanisation, Environment and Health (New York: Springer, 2014). 6 Allen J. Scott and Edward W. Soja, eds., The City: Los Angeles and Urban Theory at the End of the Twentieth Century (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1996). 7 Louis Wirth, “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” The American Journal of Sociology 44, no. 1 (1938): 1. 8 Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo

(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001). 9 David Harvey, The Limits to Capital (New York: Verso, 2006). 10 Harvey Molotch, “The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place,” American Journal of Sociology 82 (1976): 309–30. 11 Karl Marx, Capital: Volume 1, trans. David Fernbach (London: Penguin, 2006); Karl Marx, Capital: Volume 2, trans. David Fernbach (London: Penguin, 1992); Karl Marx, Capital: Volume 3, trans. David Fernbach (London: Penguin, 1991). 12 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” http://www.Marxists.Org/Reference/ Subject/Philosophy/Works/Ge/Benjamin.htm, 1936.

Management for Process Plants Volume 3, Third Edition: Machinery Component Maintenance and Repair (New York: Elsevier, 2005). 14 “On the Concept of History,” trans. Dennis Redmond (France, 1940), https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/ benjamin/1940/history.htm. 15 Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, trans. Carol

Macomber, annotated edition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 16 David Graeber, Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, 1st edition (Simon & Schuster, 2019), 221. 17 Arrian the Nicomedian, The Anabasis of Alexander or, The History of the Wars and Conquests of Alexander the Great, trans. Edward James Chinnock (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1884), http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46976. 18 Anastasia Amrhein, Patricia Kim, and Lucas Stephens, “The Myth of Midas’ Golden Touch,” in The Golden Age of King Midas, ed. C. Brian Rose and Gareth Darbyshire, Exhibition Catalogue (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 56–59, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1dr36rj.12; Nathaniel Hawthorne, A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (Boston, MA: Houghton, Miffin, 1893). 19 Shannon L. Venable, “Midas, King,” in Gold: A Cultural Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2011), 199–207, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/well/ detail.action?docID=678293. 20 Elizabeth Simpson, “King Midas’ Furniture,” in The Golden Age of King Midas, ed. C. Brian Rose and Gareth Darbyshire, Exhibition Catalogue (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 70–75, https://www.jstor.org/stable/j. ctt1dr36rj.15. 21 Elizabeth Simpson, “Reconstructing an Ancient Table: The ‘Pagoda’ Table from Tumulus MM at Gordion,” Expedition Magazine 25, no. 4 (1983): 26, emphasis added. 22 Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser, 1st

edition (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1994).

13 Heinz P. Bloch and Fred K. Geitner, Practical Machinery

37

38

REPAIR DURING A CRISIS

Why Save This? it is impossible to press pause in real life. From people to paintings, everything ages with the passage of time. Art conservation seeks to slow down aging and repair damage in cultural heritage materials, to preserve a select few objects so that they can be shared and kept for the future. Sometimes conservation work can feel futile; while one problem is being treated, the wear from handling and cleaning may create new issues elsewhere. And even when treatment takes hundreds of hours, the results should be unobtrusive; if you’ve done your job properly then casual viewers should never know you were there. Once it was common for conservators to hold historic repairs to the same standards, viewing the original components as the thing worth saving and the alterations as something separate that needs to be minimized or removed. Increasingly, though, conservators are becoming more circumspect. Damages and repairs don’t detract from the experience of an object; they are intrinsic, inseparable parts of a piece’s narrative. As a textile conservator, I spend a lot of time with old repairs. Unlike framed art or sculpture, many historic textiles were made to be worn and they carry layers of interventions that speak to their use. Different generations favor different methods of repair, and the close-looking that precedes conservation treatment creates time to speculate about where and when each alteration occurred. A hole filled with spiraling stitches suggests cloister-work in European convents. Tight, color-matched, twill-patterned fills are characteristic of professional Kashmiri darners. Large practical patches and wild,

0pposite Detail of patched hospital gown, 2020. Photo courtesy the author.

zig-zagging machine stitches are often found on American workwear, while sheer nets and adhesive supports evoke textile conservation labs of the mid- to late twentieth century. When working on a textile with historic repairs, you join the community of makers who have labored over the same piece. Though we may have different methods, we have similar goals: to make the textile stable enough that it can be used and shared once more. During the covid-19 shut-down, when local hospitals struggled to source personal protective equipment, community members organized sewing networks to make and mend masks, gowns, and scrub caps. As part of a team that repaired hospital gowns, I went to work confident in my repair skills. Conservation is a long game and I know how to make repairs that will last. The gowns came with a kit of repair supplies, and the first time I opened my kit to find blue ironon patches, I was shocked. They are the enemy of the conservator. Commercial quick fixes like iron-on patches don’t age well. They warp, discolor, and create more trouble in the long run. Adjusting to the fact that precious, long-lasting solutions weren’t helpful required a mental shift. We weren’t trying to make these pieces last for centuries; we were just trying to make it to next week—to flatten the curve and safely fight another day. This process challenged my notion of a “good” repair and provided insight into some of the more chaotic mends I’ve seen. It helped me reassess, and offer grace and understanding to long-gone makers that I might have once judged. As predicted, the first round of iron-on patches peeled off and had to be replaced a week later. Like hatch-marks filling a wall, with each passing week successive damage 39

re parat ive t hin k ing_ b rok en wor l ds

Anna Rose Keefe

40

Hospital gown with iron-on patches, 2020. Photo courtesy the author.

accumulated upon the same gowns. Unblemished stretches were crowded out by dense clusters of repairs, attesting to the passage of time while we were in lockdown. Some of the gowns were tattered beyond explanation but we still speculated wildly about what must be happening each week; some bleaches weaken bloodstained fabric and it was hard not to see blood spatter in the clusters of fresh droplet-sized holes. One garment had a sleeve that required 42 patches and many had rips that nearly tore the garments in half. While I sheltered alone in my apartment, I saw so much damage that spoke to the chaos on the front lines of a pandemic. One gown, deeply damaged with 147 holes, had a message written on the shoulder. In all-caps, the back read, “why save this?” I don’t know who wrote this, but I feel the sentiment of this message in my bones. It’s the frustrated cry of a mender, exhausted by repairing the same thing over and over again, only to see it damaged anew. This resonated as an existential question: why save this? A question perhaps asked after spending too much time in isolation staring at the proverbial navel? Why save things that are

falling apart, that no longer look the way they did when they were new? As someone who often winds up repairing old repairs, why? Why struggle to prop up objects that have outlived their functionality by decades—if not centuries? Because studying and preserving historic repairs help us understand the past, tracking and tracing the evolution of an object through time. Repairs shouldn’t decrease value, they add complexity to the story of a piece. Hindsight can make history feel static, like it’s set in stone, but historic repairs remind us of the chaos and uncertainty of life. The demands and stakes of a problem should always guide our repair work, even when they take us to messy and unfamiliar places. Repair is a human process; some moments call for an invisible, clean fix, others require a fast, raw solution. Moments of repair demonstrate individuality and provide poignant sources of connection. Shared intentions can create community across time and space. My quick and dirty fixes remind me of the battlefield repairs on flags and uniforms. The patches overlapping on hospital gowns evoke images of textiles I’ve seen where many different hands work decades, if not generations, of repairs. The practical experience of repairing during a crisis can spark a mental metamorphosis—I found myself questioning how I have been shaped and what I give shape to. At the same time, it was cathartic to focus on small, achievable repairs during times of chaos and uncertainty. Problems that seem large and insurmountable dissolve into parts when you focus on the details. Life consists of small rips and tears, and the process of mending over and over again can be exhausting. But the ways in which we recover from setbacks and damage define who we are and help us navigate our future. Little fixes have applications to larger issues and complex problems—even when they are worked in isolation. Thinking through solutions helps us to understand ourselves and our place in the community. Even when we are apart, if we are all working together towards the common goal of repair, then we are not alone. 41

42

Repair and Imperfection through the Lens of the Spectral If we would present the notion of repair as a valuable cultural practice, rather than as a mere act of mending, what might be the outcome? What might result from celebrating rather than faulting ‘imperfect’ looks, forms, and lives? And how does the prevailing interest to utilize methods of repair relate to pleas to accept imperfection in everyday life? In this chapter, we argue that, to answer these questions, it is important to bring the concept of spectrality into the equation. The current trend to embrace an aesthetic that centers around imperfection resonates across different disciplines and localities. While technologies increasingly permit musicians to “smoothen” their work, composers praise the acoustic power of glitches and cracks.1 As digital tools invite users to share smooth selfies, designers create advanced filters that allow faces to appear with futuristic-looking fins and sequins, as a protest against “the contouring, make-yourself-perfect thing.”2 Meanwhile, cultural analysts point to blurry images and other ‘deliberate imperfections’ in art and photography. 3 Not unrelated to these developments is a tendency to identify the notion of repair as a fruitful social and cultural practice. “Repairing does not come after designing,” writes Joanna van der Zanden in her influential

0pposite One iteration of Repair Society, ca. 2009.

Joanna van der Zanden. Photo courtesy Joanna van der Zanden.

“Repair Manifesto.” It is “an integral part of the same process … Repairing is not making do: it is about revealing the open-endedness of things, their limitless potentiality.”4 In these and other discussions, where repair is discussed as beneficial—as a solution to material deficit, for instance, or as a way to revaluate the role of craft at a time when technology dominates—affirmative acknowledgments of imperfection are also common.5 The act of establishing a connection between an aesthetic that is dominated by imperfection and positive valuations of repair seems paradoxical. While the first practice might correspond with an affection for cracks and fissures, the latter is often understood as a desire to make whole that which has been broken. There appear to be two different temporal logics at work here: one describes an acceptance of entropic processes (imperfection); the other comprises negentropic (or order-increasing) acts of restoration and recuperation (repair). More pointedly, within repair-oriented perspectives, shapes and textures that are perceived as imperfect are often mended and negated, rather than sought out. We can make sense of this tension—of this uneasy co-existence of positive appraisals of imperfection and repair within the same discourse, even if there is something antithetical about this material association— through the lens of spectrality. Spectrality describes a general, existential condition that ensures that imperfection is an unassailable 43

re parat ive t hin k ing_ brok e n worl ds

Jakko Kemper and Ellen Rutten

risk that can never be fully negated by repair. In turn, the condition of spectrality helps to explain the co-implication and co-dependency of imperfection and repair: both concepts, in their affirmative interpretations, describe an attachment to the material realm that is never given once and for all, but rather always embedded in the contingency of the moment. Appreciations of imperfection and pleas for repair are situated, contextual responses that are united in their sensitivity to the spectral. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida is perhaps the best-known theorist of spectrality. For all of spectrality’s preternatural connotations, for Derrida, the notion expresses a deeply material logic. In his view, ghosts are not so much paranormal entities as they are descriptors of how the past and the future are materially active in a historically situated present. Ghosts ultimately attest to indelible processes of contamination. Spectrality is a logical consequence of what Derrida defines as “spacing” (espacement)—the “originary constitution of time and space.”6 Spacing indicates how, as each moment in time is already divided within itself (a moment passes away as soon as it comes into being), it can only remain if it inscribes itself as a trace—if, in other words, it becomes spatial. With each moment canceling itself out, time is in itself a relentless process of self-negation, requiring a spatial dimension in order to operate. This intricate dynamic between space and time is responsible for the wear and tear that defines so many of the objects discussed throughout this book—objects that provide material examples of the ceaseless process of tracing; of time leaving its mark on a physical surface. The same marks also speak to another essential aspect of Derrida’s notion of spacing. Because time cannot act unless it is inscribed as a trace, it is entirely dependent on the material conditions that constrain it, which can never be fully controlled: “Traces thus produce the space of their inscription only by acceding to the period of their erasure.” 7 To be inscribed as a trace is, necessarily, to be subjected to destructivity; no trace exists that could fully inoculate itself 44

against change, because, in inscribing itself, it opens itself up to an uncertain future. This future might facilitate its survival, but, equally, might alter it irrevocably, ultimately consuming it altogether. As Derrida points out,8 the indelible logic of spacing gives rise to a general condition of spectrality (or hauntology). Against ontology’s connotations of presence and permanence, Derrida’s figure of the ghost discloses how, as Hamlet famously remarked, “the time is out of joint.”9 Derrida draws on Hamlet’s declaration to show that each moment is already diluted by past and future. Because of the ontological primacy of spacing, the futural promise of death haunts all things. At the same time, the past can never be fully reckoned with and, as long as there remain material bearers to carry it into the future, it may always return, not infrequently with a vengeance. Spectrality, then, describes an unassailable condition that in turn enables the emergence of historically, materially specific ghosts.10 Derrida extends the metaphor of the ghostly to many different fields—from the political to the technological—but here we conceive of the ghost primarily as an emblem of death and finitude. This is also where the connection between repair and imperfection enters our story.11 Because of the logic of spacing, there is nothing that can be exempt from mortality: the ‘now’ is already haunted by its own negation and the spatialized temporality of the trace is always-already suffused with “the silhouette of its ruin.”12 While this haunting finitude constitutes everything that exists, it is within those objects and structures that are framed as imperfect, or in need of repair and maintenance, that finitude has become highly legible and that the spectral structure of existence is especially palpable. Such objects, on the one hand, are aesthetically indicative of an irrefutable logic of change and decay. On the other hand, they mark our capacity for repair, showing that the specter of finitude can temporarily be warded off. The term “temporarily” is crucial here for two reasons. First, imperfection and repair

imply that, ultimately, perfection is impossible to attain.13 Both terms signal the primacy of dust and decay, attesting to a governing logic of spectrality. Seen in this light, and contrary to common belief, repair should not be understood as a striving for perfection, wholeness or completion. Rather, to repair is to recognize that one always grapples with the specter of a future death. Repair, more concretely, is a continual and concerted effort, rather than a “culminative” process. Many of the chapters contained in this book testify to this understanding, as they describe repair less as a clean and teleological task, and more as the conscientious, precarious, and always on-going work of building more sustainable worlds. What this chapter hopes to add to such practices is a conceptual framework that allows one to appreciate that repair can never grant insulation or wholeness—that aesthetic or formal imperfections can never be nullified by a final state of perfection. Repair should therefore not be undertaken as a practice that sets out to reach perfection, but rather should be handled with a sensitivity to the constant mutations that come with life’s spectral nature. While repair can hold certain specters at bay, it can never

Chaos + Repair = Universe, 2014. Kader Attia. Installation view in “Sacrifce and Harmony,” MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua. Photo: Axel Schneider.

culminate in a full eradication of the ghost of finitude. A second conclusion related to this insight is that the ideal dynamic between repair and imperfection can never be decisively determined. Because of the ambiguity that follows from the spectral structure of the temporal, there is no definitive response that would fit all of finitude’s material manifestations. Sometimes it might be wise to tolerate or even encourage imperfections, while in other contexts it could be better to fix or reconfigure them. One important consideration here is that repairing one thing will generally come at the expense of repairing or attending to something else. Derrida warns us that we must never “hide from the fact that the principle of selectivity which will have to guide and hierarchize among the ‘spirits’ will fatally exclude in its turn. It will even annhilate [sic], by watching (over) its ancestors rather than (over) certain others. […] By forget45

Chaos + Repair = Universe, 2014. Kader Attia. Installation view in “Sacrifce and Harmony,” MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua. Photo: Axel Schneider.

fulness (guilty or innocent, it little matters here), by foreclosure or murder, this watch itself will engender new ghosts.”14 Questions of repair should, as such, always be illuminated through close readings of historical and material circumstances. What will repair bring and, crucially, what will it neglect or even impair? What ghosts will it curtail and what ghosts will it engender? Repair, for all its valences, is thus not necessarily a commendable response. Sometimes, refraining from taking any action can be a powerful move. Enabling breakdown can often lead to new perspectives—perspectives that might never have emerged if we simply continued to restore that which is old. Cultural geographer Caitlin Desilvey promotes, for instance, a notion of curated decay, where 46

imperfection and corrosion are allowed to unfold organically, allowing spectators to learn about fragility and loss in the process.15 Moreover, some structures and practices may be deleterious and toxic: repairing them once cracks start to show would prove to be more destructive than curative. The general condition of spectrality carries a heterogeneity of material effects, and in certain situations repair might encourage calamity rather than prosperity. That being said, as so many of the contributions to this volume demonstrate, even if we set aside rosy or idealized takes on repair, it is no exaggeration to say that repair is a necessary prerequisite for building more sustainable and inclusive worlds. If the ghost stands in for finitude, it also serves “to call attention to and assign responsibility for social practices of marginalization and erasure, and for cultural and historical blind spots.” 16 Rather than being a figure of transcendence, the ghost urges us to attend to the material, as well as to carefully consider breakdown

and fragility, and their often uneven dispersion. If there is indeed a general logic of spectrality, this logic will always engender historically and culturally specific ghosts. These ghosts require a material basis to make themselves known—one that often assumes the guise of the imperfect, offering an aesthetic way through which time’s altering effects become evident, through which an erased past may still be carried into the present, and through which the vulnerable or the marginalized can assert themselves. It is through imperfection that we are made aware of the fragile nature of our existence, of our collective dependence on functional systems and of our shared involvement with finitude.

Whether or not imperfect shapes, textures, or forms require repair is always a question of context. The ineluctability of the spectral ensures that there is no definitive answer to the question of when imperfections should be condoned and when, conversely, they should be fixed. The concept of spectrality underlines the prime importance of attending to the material without being furtively driven by a yearning for perfection. Rather, such attentiveness should be guided by a careful and inclusive attitude—one that remains invested in the fragility and finitude that mark the present moment, as well as in the possible ghosts that this moment breeds.

NOTES: 1 Caleb Kelly, Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction (Cam-

8 Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, trans. Peggy Kamuf

bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009); Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Anne Danielsen, Digital Signatures: The Impact of Digitization on Popular Music Sound (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016).

9 Derrida, Specters: 1.

2 Quoted by French 3D artist and Instagram designer Ines

Alpha, cited in Anna Behrmann, “This AR Designer Turns Snapchat and Instagram Filters into Fine Art,” Wired, October 11, 2019, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/ines-alpha-digital-makeup. 3 Nicholas Rombes, Cinema in the Digital Age (New York:

Columbia University Press, 2009); Bernd Stiegler, “1. Imperfection,” Still Searching… January 11, 2012, https://www. fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/26907_ imperfection. It should be noted that not all of these trends are uniformly praised: design scholars warn that projecting feel-good stories onto signs of frailty and decay can be ethically problematic. See, for example, Yuriko Saito, “The Role of Imperfection in Everyday Aesthetics,” Contemporary Aesthetics, July 27, 2017. https://contempaesthetics.org/ newvolume/pages/article.php?articleID=797. 4 Joanna van der Zanden, Repair Manifesto, June 27, 2013.

https://hiatusbookblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/joannavan-der-zanden-eng/. 5 Among others, see Steven Jackson, “Rethinking Repair,”

in Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, ed. Charles Gillespie et al. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014): 221-240; Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008). 6 Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” Margins of Philosophy, ed.

Jacques Derrida, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago, IL and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1982): 8; cf. also Martin Hägglund, Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 7 Jacques Derrida, “Freud and the Scene of Writing,” in Writing and Difference, ed. Jacques Derrida, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge, 1978): 284.

(New York and London: Routledge, 1994). 10 Ghosts, in their historically and materially specifc manifestation, are often linked to notions to repair—a ghost can only be appeased or laid to rest, so popular culture often tells us, if some past wrongdoing is corrected. Within academia, ghosts have, moreover, been conceptualized as fgures that call for justice and that demand reparations—see Avery F. Gordon, Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination (Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997)—and as emblems of lost futures that may still materialize if past mistakes are repaired—see Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (Winchester and Washington, DC: Zero Books, 2014). 11 For a more detailed account of the relation between spectrality and imperfection, see Jakko Kemper, “Technological Aesthetics of Imperfection in Times of Frictionlessness” (PhD diss., University of Amsterdam 2021). 12 Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (New York: Routledge, 2002): 278. 13 On the relationship between imperfection, perfection, and purity, see also Ellen Rutten, “Imperfections: Introduction,” in Imperfections: Studies in Mistakes, Flaws, and Failures, ed. Caleb Kelly et al. (New York: Bloomsbury, in print). 14 Derrida, Specters: 109. 15 Caitlin DeSilvey, Curated Decay: Heritage Beyond Saving

(Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). 16 Esther Peeren, The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014): 13.

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07.19.21 I GOT UP AT 6.31A.M.

48

For the rain, for the wind Brian Goldberg

I don’t recall when or where I first learned about tikkun olam1—I was young, and knowing my habits and the limits of my religious education it was almost certainly in a library book. I do remember an outsized, extravagant feeling, as if I had stumbled upon the key to something—a life of meaning and purpose, an ethical framework for everything that lay ahead. Later, somewhere, I heard someone refer to tikkun olam as the vocation of the Jewish people, our offering to the world, our work. I was ready for it. The broken world seemed legible to me now, and knowable. As I grew older, and the injuries accumulated, I started to feel the rage creep in. Does that kind of rage need to be earned? Maybe it was just everyday sadness; or fear, perhaps bewilderment; or even a mannerism. Or sadness. For people I love or will never know. For all the endless cruelties of power and government. For poison in the wires; in the air, the water, the earth. So on bad days, rage or terror or sadness, tightly held; and on the rest I earnestly did my best to contribute to a world of ideas, to imagine a politics and an ethics around the slow, tedious, brilliant work of repair. How else to attend to the grain of loss and sorrow, to the thin lines, while also imagining a future? Winding the world up, binding it into a narrative of redemption and grace, of world-making and revolution. I’ve since renounced this grinding bipolarity, with its heroic, messianic reshaping of the broken into the beautiful, scarred and 0pposite Photo courtesy the author.

beloved and enduring. Why, again, should we continue to diligently gather up these shards and broken pieces? Can we even find them in this endless, shadowed, miasmic crisis? Perhaps the time has come to lay down our tools and quit. To refuse. To rest! Who would want to sustain this? If we are to have a future this world must break, as uncomfortable and terrifying as that may be; the broken pieces scattered and buried and lost; or smashed to raw dust, to begin an experiment, to make something new. Or is “the future” itself a habit we have to break? •••• Many years ago I worked on a writing project about the history of vandalism (of buildings, monuments, and works of art and luxury), abandoned when my body was reeling from illness and brutal remedy. It was too hard and heart-breaking to double-back to the scraps and pieces I found after. The project was there, but I could no longer imagine it as a whole, complete thing; as was true of so much then. I would catch myself singing that Gang of Four song. Damaged goods Send ‘em back I can’t work, I can’t achieve Send me back Open the till Give me the change you said would do me good The last section I wrote was focused on the Abbé Henri Grégoire who, in the depths of the French Revolution’s iconoclastic fever, is 49

reparativ e t hink ing _b ro ke n wor l ds

“I wake up every morning in this killing machine called America, and I’m carrying this rage inside like a blood-filled egg. And there’s a thin line between the inside and outside, a thin line between thought and action, and that line is simply made up of blood and muscle and bone.” —david wojnarorwicz, reading for the Needle Exchange shortly before his death in 1992.

said to have coined the term “vandalism.” The entire material and built culture of the ancien régime—works of art and craftsmanship, even the city itself—were symbols and reminders of a reviled royal and theocratic power structure. Grégoire’s project was to develop a conceptual structure in which things might be weighed and balanced, their culpability measured against their “beauty.” On one side of that judgment lay annihilation, the work of justice; and on the other a new-found autonomy. To destroy the latter would not be justice, but an act of depraved vandalism, a crime. These things would instead be protected, preserved, and restored, no longer for the aggrandizement of church or crown, but as the revered “patrimony of the French people” (or indeed, in its imperial form, of all mankind). The site for this transmutation would be the museum. In my still rough text I argued that this claimed authority to draw distinctions—to sift the sparks from the dross, and then stabilize these objects in the museum— marked the emergence of a new, modern

form of power. The links between things and their structural conditions, their relationship to life and labor and power, might now be repressed in the name of an autonomous commodity, an object of connoisseurship and appreciation. All that precious junk sitting in revolutionary depots would be liberated from its origin and purpose, from “guilt”; would enter into culture, into the museum; and there demand our veneration. Repair and preservation were not neutral, ethical practices, but fundamental to the construction of this new model of heritage and the nation-state, and a justification for imperial accumulation and plunder. •••• It glimmers beneath an unstable tent, so tiny, the consolation of the New World —rudolf borchardt Do the existential stakes and urgencies of the present crisis now demand that we refuse all these received, fine distinctions, and their comforts; that we be prepared instead to test David Wojnarowicz (Silence = Death), 1989. Photo ©Andreas Sterzing. Courtesy the artist and P.P.O.W Gallery.

0pposite

Strange Fruit (detail), 1992–1997. Zoe Leonard. Photo: Graydon Wood. Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with funds contributed by the Dietrich Foundation and with the partial gift of the artist and the Paula Cooper Gallery, 1998, 1998-2-1. © Zoe Leonard. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne and Hauser & Wirth. 50

everything again—to crack the world open, to clear everything away, even the traces of destruction? As with Benjamin’s destructive character,2 not out of hatred or rage, or in the name of a grand, totalizing vision, but simply to make room. How much has to end before we can begin to imagine the contours, the consolations, of a new world? We’re always urged to respond, to act, to hold on, to repair, to design and build a “sustainable future.” Might we strike instead, refuse to be party to the disease or its purported remedy, at least long enough to see with fresh eyes, to tease out the web of conditions that have constrained what is possible? Forty years in the desert seems like an indulgence in the face of emergency, but it was necessary. He said, in reference to my blood and marrow, explaining what was to come, “Burn the fields. Let the grasses grow.” The future belongs to someone else. •••• I wake up every morning in this killing machine called America, and while I expect to find that rage, more often it’s been muted

and dissipated into the practical work of keeping myself alive. Organizing and maintaining a body and the objects and processes and properties that make up this monument to a life, a monument I loathe and love and polish and hold tightly. I find strange solace and meaning in the work and its rhythms —sometimes satisfaction or even happiness—and I sense in the routine and daily effort a keystone to another life; even if, for now, it looks like nothing more than getting up, working; and again to rest. •••• The artist Zoe Leonard retreated to Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1992. Mourning the recent death from AIDS of her friend David Wojnarowicz, and so many others, she began to sew up and embellish the empty skins of just-eaten fruits. At first it was a way to think about and remember David, but eventually the practice incorporated all kinds of loss—of friendship, shared purpose, certainty. And, perhaps, more quietly, her own survival in the midst of so much death. She gathers the skins, closes them up,

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Unmade Bed, 1845. Adolf Menzel. © Kupferstichkabinett. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin SZ-Nr. SZ Menzel N 319.

restores their form, in order “to sew myself back up,”3 not (yet) as art, but a daily practice, binding together sustenance and pleasure and trauma; obsessively repeating the gesture of repair while acknowledging its futility. Leonard continued the practice for a few more years, alone in Alaska, through the long dark winters, signs and fragile parts scattered across a table. “This mending cannot possibly mend any real wounds, but it provided something for me. Maybe just time, or the rhythm of sewing. I haven’t been able to change anything in the past, or bring back any of the people I love who have died, but I’ve been able to experience my love and loss in a measured and continuous way; to remember.”4 Repair as eulogy, a kind of monument, one doomed to impermanence as the un-preserved skins continue to fade, crack, mold, decompose, disintegrate. That is until a critical distinction was made and they departed from life to become art, an object of exchange, gathered up 52

and organized and given a title and fixed in time—Strange Fruit, 1992–1997; bought and sold and insured, collected by the museum, elevated with an accession number and then subject to all the values and practices that follow. There is a fascinating narrative5 about the eventually successful but still abandoned effort to stabilize and preserve the skins, and the complicated negotiations that followed. Leonard, sitting at a table with fruit. Eating, savoring, feeling the sugar and fiber and water enter her body, enter her blood; gathering up the peels, still fresh and workable, and finally setting down to sew. Holding on, and letting go. A game of here-gone, the compulsion to rehearse and master loss and death, to set another process in motion. The work, of course, should finally return to life; that is to disappear, to turn to dust. Still its given name will persist, and it troubles the work’s quietude and its creation myth by turning us back to the unmeasurable indifference, abjection, and brutality in which she locates her loss, even though her

“Untitled”, 1991. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Installation view of Felix Gonzalez-Torres Billboard Project, Artspace, San Antonio, TX. Jan.—Dec. 2010. Photo Tom DuBrock. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Courtesy of The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.

own methods remain narrowly elegiac and therapeutic. I can’t see how Leonard accounts for this, but I must here recall the song, and Billie Holiday’s voice.6 Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees Pastoral scene of the gallant south The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh Then the sudden smell of burning flesh Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop Here is a strange and bitter crop •••• I wake up every morning in an unmade bed. I cannot help but unmake it in the night. I’m renewed there, however – sweating, vulnerable and unconscious, dreaming; but

finally at rest. And then I get up, the bed left behind, at least for a moment, empty and unused, unmade, still bearing the marks and impressions of our bodies, a memory. Traces of movement and negotiation, impressions and disarray, capturing all the perturbations of the night, a kind of “mystic writing pad”7; the unmade marked by absence and loss, a faint palimpsest; but also anticipating regular care, the making and unmaking and remaking of the bed, things broken down and put back in order, smoothed out, reorganized and made whole; here and gone, remembering and forgetting. A picture, a small drawing or a public billboard, might fix the unmade and render these private intimacies as a space for thought, for contestation, and for mourning. Gestures and acts of care, instead of simply disappearing in repetition or ritual, leave traces or artifacts, make a declaration, a claim on the present; marking time, insisting that we steady ourselves in some present tense, 53

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opposite:

Yamataka Jindai-zakura, an approximately 2,000 year-old cherry tree in Japan, 2012. Ron Henderon. Photo courtesy Ron Henderson, Japan-US Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellow. below:

Tree, 1997. Zoe Leonard. Installation view of "Zoe Leonard: Survey," November 11, 2018—March 25, 2019 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Photo: Brian Forrest. ©Zoe Leonard. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne and Hauser & Wirth.

between an unarticulated but fulsome past and a future we no longer trust. •••• Another work by Zoe Leonard, Tree, 1997; a sculpture Leonard made from parts of a tree killed by lightning, cut down and dismembered, then reconstructed and held together with metal plates and crutches and lines and supports. An orthopedic mirror, holding the present intact, in its place, a form reconstituted, the violence of its death deferred and muted, at least from a distance. It goes through the motions of repair, but there is no healing, just an act of refusal, the creation of a monstrous living death, fixing time. Or an object of veneration, where the supports and imagined totality remind us of a still vital connection to a distant or even imaginary past; a relic, imbued with occult power. This is sometimes done with very old trees, their limbs propped up with crutches and wires, so that they might continue to live and blossom and delight and solicit our awe at their age and perseverance. We like to imagine the human events that trees have witnessed in their long lives. But the rings register only climate. •••• Tehching Hsieh began his last artwork in 1986 with the statement “I, Tehching Hsieh, have a 13 years’ plan.” He completed it 13 years later, at the turn of the millennium, with a final statement, the work’s only formal expression: “I kept myself alive. I passed the Dec. 31, 1999.” Marking time, but also making plans, and surviving; attending to life. We struggle to comprehend the scale and complexity of our present, sedimentary

emergencies; and there is no outside of it, even if the suffering remains unevenly distributed. Capital and its technocratic apparatus continue to set targets they will not meet, to churn out “innovations” and products—this morning it’s vast solar farms, carbon mined from the air, lab-grown meat… but it’s always something—whatever is required to keep us enthralled, and busy. There’s nothing to repair here, and nothing to sustain; only new things to buy. I want to believe in solidarity, in an inevitable collective movement that will break our descent. Or at least buy us more time—not to repair, but to adapt, to manage our retreat. But actually creating the conditions for survival and exodus seems for now more closely circumscribed—local and intimate. Maybe it’s just you and me, with our small, daily refusals, and the routine, everyday work of keeping ourselves alive. How will we feed ourselves? Where will we go? Where will we sleep? How will we care for one another? How will we organize and calibrate the space between us, and love one another, beneath this unstable tent? I woke up this morning, but stayed in bed for a long time, listening to the layered, steady rain—on the roof, on the leaves, on the bitter ground.

NOTES: 1 In Hebrew, literally “repair of the world”. In some Jewish

traditions tikkun olam represents a religious (as well as ethical, social, and political) commitment to working for social justice and structural change. In kabbalistic traditions, tikkun is further connected to the concept of birur, or “clarifcation,” the sifting of sparks of divine light from an impure and fallen materiality. 2 Walter Benjamin, “The Destructive Character.” Diacritics,

vol. 8, no. 2, 1978, p. 47. 3 Zoe Leonard interviewed by Anna Blume, https://www.

anthonymeierfnearts.com/attachment/en/555f2a8acfaf3429568b4568/Press/555f2b29cfaf3429568b5c35. 4 Ibid. 5 Nina Quabeck, "Intent in the making: the life of Zoe Leonard’s ‘Strange Fruit’," Burlington Contemporary Issue 1 (May 2019), https://doi.org/10.31452/bcj1.intent.quabeck 6 Abel Meeropol, “Strange Fruit,” 1937. 7 Sigmund Freud, “A Note Upon the ‘Mystic Writing-Pad’,” 1925.

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58 Aesthetics of Visible Repair: The Challenge of Kintsugi Yuriko Saito 66 Repair and Design Futures: An Exhibition and Call to Action Kate Irvin 76 Darning Over Renewal Jeremy Lee Wolin 82 Thinking Rubble: Ruin and Repair at War’s End Lynnette Widder 90 Open Dialogues and Material Memory Ariel Wills 96 What Is the Work of Love Today? Repair, Care, and Carrying Lu Heintz 104 Kurhirani no ambakiti (Burning the Devil): Since That’s the Only Way They Listen to Us Adela Goldbard

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Reparative Practices_Wounds, Sutures, and Scars

Reparative Practices call for making that moves beyond rigid binaries and conservative approaches. Deep consideration of the context of the site of brokenness—no matter what the scale—is crucial in order to effectively bridge voids and join together to forge pathways to future functionality. This section explores topics that embrace the fssures, fractures, cracks, and ruptures that something broken may leave behind.

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Essays in this section look at wounds, sutures, and scars not as problematic traces of brokenness, but as inspiration and as opportunities to engage, remake, and recover value. These essays speak to repair as a way of (re)making something—perhaps even a broken world—so that it becomes functional again, while acknowledging use, abuse, accident, and error, as well as erosion, breakdown, and decay. These texts insist on not forgetting the thing or its history.

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CREATING A NEW INTEGRITY

Aesthetics of Visible Repair:

The Challenge of Kintsugi

We tend to think of material objects primarily as spatial entities with regard to the way they occupy space. As a result, we generally neglect to attend to the temporal dimension of their existence: nothing in this world stays the same. This vicissitude and impermanence of the material world has been a major challenge to human beings. Although human beings grow and mature, we are more concerned with when we are past our prime, namely when we start our decline before reaching our ultimate end. As David Lowenthal, a cultural geographer, observes, “the balance of evidence … shows general dislike of age and decay. We prefer youth, not only in living creatures but in our surroundings, including our own creation.” While he is fully aware that “distaste for the marks of age is far from universal,” he admits that the appreciation for the aged appearance “is the exception.”1 This distaste for the signs of aging and decay is today exacerbated by what Steven J. Jackson, an information and technology scholar, calls “productionist bias” or “production-centered ethos” associated with industry production. It is to privilege the end result of a production process when the product is "finished" and in a "mint" condition that is regarded perfect and unalterable.2 We the consumers are encouraged to think that an object stops its life after the point of purchase, instead of continuing its history through its own aging process and our interaction with it. Except for those objects that are considered to get better as they age and broken in, such as jeans and carpentry tools,

the changes many objects go through by their own aging process, breakage, accidental damage, and wear and tear from repeated use are considered negatively. They become “imperfect” by compromising or damaging the original integrity, rather than each stage exhibiting its unique characteristic. Particularly today when rampant consumerism is fueled by planned obsolescence, near impossibility of repair and unavailability of inexpensive replacements encourage us to throw away any objects that are no longer in mint condition. This exacerbates the environmental problems caused by increased production and waste. Furthermore, our relationship with material objects has become compromised because we lose the opportunity to nurture an enduring and engaging relationship through maintenance, care, and repair. In light of this problem, repair is making a comeback. In addition to the passage of right-to-repair legislations in increasing number of states in the United States and other countries, there are also grass-roots movements, such as the issuance of the Repair Manifesto and the global proliferation of the repair café in 1,500 venues since its beginning in Amsterdam in 2009.3 Within repair activities, however, there is a continuing penchant for an object’s undamaged appearance from its so-called “original” condition. We normally try to make the signs of repair as inconspicuous or, better still, invisible as possible. We use the same-colored thread and fabric to patch up a rip and yarn to darn socks.4 When putting

0pposite Ceiling Kintsugi, Repair Atelier, Photo by Markus Berger, 2019.

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reparativ e p r actic es _ wou nds , su t u r es, a nd s c a r s

Yuriko Saito

broken pottery pieces back together, we apply transparent glue. The paint used for touching up the scratches on a car needs to match the rest of the body. There is an implicit aesthetic judgment that the original appearance of an object is superior to its later changed appearance, which is almost always characterized negatively as damage, dilapidation, defect, or degradation. Such a fall from grace needs to be made as invisible as possible. The exquisite examples of invisible repair were on display at the 2018-2019 exhibit Repair and Design Futures at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Many objects, predominantly fabric, were covered by a glass top with a marking indicating where the mending occurred.5 Even then, I had to scrutinize closely to find the repaired parts, and the resulting amusing experience was similar to finding natural creatures’ camouflage. In addition, I could not help but admire the considerable skills involved in such meticulous and stunning results. Today’s repair activists, however, challenge the aesthetic assumption involved in this repair method. Why hide the sign of damage and repair? Why not consider it as a springboard for creating a new integrity for the object, a kind of a new chapter in its ongoing story by accentuating the damage and repair? Probably the best-known example of visible repair is proudly displayed patches and stitches on clothing, sometimes literally worn on the sleeves.6 Some contemporary art projects also feature visible repair. Let me list several: Daniel Eatock’s Visible Vehicle Repairs (2017~) that results in two-colored cars; Rachel Sussman’s Sidewalk Kintsukuroi (2016~) that repairs sidewalk cracks by filling them with gold-colored paint; Jan Vormann’s Dispatchwork (2007~) in which, across different parts of the world and often together with the area residents, he repairs the crumbling edifice of brick structures with Lego pieces; Charlotte Bailey’s repaired broken vases by wrapping them with fabric with the same pattern and sewing the pieces with gold threads (2016); Tomomi Kamoshita’s patchwork chopstick rests and mismatched earrings that piece together ceramic 60

shards (2014~); Yee Sookyung’s Translated Vases (2002~) that piece together shards from multiple vases using the kintsugi method; Elisa Sheehan’s Kintsugi Eggshells, an ongoing project presenting “repaired” eggshells with the kintsugi method, described by the artist herself as “a visual representation of imperfection as a true value and where flaws are celebrated and viewed as beautiful”; and Tatiane Freitas’ My Old New Series (2010~), broken wooden furniture “fixed” with parts made with acrylic resin.7 As is evident from the above list, many artists are inspired by the traditional Japanese repair practice called kintsugi (gold joinery) or kintsukuroi (repair by gold). Kintsugi originated as a mending method for tea bowls used in the tea ceremony. According to a legend, Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa (1436–1490) had a prized Chinese celadon porcelain tea bowl which became cracked. He sent it back to China for repair. It came back repaired with metal staples, which did not satisfy his aesthetic taste, so he ordered a craftsman to come up with a more attractive repair. The craftsman repaired the bowl with the kintsugi method. This repair method was subsequently popularized with the sixteenth century establishment of the wabi tea ceremony, as indicated by its founder, Sen no Rikyu’s observation: “We might naturally find it awkward to use … a cracked tea bowl of present-day porcelain. On the other hand, … we are accustomed to make use of or even very ready to use, despite defects, the antique tea-caddy imported from China … mended with lacquer.”8 As this passage indicates, despite the impression given by the term “gold joinery” or “repair by gold,” lacquer is used as an adhesive and gold, sometimes silver or tin, flakes are applied as an ornamental touch. Kintsugi suggests several important implications that are applicable beyond its culture- and history-specific origin. First, it regards various forms of so-called damage as having their own integrity for what they are and providing an opportunity for exercising imagination and creativity. In keeping with Zen Buddhism, the philosophy underlying

Bowl with kintsugi repair (detail), 936-1392. Korean. Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke 17.104. RISD Museum.

the wabi tea ceremony, which advocates respecting and appreciating the Buddha nature of everything whatsoever, kintsugi celebrates, rather than denigrates, the so-called damage or imperfection. It is noteworthy that the new pattern created by kintsugi-repaired damages is considered to evoke a landscape, keshiki. For example, one of the best-known kintsugi-repaired tea bowls by a noted craftsman Hon’ami Koetsu (1558–1637) is named Seppo, a snow-clad mountain peak.9 Second, accepting impermanence and transience of the material world does not necessarily imply not intervening; instead, it encourages working with this condition. Kintsugi requires a close observation to devise the intervention most appropriate for and respectful of the particular damage. For example, if a deep crack needs repair, it is recommended that the break be completed by splitting the object open. In order to determine whether the crack is deep enough,

we put our ear against the object while squeezing it to see whether a clicking sound is heard. Similarly, in mending a fabric, one practitioner states that “every stitch requires listening and responding to what the fabric, and the hole, might need.”10 This way of mending is echoed by a denim repairer: “Rather than having a predetermined vision of the finished garment, we let the contours of the damage dictate the repair.”11 In short, this way of repairing expresses respect and care for the object with its specific condition. Thus, the aesthetic paradigm of visible repair shuns uniformity, and accentuates the individuality of a particular object and its unique history by presenting a tangible record of repair, as well as the care and affection for the object. With the increasing popularity of repair among amateurs today, its practice offers an aesthetic experience not only to spectators but also to those who engage in this activity.12 While aesthetics 61

discourse in the West has traditionally been concerned with a spectator’s experience, there is a growing attention to the experience of executing activities, such as cooking, eating, cleaning, gardening, and playing sports. Like these activities, mending practice engenders a bodily experience of handling and working with the object’s materiality. Mending fabric, for example, occurs where “this active space of at/tending—assessing, touching, thinking, and intuiting—entwines into an embodied knowledge, a soft technique, during which the ameliorative thread is sewn this way and that.”13 Insofar as the activity of mending requires an embodied knowledge, skills, and working according to the material’s dictates, the process can be considered an apt example of the reciprocal, 62

Sandusky Platter, ca. 1838 (detail of stapled repair on back). English. Gift of Edward B. Aldrich in memory of Lora E. Aldrich 35.259. RISD Museum.

cumulative, and continuous relationship of “doing” and “undergoing” proposed by John Dewey when characterizing an aesthetic experience.14 In addition to providing a possible occasion for an experience, such active and careful engagement with the object cannot but nurture one’s affection for the object, rendering it not only an object of aesthetic appreciation but also an object graced with longevity.15 There are two caveats regarding the benefits of visible repair discussed so far. First, the aesthetic value of repair requires a judicious balance between repaired and

undamaged objects. If our everyday environment is surrounded by too many repaired objects, particularly with visible repair, its aesthetic potency would be diluted. Imagine what it would be like if every crumbled built structure were repaired by Legos, or kintsugi-inspired repair appeared on every cracked pavement. Certainly, in light of serious environmental problems, we should strive to facilitate the longevity of what we have through caring for them by maintenance and repair. But an object may reach a point where it would make more sense to either discard it or turn it into something else through recycling or repurposing. As warned by Elizabeth Spelman, a philosopher, “a voracious appetite for fixing can lead to poor judgment about what is and is not desirable or even possible to repair. Pride in our repairing abilities may push us into believing that whatever has been broken can be and ought to be fixed.”16 We may need what cultural geographer Caitlin DeSilvey calls “curated decay,” rather than indiscriminate repair of everything.17 In addition, some broken objects with a special historical significance should not be repaired but rather preserved as is. For example, some, but perhaps not all, ruined structures that result from a war or an evil human deed should be preserved in their ruined state as historical witnesses and cautionary reminders of “never again” for the future generation.18 Second, the recent popularity of visible repair and repair cafés may be culturally and economically situated in affluent societies with material abundance that can afford to take pleasure and amusement in the signs of repair. What about those who are living in circumstances marked by poverty and scarcity and are forced to make do with what little they have? After all, the stunning beauty of quilts in the American South reflects the poor living condition of the makers. The same is true for the Japanese fisherman’s kimonos mended with boro, tattered rags.19 These repeatedly mended clothes resulted from the extreme scarcity of resources in the northern part of the Japanese mainland. In fact, wabi aesthetics, the tea ceremony, and kintsugi supported by the wealthy and pow-

erful were criticized by a nineteenth-century Japanese Confucian scholar: “Today’s tea men take filthy and damaged old bowls, … repair them with lacquer and other materials, and then use them. It is an unspeakably disgusting custom,” because “whatever tea dilettantes do is a copy of the poor and humble. It may be that the rich and noble have a reason to find pleasure in copying the poor and humble. But why should those who are, from the outset, poor and humble find pleasure in further copying the poor and humble?”20 In a similar vein, contemporary advocates of visible repair warn against “the exploitative chic-ing of the shabby,”“the idealization of repair,” and “the romanticization of strategies of survival.”21 Fetishization and commercialization of visible repair can endanger this practice by rendering it another fashion trend within a capitalist framework that can easily be replaced by another trend. Regardless of these possible pitfalls, however, I want to conclude by pointing out the potential of kintsugi that goes beyond material repair. Nishiko, a Japanese artist practicing in the Netherlands, has been working on the Repairing Earthquake Project since the earthquake and tsunami hit the northeastern coast of Japan in March of 2011. In addition to documenting its aftermath through eyewitness accounts and photographing various objects, her project includes collecting fragments and debris from this catastrophe and putting them back together. The repaired item encased in a box specifically created for it is either returned to the owner, if found, or placed with a foster family for safe-keeping. The objects and processes are presented through photography, videos, installations, performances, publications, and blogs. The broken pieces symbolize the scars left by this natural disaster and the act of repair a process of healing.22 Earthquakes, frequent occurrences in Japan, provide an inspiration for another kintsugi project. Kunio Nakamura, a Japanese kintsugi artist, volunteers his time and expertise to put broken pottery pieces back together for the residents of Kumamoto prefecture, which was hit by a massive 63

Cumbrian Blue(s) – Spode Works Closed, Italian Blue, 03/10/09/09l, 2013. Paul Scott. Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund 2015.46. RISD Museum.

earthquake in 2016.23 He also articulates his hope for a peaceful world by combining plate pieces from two nations caught in a problematic relationship, such as South Korea and North Korea. This art project, called Kintsugi Pieces in Harmony, presents the possibility and hope for a harmonious co-existence of feuding nations by symbolically attaching two disparate pieces.24 Finally, this method of material repair is sometimes taken as a metaphorical expression of repairing a fractured psyche, and fragility turned into resilience in the field of psychology. Scott Barry Kaufman features kintsugi-repaired pottery in his article, “Post-Traumatic Growth: Finding Meaning and Creativity in Adversity,” subtitled “Resilience and strength can often be attained through unexpected routes.”25 Reflecting on her practice of mending fabric, Lisa Morgan offers a similar observation: “Tending to the wound in the garment facilitates a tending of ourselves, and through mending a hole there is the sense of stitching oneself almost whole, a reflecting on what has gone before and a bringing together and uniting of what remains. The scar may never disappear, but it indicates in detail how it was healed. The 64

darn becomes the celebration of a story.”26 The kintsugi repair thus challenges often-held assumptions regarding material objects by showing their aging process as a positive turn, instead of deterioration, and a springboard for engagement, creativity, and imagination, as well as an opportunity for us to participate in their lives. It also offers an artistic metaphor for healing the human psyche fractured by various traumas, which unfortunately are very much a part of this world.

NOTES: 1 David Lowenthal, The Past Is a Foreign Country (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1990), all the passages from 127. 2 Steven J. Jackson, “Rethinking Repair,” in Media Technolo-

gies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society, eds. Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo J. Boczkowski, and Kristen A. Foot (Cambridge, The MIT Press, 2014): 221–239. 3 See http://www.platform21.nl/page/4315/en, https://www.

ifxit.com/Manifesto, and https://repaircafe.org/en/, all accessed June 7, 2020. 4 For discussion and examples of invisible fabric mending,

see Alison Gwilt, “Producing Sustainable Fashion,” in Shaping Sustainable Fashion: Changing the Way We Make and Use Clothes, eds. Alison Gwilt and Timo Rissanen (London: Earthscan, 2011), 59–73. 5 See https://risdmuseum.org/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/repair-and-design-futures, accessed June 7, 2020. 6 See Gwilt, Shaping, and Katrina Rodabaugh, Mending Matters (New York: Abrams, 2018) for innovative examples of visible repair. 7 See examples at https://eatock.com/books/visible-vehicle-repairs/, http://www.rachelsussman.com/portfolio#/ sidewalk-kintsukuroi, https://www.janvormann.com/testbild/ dispatchwork/, https://mymodernmet.com/charlotte-bailey-kintsugi-patchwork-porcelain/, https://hangingbyathreadembroidery.wordpress.com/, https://rittau.jimdofree. com/, https://www.yeesookyung.com/translated-vase-, https://elisasheehan.com/collections/eggshells, https://tatianefreitas.com/My-Old-New-Series, https://mymodernmet. com/kintsugi-kintsukuroi/2/ all accessed on June 7, 2020. I thank Sanna Lehtinen for the Vormann reference. 8 Sokei Nanbo, “Record of Nanbo” (Sen no Rikyu’s teaching

recorded by his disciple, Sokei Nanbo), in The Theory of Beauty in the Classical Aesthetics of Japan, eds. and trans. Toshihiko and Toyo Izutsu (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1981), 146. 9 See the image at http://www.ebara.co.jp/csr/hatakeyama/

colle018.html, accessed June 7, 2020. 10 Lisa Z. Morgan, “Kate Kittredge’s Stockings,” in Manual: A journal about art and its making (Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design) 11 (Fall 2018), 70. 11 Matt Rho cited by Rodabaugh, Mending Matters, 119. 12 Tatsushi Fujiwara points out that today transparent epoxy can repair the breakage much faster and easier without leaving any trace of repair, which indicates a particular attraction of kintsugi beyond actual repair. Bunkai no Tetsugaku: Huhai to Hakko o meguru Shiko (Philosophy of Decomposition: Thoughts on Decay and Fermentation) (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2019), 289–290. 13 Morgan, “Kate Kittredge’s Stockings,” 70. 14 John Dewey, Art as Experience, originally published 1934 (New York: Capricorn Books, 1958).

Attachment does not mean not hurting. Rather, it is to appreciate thoroughly the scars and frays as much as possible and as long as functionality is not lost.” Philosophy, 285, my translation. I also explore the seeming paradox of facilitating the longevity of consumer goods through accepting and appreciating their transience in “Consumer Aesthetics and Environmental Ethics: Problems and Possibilities,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 76, no. 4 (Fall 2018): 429–439. 16 Elizabeth V. Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), 6. 17 Caitlin DeSilvey, Curated Decay: Heritage beyond Saving (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017). 18 See my “Refections on the Atomic Bomb Ruin in Hiroshima,” in Philosophical Perspectives on Ruins, Monuments, and Memorials, eds. Jeanette Bicknell, et al. (New York: Routledge, 2020): 201–214. 19 For boro, see Timo Rissanen, “Designing Endurance,” in Gwilt and Rissanen, Shaping Sustainable Fashion, 130, and Sasha Rabin Wallinger’s “Mottainai: The Fabric of Life, Lessons in Frugality from Traditional Japan,” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, 10. no. 3 (Nov. 2012): 336–345. For quilts, see The Quilts of Gee’s Bend, William Arnett, et al. (Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2002) and Gee’s Bend: Women and Their Quilts, John Beardsley, et al. (Atlanta: Tinwood Books, 2002). 20 Dazai Shundai, Dokugo (1816), cited by Hiroshi Minami, Psychology of the Japanese People, trans. Albert R. Ikoma (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 90. 21 “The exploitative chic-ing” is from Daniela K. Rosner, “A Beautiful Oops,” Continent 6, no.1 (2017): 78–79. The other two phrases are from Shannon Mattern, “Maintenance and Care,” Places Journal, November 2018, Section on “Cracks: Fixing Objects,” https://placesjournal.org/article/maintenance-and-care/, accessed July 10, 2020. 22 The description and visual images of this project can be

found in a booklet, Repairing Earthquake Project (Den Haag: Stroom Den Haag, 2019) and at https://www.stroom.nl/ activiteiten/tentoonstelling.php?t_id=408800, accessed November 1, 2019. I thank Joanna van der Zanden for this example. 23 It is described in https://mymodernmet.com/kunio-nakamura-kintsugi-pottery-repair/, accessed July 10, 2020. Fujiwara observes how people’s sympathy and compassion toward the victims of the earthquake have also become directed toward broken wares. Philosophy, 293. 24 You can see this project at https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=i8m_AeTGcmk, accessed November 1, 2019. 25 The article can be found in Scientifc American blog, April

20, 2020 at https://blogs.scientifcamerican.com/beautiful-minds/post-traumatic-growth-fnding-meaning-and-creativity-in-adversity/, accessed July 10, 2020. 26 Morgan, “Kate Kittredge’s Stockings,” 70.

15 Fujiwara states: “Clothes, houses, bicycles, and cars are

all repaired, used, and repaired again when broken again. They are cleaned, washed, polished, and maintained. After repeating these activities, we develop attachment to these objects and want to keep them with us as long as possible.

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MENDING AS MATERIAL INTERVENTION AND METAPHOR 66

Repair and Design Futures: An Exhibition and Call to Action Kate Irvin

In many ways, museums embody brokenness. As colonialist institutions, they evolved from a system that sought to rupture existing relationships and ideals while enforcing new frameworks. They were designed to impose a logic of European aesthetics based on hierarchy, while suppressing alternative ontological foundations—their monolithic structures blocking the paths that many of the treasures within opened to other, often ancient and sustainable, ways of seeing and being in the world. Today museum classifications and departmental divisions can be read as scars, testifying to the violence of extraction, especially cultural belongings and materials taken from their originary worlds and contexts.1 The decontextualization that severs human relationships and connections, and that drains objects of their vitality, is exacerbated as museum visitors are told to step back and observe from a distance. They are asked to consider a foreign object for its perfection, with its exemplary form and craftsmanship spotlit on a pedestal, and interpreted within a linear timeline. Museums also hold manifold expressions of repair and care. Repair manifests in the objects themselves, hinting at their varied

and sometimes multiple states of existence prior to their acquisition by the museum. It is also reflected in the work carried out by conservators and other caretakers, whose efforts maintain and preserve the object’s current state and its potential to exist as far into the future as can be imagined. These are tangible and often small repairs that can tell expansive stories. In thought and practice, repair is also a constant process that relates to the activities of those who work at all levels in the museum. It is especially pertinent to those whose responsibilities fall within the largely subterranean areas of the institution that handle storage.2 This reparative, frequently messy work is largely invisible, concealed by clean displays and concise label copy in the museum’s galleries. Those of us who work, circulate, and participate in the spaces and programs of museums and cultural institutions are, or should be, in a moment of active reckoning with our place and role in the rigid and historically oppressive regime of taste and ownership that is protected by the institution’s systems and structures.3 There are a multitude of current efforts from both within and outside of the institution to reanimate objects and to

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Woman’s Shift or Underdress, 1875–1920. Libera Lubrano Lavadera. Gift of Falcone Previti Family 2014.57.5. RISD Museum.

Noragi (work coat), late 1800s–mid-1900s. Japanese, Shonai (present-day Yamagata) prefecture. Elizabeth T. and Dorothy N. Casey Fund 2012.21.1. RISD Museum. 67

Repar ativ e Practic es _ Wo un ds , Su t u r es, a nd S c a r s

“Repair is the creative destruction of brokenness.” —elizabeth v. spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World

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re-open pathways to relationships that the museum’s ramparts have effectively blockaded for centuries.4 In such work, repair takes on a more capacious and self-reflexive definition: it offers a way to question our current thinking and reimagine the fixed narratives of the canon. It paves the road to another way of being in the world, one that embodies philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s provocative definition of repair as “the creative destruction of brokenness.”5 This chapter describes one such attempt at enacting Spelman’s thesis through the organization of an exhibition and an ongoing academic project (of which this book is a part), both of which seek to re-engage various audiences with sensory relationships to objects. This reconnection is encouraged through considering instances of material and metaphorical repair from multiple perspectives, in conjunction with the objects themselves. An Exhibition and Call to Action Repair and Design Futures was on view at the RISD Museum, an institution that is an integral part of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), from October 2018 through June 2019. The exhibition broadly investigated mending as material intervention and metaphor, and as a call to action. In this context, repair was framed as a useful exercise applied to beloved textiles, and as a global, socially engaged practice within contemporary art and design culture, which addressed environmental and sociopolitical ruptures. The gallery space was designed as a multi-use environment, accommodating the display of costume and textile objects from the collections of the RISD Museum and Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, within an integrated, flexible programming and gathering space. This format—of object display activated by a variety of performances and public discussions— was intended to amplify the intersecting threads of its subject matter, promoting a certain unruliness and informality that encouraged engagement across a broad spectrum of our diverse community. An overarching goal of the exhibition, 70

which also featured a series of multidisciplinary gallery talks and performances, was to expand the concept of literal, specific repair, instead allowing it to encompass the scale and vision of one’s world, where repair could be realized as a daily practice and intention.6 This speaks to a commitment to advance the health and welfare of not just the self, but the world writ large—our planet, environment, communities, and institutions. It encourages action at varying scales, from the personal and local to the universal; to mend what has been broken, forgotten, disregarded; to make our world, and us, whole again. In its presentation and integration into diverse academic and studio classes, the exhibition posed more questions than answers, including: how can historic mends in textiles and clothing—in their variety and, often, disorderliness—inform reparative thinking and design practices today, and how might looking through the lens of repair aid in conceptualizing and designing our collective futures? Rather than considering aesthetics at surface level, the gallery presentations asked the viewers to come close whilst thinking carefully and deeply about brokenness with open minds. The material focus of the exhibition rested in textile practices, with thread presented as an elemental binding unit, and sewing as a literal and metaphorical method of suturing, as the connective and restorative tissue linking the past to the present and future. Overall, it was conceived and designed to speak to and inspire makers and thinkers across a range of disciplines. Textiles are tactile, familiar, accessible, and sometimes quite humble, but they are also poetic, complex, and inherently flexible, both practically and metaphorically. The Latin root of the word “textile,” texere, means to join or intertwine, while the Old French root of mend, amender, signifies putting something right, or regaining health. In this arena, the concept and practice of repair functioned at the intersection of these definitions, as an invitation to a renewed form of social exchange and an alternative, holistic way of facing environmental and social breakdown. At the macro level, repair was discussed as

now. Close examination of darns and patches, as well as stabilized areas within everyday objects, acts as a springboard for discussing the ways in which mending can serve as a visual and emotional aid to socially engaged design thinking. It also reframes the designer or maker’s role in regard to production, consumption, and waste, in a world that is already circulating in excess. Narratives of practicality and emotional investment, which can be read in repaired textiles, criss-cross the world and through Repair as Emotional Investment the centuries. In essence, they invite us to “Entanglement” is a word that regularly surbecome archaeologists of sorts, as we unfaces in discussions of decolonizing design, earth material value in a world of consumer museums, and other institutions. It is this goods that is most often moving much too textured and tactile word that leads to the fast for deep meaning to be accumulated. metaphor, materiality, and praxis of textile Garments such as a late nineteenth-century mends as a common point of entry into the woman’s shift—hand-woven, worn, repaired, world of repair.7 Entanglement is an active, altered, and re-made on an island off the sometimes messy and disorderly, word that coast of Naples, Italy—stand out as wellalso accurately describes many instances of used, well-loved, and well-maintained pieces domestic textile mending around the globe, both traditional and contemporary, as mend- that were saved and cherished not for their ers have incorporated the language and ethos perfection, but rather for their agency as materials that came to represent hard work and of visible repair into their practices. While flexible functionality. They were kept alive textiles have historically been overlooked, even dismissed, as a site of critical, conscien- and active through their reinforced shoulders tious engagement within academic discourse, and seams, their alterations, and their mended holes, reminding us that everything we my experience working and teaching with wear and use is in the process of becoming, textiles and garments, made in cultures imbued with a living history that, if given the around the world, shows the potential of chance, will continue well beyond our time. repair within this context to connect us in Students from a range of disciplines are crucial ways that, at the same time, promote likewise intimately touched by the sensitheories of decolonial design praxis. tively sewn patches and repairs in a Japanese As a curator at a university museum, laborer’s coat, an example of boro (a word where we frequently teach with collection that literally translates as “ragged”).8 Made objects, it is evident that looking closely at examples of darned and patched garments and remade to work and to last, boro items and textiles with art and design students show darns that animate them—which have inspires them to find meaning and profound kept them alive and usable—revealing their beauty in the imprints left by multiple labored history. In this way, these repairs wearers and the passage of time. Well-used, bind them to contemporary viewers with well-loved, and well-maintained objects the memories and emotion that have been harbor traces of personal narratives that stitched in with the repairs and signs of use. speak to these emerging designers and artists They motivate us to consider materiality, as important markers of history, emotional loss, decay, and that which is worthy of investment, and endurance. These instancour care and attention. In these examples, es of repair trigger thinking about how we the repair itself, both for the mender and might begin to remake ourselves and our the onlooker, calls for thinking that moves worlds as better versions of what they are beyond rigid binaries and conservative an ethical and ecological commitment: a rejection of mass production and limitless consumption; a validation of undervalued and repressed labor; and as a reimagined relationship to quality as an expression of invested time, the intimacy of skill, and a commitment to craft and the well-made. It was also shown to be an embodied act, a way of entering into and understanding objects as material and practice.

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Repaired shawl, 1820/1840. Kashmir (for export). Gift of Miss Lucy T. Aldrich 55.327. RISD Museum.

approaches. The mindful act of joining jagged edges requires creative thought processes and techniques that involve multidirectional, entangled threads to fill the gap. In this sort of mending, repair is an alternative form of design: the old made new, a void bridged by joining threads, a new pathway to future functionality. “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” Some writers on repair have sought to describe the magical views into the life of an object opened up by wear and tear, invoking Leonard Cohen’s song lyric: “There’s a crack in everything—that’s where the light comes in”; a line that itself is inspired by the thirteenth-century Persian poet and mystic Rumi, who wrote: “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” When studying 72

repaired objects in the flesh, at close range, art and design students have likewise conveyed that their stabilized areas and repairs, in their imperfection, leave openings that allow them to see the humanity of the object, even as it now lies in repose in the museum’s collections. The areas of mending provide a way in, they say, an entry point to understanding objects as subjects, material, and practice, and to identifying imperfections as valuable signs of history, time, and embedded emotion. Studying items that show fragility strengthened through repair invites recognition of the labor that went into not only the making of an object, but also its upkeep by numerous and diverse hands. These pieces offer clear evidence of continuity, of the multiplicity of use and ownership that allow functional objects to breathe and grow

in response to new demands. Objects such as a mended Bamileke gourd container for palm wine, for example, are practical but also strikingly poetic—and powerful—particularly so when we focus on the time and effort spent on what might appear to be comparatively luxurious, time-consuming repairs to what are clearly special, yet still functional, objects. The celebratory basketry mends on this example signal its centrality in the life of its maker, owners, and/or caretakers. Items like this piece also offer a moment for thinking through how we might work to heal the Palm-Wine Gourd Container, 20th century. Bamileke artist, Cameroon. Gift of William B. Simmons, Courtesy of Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University 2000-22-27.

fissures in our environment and lives, while retaining evidence of our history and our complicity in such traumas. In their physicality and proximity to bodily sutures, mends like these illustrate living repair and engage us in re-thinking the objects around us that tell stories at a visceral level. Broken World Thinking The paradox of emerging artists and designers finding inspiration in garments and textiles that are old, used, broken, and repaired brings to the fore the question of what it means to be a maker in a world that is already filled to the brim. This is a crucial question touched on by information scientist Steven J. Jackson’s polemic for “broken world thinking,” which he describes as “filling in the moment of hope and fear in which bridges from old worlds to new worlds are built, and the continuity of order, value, and meaning gets woven.”9 Jackson starts his essay, titled “Rethinking Repair,” by calling out the twenty-first century world as full of risk and uncertainty; growth and decay; fragmentation, dissolution, and breakdown—a dire portrait, but one that he maintains is ripe with opportunity for reconsidering the value of imperfection, the fragmentary, and the incomplete. Jackson’s thesis is beautifully illustrated by an early nineteenth-century Kashmir shawl with an inserted repair that itself is composed of bits and pieces of other shawls. Here, repair reads as a reorganization, a recontextualization, a way of picking up the broken pieces and making something functional again through improvisation and bricolage. Further embodying Jackson’s points is a hunter’s tunic in the collections of Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum. The accumulated and visible repairs in this potent garment were made by Fode Keita, an important hunter and griot (community historian, storyteller, poet, and musician) living in southern Mali. The base cloth, called basilanfini, is a cotton textile associated with healing due to its Lannea Velutina dye, a bark used for medicinal purposes. Marking the work and supernatural energy of the hunt, 73

ourselves up to a pluriversal world, a patchwork, a world in which many worlds fit.12 Within the museum specifically, if we are allowed, and if we allow ourselves, to look closely, at both the objects and the work being carried out by its staff, it is possible to see and feel the various relations and attached meanings that a multitude of acts of care and repair have sustained and made perceptible in the present. Studying the mended, the imperfect, or the overlooked in Turning Things Inside Out and Setting a museum collection not only sidesteps the Right canon, but also prompts us to think about “We mend. We women turn things inside out repair within a broader mindset: that is, as and set things right,” as Anishinaabe author a socio-political lens through which we can Louise Erdrich wrote in her novel Four Souls. re-envision our relationship to objects and For Erdrich, sewing and salvaging serve as the world around us. Anthropologist and physical manifestations of an Indigenous cultural critic Rosalind C. Morris has stated woman’s prayers for the health and well-bethat leading people through material culture ing of her family and community.10 It is a toward relations with others is perhaps seemingly mundane, reparative action that is the most optimistic expectation of what a museum can accomplish with its holdings, simultaneously emotional, spiritual, politiespecially items that have been extracted cal, and revolutionary. By linking Spelman’s description of repair as “the creative destruc- from other cultures and consequently reside tion of brokenness” with Erdrich’s example of in foreign contexts.13 Given the material mending as a tool that is wielded by women, examples described above, might the ways as a practice that requires inversion and in which they stimulate intimate study and probing to address brokenness and injustice, emotional responses be viewed as instances we end up with a particularly useful and of newly forged relationships that instigate powerful way to think and make with repair repairing brokenness within the museum in mind. structure itself, upending traditional art hisAs applied in curricula on an art and torical ways of looking, classifying, evaluatdesign campus today, this reframing of repair ing, holding, and preserving? holds the potential to point the way toward It is time to repair what the museum is, decolonial praxis in numerous disciplines. By what it does, and what it means. Only by prioritizing constant and iterative adaptation radically rethinking these foundational conand ongoingness, as well as foregrounding cepts can we move toward creating generative local and traditional knowledge, everyday fissures in the museum’s monumental facade, repair practices around the world have the from the inside out, and revealing pathways potential—as an action and as metaphor—to with which to face broken relations and bro“break the mold of a colonial matrix of power,” ken worlds. At the center of this initiative is according to designer Tristan Schultz.11 a conception of creativity and agency that is forever expanding. This is the question at the Schultz and his peers in the decolheart of Repair and Design Futures, an exhibionizing design movement contend that the tion and call to action for finding alternative embodied action and objects of hands-on repair provide a tool for contemporary desig- ways to reach and develop alternative futures. ners to effectively take part in mending the opposite world. By “opening up controversial things” Installation view of Repair and Design Futures, and effectively turning traditional boundaries RISD Museum, October 5, 2018–June 30, 2019. Photo Erik Gould. and systemic “seams” inside out, we open the prominent mends and patches were created and maintained by Keita himself as integral to the ensemble’s accretion of power over time. In this respect, repair serves as a way of creatively making something—perhaps even a broken world—functional again by acknowledging use, history, and accomplishment, as well as abuse, accident, and error. Insistence is placed on not forgetting the object or its history.

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NOTES: 1 See: Alice Procter, The Whole Picture: The Colonial Story

of the Art in Our Museums & Why We Need to Talk About It (London: Octopus Publishing Group, 2020).

and Pedro Oliveira, “What Is at Stake with Decolonizing Design? A Roundtable,” Design and Culture 10 (January 2018), pp. 81–101.

2 See Laurie Brewer, Tayana Fincher, Kate Irvin, Anna Rose

8 Kate Irvin, “Japanese Boro: An Archaeology of Faded

Keefe, and Jessica Urick, “Museum Storage Is Not an Icebox: Re-examining Textile Storage at the RISD Museum,” Museum Collection Storage [Special Issue], Museum International 73, no. 289–290 (2021), pp. 100–109.

Indigo,” Manual: a journal about art and its making 4, special issue on “Blue” (Spring 2015), pp. 49–55. See also: Shin-Ichiro Yoshida and Dai Williams, Riches from Rags (San Francisco: San Francisco Crafts & Folk Art Museum, 1994).

3 See: Ariella Aïsha Azoulay, “Imagine Going on Strike:

9 Steven J. Jackson, “Rethinking Repair,” in Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, and Kirsten Foot, eds., Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society (Boston: MIT Press, 2014).

Museum Workers,” in Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (London: Verso, 2019). 4 As a model for such work, see in particular the “Caring

Matters” and “Thinking With” ongoing conferences organized by the Research Center for Material Culture (RCMC), a research institute within the Tropenmuseum (Amsterdam), Museum Volkenkunde (Leiden), the Afrika Museum (Berg en Dal) and the Wereldmuseum (Rotterdam) that serves as a focal point for research on ethnographic collections in the Netherlands.

10 Louise Erdrich, Four Souls (New York: Harper Perennial, 2005). 11 Tristan Schultz, “Design’s Role in Transitioning to Futures of Cultures of Repair,” in A. Chakrabarti and D. Chakrabarti (eds.), Research into Design for Communities, Volume 2, Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies 66 (2017), p. 225.

Fragile World (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002).

12 Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2018).

6 See Kate Irvin and Brian Goldberg, eds., Manual a journal about art and its making 11, special issue on “Repair” (Fall 2018).

13 Rosalind C. Morris, keynote and panel discussion, “Extraction,” Caring Matters conference, 23 September 2021, Research Center for Material Culture, Leiden, The Netherlands.

5 Elizabeth V. Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a

7 See: Tristan Schultz, Danah Abdulla, Ahmed Ansari, Ece Canli, Mahmoud Keshavarz, Matthew Kiem, Luiza Martins,

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Darning Over Renewal The darning stitch is hard to pin down, as many methods of adorning and altering cloth wear the term darning. A darning stitch threads into an existing piece of fabric, but unlike embroidery techniques that move in all directions, darning stitches follow a textile’s structure.1 This fundamental aspect has long made darning useful for mending, as the stitch can both reinforce the existing structure of a textile and recreate its weave where the fabric has worn through. This simple utility makes locating a precise origin of the stitch difficult, as its application is both varied and widespread.2 I am new to darning. Educated in architecture and American studies, I have long been preoccupied with urban renewal, the era of widespread “slum” clearance and civic reconstruction that remade twentieth-century American cities. An extensive network of politicians, businesses, and planners attempted repair on a city scale, but representative of the most privileged and powerful, they instead unleashed waves of destruction onto communities that they labeled “broken.” When urban renewal flattened Boston’s West End, psychiatrist Erich Lindemann found that destroying buildings ruptured the social system within them; clearance overwhelmingly harmed Black, immigrant, and low-income households, rupturing ways of life and causing trauma on a community scale.3 While studying this history, I took a class in the risd Museum, where the Costume and Textiles Collection exposed me to darning.

0pposite Albers Sampler, 2020. Jeremy Lee Wolin.

I encountered drawers filled with needlework, testaments to darning’s geographic reach and survival. Samplers that boasted wealth and status rather than actual repair were the few examples of darning that bore names. Those names however—Abigail Pinniger, Hannah Freeborn, Eliza Cozzens—underscored darning as women’s work, and despite the skill of even the most pedestrian darned repairs, the vast majority of these women go uncredited. Examining textiles may not be common in architectural education but it is not novel. Gottfried Semper argued in the mid-nineteenth century that enclosure, the third element of architecture, found its roots in weaving.4 And if building anew is akin to weaving, perhaps that period of repair gone awry, urban renewal, could learn from darning. In need of somewhere to darn, I turned to New Haven, the city where I learned to look at architecture and which received more urban renewal grants per capita than any other municipality—the city razed over 3,000 structures between 1957 and 1980.5 In 1958, Life Magazine lauded Dick Lee, the mayor who engineered this demolition, as a “City Clean-Up Champion” and photographed him among the ruins.6 In these images, Lee looms over models of the Chapel Square Mall and the Knights of Columbus Tower. In another shot, he sits in the cab of a wrecking crane and gestures into the air triumphantly, a hill of rubble behind him. I began this series by transferring these images onto linen and darning over Lee’s hands, the reach of the “repairer-in-chief” now restrained, and then covered his 77

reparativ e p r actic es _ wou nds , su t u r es, a nd s c a r s

Jeremy Lee Wolin

Dick Lee II, 2018. Jeremy Lee Wolin. 78

Dick Lee I, 2018. Jeremy Lee Wolin. 79

80

0pposite

NOTES:

Oak Street Sketch, 2018. Jeremy Lee Wolin.

1 Irene Emery, The Primary Structures of Fabrics (Washington,

DC: Textile Museum, 1966). 2 Sheila Paine identifes darning stitches in the embroidery

signature projects in thread. In an early test, I incised out the two-mile stretch of Oak Street homes bulldozed for a highway that was never built and attempted to darn the neighborhood back together. As I moved on, I expanded my scope to Paul Rudolph, dean of the Yale School of Art and Architecture, whose own projects rose from the rapid deployment of federal urban renewal funds in the 1950s. As an architecture student, I found myself implicated in the academy’s past crimes.7 As I darned, the contrast of stitch against photograph highlighted the ill-suitedness of Lee and Rudolph’s projects, while the integrated structure of the stitches themselves demonstrated a contextual sensitivity at odds with their work. Yet my first efforts tugged at the linen, warping the image and weakening the cloth. In need of help, I looked to another figure from New Haven history: Anni Albers, the designer, weaver, and writer who worked on architecture’s margins from a studio on the city’s outskirts. Albers wrote in her 1965 text On Weaving that the best weaving understands its limits and makes an amateur of its designer, who must follow the needs of the weave no matter their skill level. On weaving’s applicability, Albers wrote, “just as it is possible to go from any place to any other, so also, starting from a defined and specialized field, can one arrive at a realization of ever-extending relationships.” 8 If weaving is integral to architecture, darning is a model for architectural repair. Darning requires not only skill, but sensitivity. Pull the thread too tightly, and the ground buckles, but let it slack and it loses its strength. The warp and weft of the darned thread rely on each other for support. The stitch stresses that an urge to repair is a start, not an end—that each step requires careful consideration of the existing fabric. Weaving one strand into another, darning allows for the rereading of architecture in thread.

of the Indian subcontinent, Turkey, Algeria, Greece, and the former Yugoslavia in addition to the stitch’s use in Northern European samplers and its resemblance to the Japanese sashiko stitch. See Sheila Paine, Embroidered Textiles: Traditional Patterns from Five Continents: With a Worldwide Guide to Identifcation: With 279 Illustrations, 171 in Colour (London: Thames and Hudson, 1997). 3 National Institute of Mental Health, Mental Health Re-

search Findings: 1963: Selected from Research Grant Projects of the National Institute of Mental Health (U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, 1965). 4 Semper mused that hung carpets, woven branches, and

wickerwork evolved into the earliest walls. See Gottfried Semper, The Four Elements of Architecture and Other Writings, RES Monographs in Anthropology and Aesthetics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 103. 5 Francesca Russello Ammon, Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 145. 6 “City Clean-Up Champion,” LIFE Magazine, February 17, 1958. 7 Lizabeth Cohen and Brian Goldstein note that Rudolph’s career also waned as government-sourced funds dried up after the 1970s. In an interview with Cohen, Rudolph’s contemporary I.M. Pei also noted that in the lean postwar years, corporate frms like Skidmore, Owings & Merrill monopolized much of the available private sector work, leaving emerging and academic architects to turn to public funds related to urban renewal. Lizabeth Cohen and Brian Goldstein, “Paul Rudolph and the Rise and Fall of Urban Renewal,” in Reassessing Rudolph, ed. Timothy M. Rohan, Illustrated edition (New Haven, CT: The Yale School of Architecture, 2017), 26. 8 Anni Albers, On Weaving: New Expanded Edition (Princton,

NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), xi, https://www.degruyter.com/princetonup/view/title/542147.

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Thinking Rubble: Ruin and Repair at War’s End Lynnette Widder

“There are Those Who Remained Amidst the Destruction.” 1 Working amidst the ruins of war, post-war German architects saw themselves as “the Idealists…who had thrown themselves into the battle against want and rubble, those who had remained amidst the destruction.”2

The decision to repair is one that might begin with material considerations: the nature of the original artifact, the availability of and desire to exercise artisanal skills, and the value of materials and labor. No less varied and complex are the associations that allow meaning to be attributed to the artifact that is subject to repair. In the years that followed Hitler’s unconditional surrender, the relationship between the material and the transcendental aspects of repair preoccupied German architects. Working amidst what remained after the skies had cleared and the firebombs had burned themselves out, they were, as one explained, “the Idealists… who had thrown themselves into the battle

0pposite Destruction in Berlin after Anglo-Ameri-

can Bomb Attacks, 1945. At the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Dorotheestrasse. ADN-ZB/Archiv, Bundesarchiv Deutschland.

against want and rubble, those who had remained amidst the destruction.”6 “In the rubble heaps of earlier moments,” they sought “…a life that was reawakening.”7 But this was more than a “battle against… rubble.” It was also an attempt to reconcile the way in which the past would, or should, be carried forward. Between ruin and rubble lies a boundary that is difficult to locate but unequivocal in meaning. “The ruined building is a remnant of, and portal to the past,” Brian Dillon points out in a 2011 essay,8 “[a]nd yet by definition, it survives after a fashion: there must be a certain (perhaps indeterminate) amount of a built structure still standing for us to refer to it as a ruin and not merely a heap of rubble.” This distinction is not, as Dillon seems to suggest, merely a matter of quantity or form, but rather the degree to which the ghost of a former building can still be recognized in what remains. Political and societal yearnings give 83

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Together, they pursued a spiritual and socially collective vision of architecture, not unlike that envisioned by the “Masters of the Thousand Year Reich” 3 or the Bauhaus ‘Cathedral.’“In the rubble heaps of earlier moments,” they sought “…a life that was reawakening.” 4 Between this life and rubble, between “the unity of all creations,” and “unspeakable solitude” 5 were the fragments of building blocks. Central to physical repair, the remains of the pre-war city became building material. Rubble was more than a material of convenience. For seminal public buildings of that era, rubble became a physical connection to ruptured history.

Sketches of ruins (above surrounded by trees and below within a reconstructed urban context), published in Bauen und Wohnen magazine, 1947. Walther Schmidt.

rise to standards for distinguishing ruins, which convey meaning; from rubble, which no longer retains the formal referents in which meaning resides. But even in an era of resource shortage,9 when there was no choice but to use rubble for new construction,10 it was implicitly also a physical connection to ruptured history. 11 Too much had been destroyed for it all to be considered worth saving. The immediate need to rebuild was overwhelming. More than half of all the housing that existed in Germany before the bombings, some 19 million units, had been destroyed or made 84

unusable, at a moment when some 8 million displaced persons were moving into German territory.12 The need for action was urgent. But it invoked physical and transcendental considerations. It begged the question of where meaning resided, in form, in material, or in both, and whether the act of repair was one of objective calculation or collective action, preservation, or creation. The 1947 article “Building with Ruins” (Bauen mit Ruinen) was intended to offer sober criteria for such decision-making. Its author, Walther Schmidt, a Modernist architect who would go on to become edi-

tor-in-chief of the widely read journal Bauen und Wohnen, began by describing the historic scale of the situation.13 “The countless ruins of war—destroyed buildings pose for us an entirely new problem,” he began. “What should happen with them? Our consciousness of the value and uniqueness of work and art work raise this question for us—we, who lack the ease of earlier times, times that used ruins, regardless of what kind, for their own purposes inasmuch as those ruins were adaptable but otherwise let them decay or, if they were in the way, disposed of them without further thought.”14 How simple Schmidt made the concerns of the past seem, when repair was necessitated only by usefulness or “adaptation,” but was otherwise subject to no pressures, so that remains could simply decay in place. The ease enjoyed by the past is of course Schmidt’s fiction. Ruins as historic witness were a long-standing preoccupation in Germany’s political culture, subsequent to the country’s late nineteenth century unification. Numerous “restoration” projects had turned otherwise marginal building remnants into monuments, in service of nation-building.15 Built remains had always been used to inscribe history into the popular imagination. Schmidt proposed four distinct actions: to clear the ruins away; to rebuild them in approximation of their original form; to leave them as they were; or to subordinate them within new construction. For each, he listed standards. Were the remains compatible with efficient traffic planning, with contemporary usage and real estate income streams? If not, then the needs of the present dictated removal. Were the damaged buildings important to the image of the cities where they still stood? Did they retain sufficient distinguishing characteristics to be recognizable? Image and identity, both mythic imaginaries, were important to Schmidt. A confrontation with recent history was, apparently, not. In Schmidt’s usage, form was more than a criterion to distinguish ruin from rubble. It was uncomfortably close to the role that form played in the fraught romantic of German Heimatstil, a Nazi invention used to

assert German national character in architectural form. In cases where a damaged building was still recognizable, Schmidt continued, could its exterior shell be combined with a new interior better suited to its present need? He offered his most extensive answer to this question, using drawings of one of his own architectural projects for converting a former granary into a hostel. Schmidt’s design interventions included an entirely glazed rear façade rendered in a Modernist style. His mixed allegiances proved the claim that, by 1947, “the comfortable simplification: modern—democratic; traditional—national socialist has no credibility.”16 The systemic influence of more than a generation of Nazi cultural instruction meant that many Fascist tropes were barely recognizable even to those who thought of themselves as forward-thinking. Nowhere was this more evident than in Schmidt’s discussion of what it meant to “retain ruins as ruins.”17 His discourse muddles pragmatic arguments with speculation of dubious provenance. To keep a ruin as it was, he began practically, meant foregoing the space it might house or income it might provide, were it to be restored. He shifted then to subjective argument, asserting that ruins amidst rubble or surrounded by vegetation might seem acceptable, but within the context of new building, those same ruins would result in “dissonance.”18 Without offering proof of that assertion, he attempted instead to define intrinsic criteria, based not in the ruin but in the artifact from which the ruin had emerged: what kind of building was, by its nature, worth preserving, even in a ruined state? This might seem the central question of any evaluation of repair, whether an artifact is worthy, and if so, by what measure. Schmidt’s answer drew entirely on values that had guided the building agenda defined under the Third Reich. Only solid constructions, built in stone as during antiquity, he argued, could produce valuable, “characteristic” ruins. Contemporary buildings had not been built with an eye to producing ruins that would be worth preserving. Schmidt’s 85

arguments mirror Albert Speer’s “ruin value,”19 which justified monumental solid stone buildings, and the slave labor demanded for their construction, by invoking the grandeur of the ruins they would ultimately become, comparable to those of the Roman Empire, to which the Third Reich compared itself. And yet despite Schmidt’s ideological failures, his question niggles: is there greater ruin value inherent within certain buildings or artifacts? Are some materials, some methods, simply more worthy of preservation in an imperfect state? Schmidt’s emphasis on inherent material value also served to deflect from a thornier problem, that of the implicit historical referentiality of a ruin as witness to a prior era and its decline. Allowing ruins to persist, he wrote, is to “deny ourselves the primacy of the living over the dead … Too much of our own heart’s blood has been let with the destruction of these old cities, too unbearable would it be … to stand before them in the form of artificially preserved mummies made from beings to which we were bound in life.”20 That Schmidt wished to allow Germans to forget their recent experience is of course wrong-headed, but it nonetheless complicates the belief that an artifact visibly repaired will inevitably be a monument to a romanticized history of material and labor. Without a willing and literate audience, meaning remains elusive. Schmidt’s contemporary Otto Bartning21 was, by contrast, utterly unromantic. Instead, he engaged the way that labor and community could transmute the physical remains of war. Also writing in 1947, Bartning saw in rubble that same “heart’s blood” spent, but unlike Schmidt, he embraced the ethics of memory. As he wrote in his text on life amongst the ruins of German cities: “Blind, yes, with a kind of protective blindness, we make our little paths through the rubble heaps and earth-filled graves. Suddenly we are overcome by the vision of a wild question: is this dream or reality? And if it is reality, what does it mean? …We stare silently at the debris, not as though it had imploded in the roar of an explosion, but rather as 86

though it had fallen in on itself by virtue of some internal cause.”22 To Bartning, rubble was witness to moral collapse. Even without a legible form for reference, it was a mandate to recollect. No one had the right to turn away. An Avant-Gardist and Expressionist in Berlin during the 1920s, Bartning abandoned new construction during the war and worked instead with the traditional building guild responsible for the Protestant churches in Heidelberg. Setting aside his passion for the messianic promise of Modern architecture, which had characterized his Berlin-era writing, he had become less dogmatic about the meaning of Modernism by the time the War had ended. Perhaps his time working with stone masons, whose methods and work structure remained the same over centuries, shifted what he valued most in architecture. In 1945, inspired to help the many refugees who were camped in his small hometown, he led an initiative to build simple unfired brick houses for them. He convinced the parish to provide land, and then developed a building technique that he taught to the refugees, who collaborated on construction.23 To critics who advocated factory-built homes in lieu of Bartning’s archaic construction methods, he responded, “we were thinking, with our adobe, more than a little about the present, which has neither fuel nor transportation.”24 The collaborative act of building was one of establishing community among those who were displaced, not a moment to argue the value of new against old. Simultaneous with his mud brick project, in April 1945, he assumed responsibility for all church buildings in the Baden region. There was, he quickly understood, as great an urgency for church building as for housing. Working with colleagues Otto Dözbach and Alfred Wechssler, he designed “emergency” churches, Notkirchen. In collective acts of repair, the remains of older churches were salvaged, then built into the walls of each Notkirche. Conceived as a temporary solution, the churches remain today for the most part, retaining meaning in form and material. “The human problem stands above all

others,” Bartning wrote to explain the urgency of his church repair program. As centers for communities in turmoil, the churches contributed to the difficult process of re-establishing social bonds. He continued, “New dwellings (regardless of construction method) are required by the new human being with a simple, ethical approach to life. Without this new human being, any dwelling remains an empty shell. The human being is the foundational element of our rejuvenation. The emergency church will offer this new human being a place of collection and expression. It is inherent to the program of providing dwellings.”25 Forty-eight of these churches were built throughout Germany’s four occupied zones. The distinction between ruin and rubble, between “remnant of, and portal to, the past” and “mere … heap” was rendered immaterial by Bartning’s system: its component parts, like its construction techniques, could supplement the remaining walls of half-ruined churches, many not so different from the one in Schmidt’s sketch. But the system was also conceived to transform rubble, no longer recognizable as the church it had once formed, into the new walls of the space so desired by its congregation. Simple prefabricated wooden trusses, paid by donations from American congregants, formed the roof. If old walls still stood, the truss was used in its conventional orientation, its bottom chord parallel to the floor, to form a modest peaked roof. The original church was repaired, albeit in less grandiose form. Much more eloquent were the results when an older church had been reduced to rubble. Rubble had to be salvaged, transported in wheelbarrows to stockpiles where old mortar was chiseled away and then stacked according to residual geometry. This salvaged masonry, transformed through volunteer labor from rubble to building material, was laid up in courses, trued and mortared often by the same people who would worship in the church constructed in this way. The banal wooden trusses were canted up between segments of rubble wall. Each pair of trusses, one projecting from each side of the Not-

kirche, met at what would become the apex of the soaring new church roof. Retained in the church’s walls was the memory of its predecessor; but expressed in the church’s form was something entirely new, an act of repair as one of transmutation. Bartning had imagined both his mud brick houses and his emergency churches as provisional repairs in the torn fabric of daily life. It was clear to him that an entire country could not, should not, be rebuilt this way. However, German reconstruction remained a slow process throughout the late 1940s, dependent entirely upon the unpaid labor of those who survived the war. In the meantime, plant life took over the gaps in their cities, far outpacing human action. Some suggested that, in lieu of repair, German cities should be reforested, perhaps an act of penance, a restoration of material economy and perhaps the basis for a new national identity that could begin with a forest primeval.26 This did not happen. The culture of repair receded as the economy was restored and the cost to society of manual labor again rose above that of construction materials. “In rebuilding Berlin, we have the opportunity … to assign to landscape a role appropriate to the image of nature, even within the metropolis.” Nonetheless, what to make of the opulent plant life that fills renderings by those architects as they imagined life after the War? Perhaps the plants they drew, domesticated corollaries to the species that had encroached what remained of urban battlefields, were more than the “image of nature”27 in miniature. Perhaps they were meant as ghosts of the rubble and ruins over which their wild predecessors had grown. Front yard daisies might be as much a portal to the past as a physical remnant, until, like both ruin and rubble, even those ghosts disappeared from the collective consciousness and West Germany returned to an economy of the new.

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NOTES: 1 Alois Leitl, “Anmerkung zur Zeit”, in: Conrads, Ulrich, ed.

Die Städte Himmeloffen: Reden und Refexionen über den Wiederaufbau des Untergegangenen und die Wiederkehr des Neuen Bauens 1948/49 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003). 2 Ibid. 3 Rudolf Schwarz’s term, from his infammatory opening salvo

many Reich administrators whose compromised politics was dismissed by the occupying forces in order to deploy the utility of their expertise: after 1945, he returned to practicing architecture in Lindau and in 1951 was appointed head of town planning in Augsburg. See Wilfried Nerdinger, Walther Schmidt 1899–1993. Von der Postbauschule zum Stadtbaurat von Augsburg (Berlin: Reimer, 2008)

to the Bauhaus Debate. See my article ‘Whose Modernism? The 1953 Bauhaus Debate and the Right to Defne Modern Architecture’ in Wolkenkuckucksheim v. 24, no. 39, 2019

14 Walther Schmidt, “Bauen mit Ruinen,” Bauen und Wohnen: Zeitschrift für das gesamte Bauen v. 2, 1947, 322–326.

4 Rudolf Schwarz, “Das Unplannbare”, in: Conrads, Op. Cit.

15 See, for example, Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces:

5 Ibid

Artifacts of German Memory, 1870–1990 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).

6 Alois Leitl, “Anmerkung zur Zeit”, in: Conrads, Ulrich, ed.

Die Städte Himmeloffen: Reden und Refexionen über den Wiederaufbau des Untergegangenen und die Wiederkehr des Neuen Bauens 1948/49 (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003). 7 Rudolf Schwarz, “Das Unplannbare”, in: Conrads, Op. Cit. 8 Brian Dillon, ed., Ruins. Documents of Contemporary Art,

Whitechapel Gallery (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011), 11. 9 See, for example, Bonn zwischen Kriegsende und Währungsreform: Erinnerungsberichte von Zeitzeugen (Bonn: Bouvier, 1991). 10 Sophie Hosseinzadeh, Nur Trümmerfrauen und Amilieb-

chen? Stuttgarterinnen in der Nachkriegszeit (Stuttgart: Gleichstellungsstelle Stadt Stuttgart, 1996). Rubble was largely excavated by women.

16 Friedrich Tams, cited in Werner Durth, Deutsche Architekten: Biographische Verfechtungen 1900–1970 (Braunschweig, Wiesbaden: Vieweg, 1986). 326. 17 Schmidt, Op. Cit., 324. 18 Schmidt, Op. Cit., 324. 19 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970), 97. 20 Ibid., 324. 21 Unlike Schmidt, Bartning had spent the War relatively sequestered outside of Heidelberg, a city largely spared bombings, working within the city’s Bauhütte, or cathedral masons’ lodge. 22 Otto Bartning, “Mensch ohne Raum,” Baukunst und Werk-

11 Most famously, Hans Döllgast’s Alte Pinakothek Museum

form 1 (1947), 20.

in Munich (1952–1957), Rudolf Schwarz’s St Anna Church in Düren (1950–1956), and Otto Bartning’s Emergency Churches, of which more than 40 were built through both West and East Germany, combined rubble walls with wooden trusses provided by a private donor in the US, redefning the formal language of prefabricated elements through the practice of salvage.

23 Werner Durth, “IV: Wiederaufbau oder Neubeginn?” in:

12 Neundörfer in Ulrich Conrads, Die Städte Himmeloffen

(Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003), 25. 13 Schmidt had, as a public servant in 1920s Munich, realized

a series of still-famous Modernist post offce buildings, call booths, and other communications infrastructure. His success as an administrator had taken him, during the Third Reich, to Berlin as a staff member in the Ministry of Postal Services, where he realized large-scale projects also in the Modernist style, by then a putative harbinger of Nazi technical advancement. After the War, he became one of

Otto Bartning (1883-1959) Architekt einer sozialen Moderne, Akademie der Künste Berlin, ed. (Ludwigsburg: Wüstenroth, 2017), 88-91. 24 Werner Durth, “IV: Wiederaufbau oder Neubeginn?”, 90. 25 Ibid., 94. The quotation is borrowed from the speech Otto

Bartning gave at the consecration of the frst Notkirche. 26 This was a proposal made specifcally for Hamburg but

not dissimilar from the US’s Morgenthau plan to re-pastoralize and de-industrialize Germany. See Jörn Düvel, and Niels Gutschow, A Blessing in Disguise: War and Town Planning in Europe 1940–1945 (Berlin: Jovis, 2013), 231. 27 Max Taut, Berlin im Aufbau (Berlin: Berliner Verlag, 1946).

0pposite

Cover and image from Max Taut, Berlin im Aufbau (‘Berlin Rebuilding’), 1946. 89

MAKERMATERIAL ENCOUNTERS

Open Dialogues and Material Memory I regenerate my identity and the legacy of my people in my creative praxis each time an encounter reveals potential intersection with my heritage. The smell of Mama’s chicken soup on the stove, learning my ancestral Spanish in college, and sewing doll clothes the way my great-great-grandmother Mimi did: all activate memories that serve to connect my individuality to the universal community. I see heritage as alive and practices of making, whether evolving or new, as ways of actively sustaining and repairing cultural identity and history within always-changing contexts.1 In my work, I hope to communicate the small defining moments and characteristics that shape human individuality and that describe and repair our kinship with the material world. My mom told me about a time when she sewed a nightgown for Mimi’s birthday. She spent countless hours sewing, delicately refining each detail to create a beautiful garment that Mimi was grateful to receive. The next time my mom visited Mimi she saw a familiar fabric draped over a chair. It was the nightgown! Except this nightgown was disassembled, the original seams taken out and pinned back together, awaiting reassembly according to Mimi’s requirements. Everyone says Mimi was a perfectionist who re-worked projects to fit her exacting standards of garment construction. My cousin Valerie recounted a similar experience. At age 12, after taking sewing 0pposite Thimbles, 2021. Ariel Wills.

class, she was overjoyed to show off the garment she had learned to make and worked on so diligently. “I remember making this cute little camel-colored miniskirt, and I brought it home.” Mimi took the skirt, ripped out the seams, and sewed it back up again. “It didn’t do too much for my self-esteem,” said Valerie. My mom, on the other hand, expressed feeling honored that Mimi reconstructed her nightgown because the time spent with it demonstrated that Mimi liked it. Reflecting on these stories, I consider what it means to take pride in one’s work. I consider my mom and my cousin, and their impressions when seeing their handwork disassembled, and also I think of Mimi. What was her intention in investing time to improve these garments? In a family that teaches and learns by doing and demonstration, Mimi modeled how to pay attention to detail and quality. I now understand that Mimi was also passing on the reparative effects of ensuring continuity of tradition and skill. Consider a woman whose life’s work and creative expression manifest in what she puts into making a home. The satisfaction and value of handiwork develop as one cultivates techniques over years of training. What is the significance of finding meaning and cultivating value in your work? If those garments had met Mimi’s standards, then their time of actively being made would have come to a standstill. They may have been put to use as garments, but their evolution would have paused, at least until the moths started to 91

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Ariel Wills

eat holes in the cloth and they were patched or turned into scraps. Mimi did not let their journey of evolution end. She decided she would refashion them to meet her scrupulous standards. High-quality sewing is more than an aesthetic choice; it is a practical one, too. Mimi’s perfection extended the lives of those garments, so that her effort provided those clothes with longer life, necessary during times of shortage and scarcity. Mimi was the first person in the family to be born in the United States since the family fled the pogroms in Lithuania. Being raised post-immigration, living through the Great Depression, two world wars, and watching the Holocaust from across the ocean are experiences that each would impact an individual significantly, and the collection of them all paints a picture of adversity and struggle. Recognizing remaking in the context of this background reveals a complicated response to material constraints. Perhaps Mimi wanted to broaden her conversations with the garments she sewed. What might be recognized as perfectionism—reworking and remaking, adjusting again and again—might be understood as her commitment to an open dialogue with her material. An open dialogue is constantly engaged with by multiple parties, in this case, the maker (Mimi) and the materials (the camel skirt or the gifted nightgown). The maker is continuously listening and manipulating with her hands, sensing through touch and tension, resulting in physical consequences. The materials being listened to are communicating via their authentic form, physicality, and tendencies to act and react. This kind of dialogue is always available should the two parties convene. By returning and remaking, the practitioner maintains an ongoing dialogue with the piece being produced. This is the conversation of disassembling and assembling. Throughout the process of making, the media is in a fluctuating state. What is the lifetime of a material? What kind of memory is held within it? The precarity of constant dialogue, of a balancing act of open 92

Sewing Machine Tools, 2021. Ariel Wills.

dialogue with the material, might incite anxiety and unease in some, yet it is this process within which both the inexperienced beginner and the expert can find solace. Conversation with the materials provides the maker with a way to engage with material knowledge and with learned techniques, in the way that when one is reunited with an old friend it feels as if no time has passed. The dialogue rejuvenates and reaffirms a sense of self. It is in these moments of maker–material encounter that material becomes an ally to memory. Material acts as a relative and a witness that can establish continuity in the face of disjunction, rifts, and separations created through events like violence or displacement. The open dialogue that is cultivated between maker and material keeps memory open and accessible to humans during times of constant change, migration, world wars, and financial hardship. Making and remaking

become forms of witnessing and testifying as strategies of resilience. In making and remaking, the boundary of the human self is challenged and extended through the material world. The reverse can become true as well. The materiality of ourselves is engaged as we focus on material language and sensory responses like the smells and tastes of cooking or the feeling of a pricked finger on a needle. Traces of our bodies extend into everything we have touched, beyond our comprehension. Microscopic skin flakes dust our worlds, while a fingerprint left in ceramic glaze leaves its maker’s trace. A perfectly fitted bodice describes the wearer’s body, which itself was described by genetics. My mom tells me they used to joke that the secret ingredients in the generations of cooking came from the blood of fingers sliced on the cheese grater and the cigarette ash that found itself in the brisket. There is always some truth to humor. Perhaps Mimi was using what she had to create a resource or a reserve for herself, not merely to be a perfectionist, but to continue a sense of self. When every remake is an act of archiving, the burden of remembering is not upheld alone. Had Mimi’s practices of making served to help her remember who she was, to maintain a sense of self through transitions, transformations, and evolutions of her world? When I return to the beginning, my stories all start with a single stitch. I consider making and refinement of craft as processes that allow for an internal shift, providing space for the imagination and memory to intersect in ways that a linear passage of time might not allow. These processes sustain an open dialogue with the past and allow my own psychological connections to take concrete form. In my observational painting, each brushstroke is a small action bringing me closer and connecting me to the subject. The tools and materials in these paintings belonged to my Nana, and I painted them from observation sitting in the room that was at one time her workshop—the same one where over 20 years ago I would have followed her into (when she let me) to

see the treasured projects she was working on. Physically back in that space, I delicately peered through the drawers that housed her old tools, still resting precisely, each in their designated place. As I explored, I would glance nervously at the portrait of Nana that hung in the workshop, to inquire whether she approved of me going through her things. Painting the sewing machine tools, carefully observing the bobbins and bone folders, resulted in heightened familiarity and recognition that enhanced my existing memories of Nana. We carry our family’s histories and build them into our own identities, informing how we think of where we came from. The small actions of painting these objects brought them closer to me and allowed me to spend time with the loved ones who are no longer here or nearby. We have emigrated from many places, over time, and spread ourselves out. I have a sense of multiple origin points, traces from times when rich cultural sensibility and foundation were embodied within a close community, saturated in histories, family legacies, and, most foreign to me, a clear sense of our past. How did we get here? Where do we come from? My knowledge of the violence, the pogroms, that drove us to leave our homes is distant and abstract. When the Cohens came to New York, after leaving Lithuania, they preferred not to speak about the old country. My cousin Valerie and my mom both would ask about Vilna, but my greatgreat-grandma Mimi always maintained, We are American. Mimi and the older family members’ unwillingness to dig up stories of the past touches on common emotional coping mechanisms to move forward in life. It is fairly easy to understand how the displacement the Cohens experienced in fleeing a dangerous environment would be felt in the body as trauma. Dr. Maté explains how “the essence of trauma is the disconnection from the self.” 2 Repression and dissociation can be understood as the body’s way of protecting and taking care of oneself, yet this develops a misattunement of self, and the effects of this 93

disconnection can lead to complex trauma. My interest here is in noticing how practices of making can serve to repair and reattune people within the greater context of belonging within the world. The unknown voids in my family history have a visceral effect on me, like a slow ache. This is why I am interested in how memory exists beyond the human mind. Peering over my family tree, I feel a sinking in my stomach as too many households are cut short around 1945. Killed in the Holocaust. How is the space of memories filled when you do not know what happened? Or when nothing could happen, because a branch of the tree was cut short? As I return to stitching, my needle piercing the fabric reanimates what is hidden in my blood memory, reiterating movements and going through steps my grandmothers repeated. I learn to execute the motions and retain them in muscle memory. My blood holds my DNA and the histories of my ancestry, a physical record, and perseverance of the past into the future. This is where I cultivate a space where what is unknown and what never will be can exist in the home I carry inside me. This is me; I am material. The repetition of my hand and the rhythm of my sewing machine create seams that grow and continue into endless possibilities—possibilities that comfortably coexist. The simplicity of this practice, so visually superficial, is pregnant with complexity and the weight of my questions. The networks of memories (forgotten and imagined) are multiplied each time I share my sewing and embroidery. Certain people might see the connection, too; after all, my mom is always sure to mention when my work reminds her of Mimi and her sisters. Though I do not know details about my family’s life back in Vilna, I appreciate that my interests in textiles and fashion echo my family’s expertise and the way my ancestors interacted within their world. As I wonder how to reconnect to this history, I grasp how tapping into the web of memory and practices of making can help. I see how returning to practices like Mimi’s aid in reimagining my relationships to the past and the fu94

ture today. I see how the handmade object communicates qualities of personal history and reinforces foundations of heritage to lead to a future of sustained cultural memory. I imagine a large-scale reattunement to the world as the marker of cultural sustainability. Stories of the past are reanimated within my seam work. In my practices of making, I have created an antidote to worldly disconnects. Eduardo Kohn, whose research does not distinguish between the human and non-human, details ways in which we are pulled out of relation to ourselves and each other every day; sometimes we even kill this relation.3 Stanley Cavell calls these “little deaths” of everyday life.4 I think of these little deaths as a kind of dissociation from self, akin to the tactic people use as self-protection from trauma. These little deaths appear in many contexts, both superficial and profound, in “our slights of one another, in an unexpressed or disguised meanness of thought, in a hardness of glance, a willful misconstrual, a shading of loyalty.”5 Bringing awareness to the animism and vibrancy of things might help us re-associate or connect to ourselves again.6 In bringing awareness to the vibrancy of things, perhaps we are actually bringing alive ourselves (in a counter-action to the “little deaths of everyday day life”). This happens when we sew, cook, and do making practices. By noticing the selves—the materials, such as a carrot, knife, sleeves, thimble, doll clothes—around us and opening up to them as we work with them, we are becoming alive again, reconnected, and reattuned. Materials are selves. As traces of memory find a physical host within materials, they gain substance. Makers can, in a sense, “program” the thing we are making with residual memory as we follow the lead of the materials and the traces. Arjun Appadurai explains how following the trajectories of objects helps reveal information about the human condition: “Though from a theoretical point of view human actors encode things with significance, from a methodological point of view it is the things-in-motion that illuminate their hu-

man and social context.” 7 The understanding of someone’s relationship with their world is built up out of stories. Might the maker’s dialogue with their material, its resistance, and recognition of its patterns be a way to make sense of a story? Might sewing be a way to filter a story? Through imagining how humans encode things with significance, why should it not also be the other way around? Things encode us with significance, as we are, ourselves, material. An ecology of social practices using that which is present includes the non-human components that are always involved.8 By carrying out practices of making, we start to glean how we are nestled in a web of beings and tangibles. Each remembrance is an act of repairing the web—we add to the memory every time we touch, sew, chop, pick, mend, make, and remake something. If we acknowledge that materials hold traces of our interactions with them, then every time we make something we are engaging with these traces, and every remake of something is an act of archiving. If, per Dr. Maté, we understand trauma as a disconnection from the self, how might making and memory mitigate that disconnection? Today we find ourselves plagued by single-use plastics, excessive material dependency, a toxic relationship to fossil fuels, and a culture of capitalist mass consumption at the detriment of the planet. Through the destruction of the natural world, we are not only ravaging the material world but also our ability to relate with the materials interpersonally as different kinds of resources. Materials conceivably can be recognized as peers with whom we can engage, think, cultivate relationships, and pass on knowledge and memory. Let’s just start with a stitch, push the needle through the cloth, feel the tension of the thread stretched from fabric, and sew a running stitch just the way one grandparent taught their grandchild and my mother taught me. I will never have the firsthand experience of what it was like to grow up alongside those ancestors, but my stitches serve to fill gaps and repair empty spaces in my memories, from those days before I was

born. Each stitch is an affirmation of perseverance, creation, and continuation. We are still here. When we honor and appreciate the material as a fellow occupant in the world, as a fellow tangible actant, it is world-transforming. Practices of making help us refine our perception in material encounters, and if we listen and attune ourselves through our responses, we realize we are supported by material teachers who carry traces of memory to exchange and pass on to us. We find that we are not alone—we are, and always have been, embedded in a material community.

NOTES: 1 Laurajane Smith and Natsuko Akagawa, “Introduction.” In

Intangible Heritage: Key Issues in Cultural Heritage (London: Routledge, 2008), 1–9; Laurajane Smith, “Theorizing Museum And Heritage Visiting,” In The International Handbooks Of Museum Studies: Museum Theory. Edited by Andrea Witcomb and Kylie Message (Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 2015), 459–484. 2 When people protect themselves from traumas by

employing the coping mechanism of disconnection from one’s world, this can become habitual beyond the period of service. Often, this coping mechanism continues within the body past the time of peril when the disconnection is no longer protecting the human. Gabor Maté, “The Addict in All of Us: Gabor Maté’s Unfinching Vision,” interview by Lauren Dockett and Rich Simon, Psychotherapy Network (July/August 2017). https://www.psychotherapynetworker.org/magazine/ article/1102/the-addict-in-all-of-us. 3 Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology

beyond the Human (Berkeley; Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 2013). 4 Stanley Cavell, Philosophy the Day after Tomorrow (Cam-

bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 128–302. 5 “A dismissal of intention, a casual indiscriminateness of

praise or blame—in any of the countless signs of skepticism with respect to the reality, the separateness of another.” Ibid., 302. 6 Jane Bennet, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010). 7 “It is only through the analysis of these trajectories that we

can interpret the human transactions and calculations that enliven things.” Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 5. 8 “In Edward Casey’s words, memory ‘is already in the world:

it is in the reminders and reminiscences in acts of recognition and in the lived body, in places and in the company of others.’” Emily Keightley and Michael Pickering, Mnemonic Imagination: Remembering as Creative Practice (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 81. 95

REPAIR AS CARE WORK 96

What Is the Work of Love Today? Repair, Care, and Carrying I repair objects. It is a practice of love—love for the object itself or love for a person who needs the object. I also repair from a love for the work, particularly the material processes, keeping time with a needle, a hammer, sandpaper. The material trades of repair—the stitching, bonding, reweaving, and patching—provide terms and methodologies that could be applied to multiple contexts and projects, including interpersonal lives. But repair processes offer a metaphorical tidiness that is not so easily obtained in our complex and messy social relations, which cannot simply be fixed. Instead of conceiving of repair as a holistic meta-concept or a practicable methodology to be employed across various realms, in the sites and feels of social relations I position repair as a point on a continuum that marks a transition—a hinge, if you will. Social relations provide a locus for integrating theory with lived experience. I am committed to feminist ethics of care, and the teachers and movements of anti-capitalist intersectional feminism. While I feel connected to the term “feminism,” I do not

0pposite With Holdings, 2018. Performance by Erika Morillo and Lu Heintz. Photo John Butkus.

support what I would define as Western, white feminism, which aspires for opportunities and rights that are synonymous with (white) male power and is dependent on the subjugation of others in its constitution and maintenance. Intersectional feminism understands the frictions of multiple and intersecting oppressions and perceives how lived and/or constructed differences have been distorted and amplified to promote hierarchy and sow animosity for the benefit of the most powerful.1 Intersectional feminism thus re-owns difference into a guide for understanding each other within the context of ablest patriarchal racial capitalism. Difference becomes the point of entry for collaborative exchange and potential mutuality. While feminism might be understood as a centuries-long movement supporting the rights of women, I expect the term capable of holding any variety of queer person. I retain the term to acknowledge “woman” as a class category, an identity that has been exploited or enslaved into carrying out the world’s care-work.2 Thus concepts of repair within this world-making recognize and hold dearly the everyday, feminized experiences of care that have been (and are) classed, raced, scorned, and wielded as tools of division, enclosure and subjugation, while always aiming to unfasten and destabilize these enclosures. 97

reparativ e p r actic es _ wou nds , su t u r es, a nd s c a r s

Lu Heintz

Opening the Categories From this intersectional feminist base, repairing can be viewed within the realm of care-work, one of many processes that allows for everyday maintenance and mutual aid. The artist Meirle Laderman Ukeles proposes that the world consists of “developers” and “maintainers.”3 While, of course, any categorization holds lapses and overlaps, Ukeles notices how types of embodied work exemplify social strata. As a mother, teacher, and artist, I maintain everyday, and sometimes I create. On the many days that I cannot make it to the studio, I am maintaining and repairing cycles of things and people. The repair work is often more self-rewarding than the other menial, daily chores. I position repair practices in the spaces that exist between and across ideas of development (creativity) and maintenance. Creatives are able to be altruistic by doing a bit of repair, and maintainers access moments of creative intervention/invention through reworking a physical problem. Repair is a hinge, and if it is a hinge, it may be in motion. It may open toward the other side. Moving Through the Symbolic Material repairs make concrete, structural changes that can be immediate, compared to the murky duration of interpersonal, emotional repairs. Those who have repaired a sweater and broken a heart understand it is far easier to reweave threads than it is to reverse or mollify the harmful impact of words. The restoration of objects is satisfying precisely for this reason: objects can recover in ways that humans suffering from trauma often cannot. Yet repairing objects can be a symbolic gesture that pivots toward mending relations. Humans communicate through objects. I’ve repaired countless objects for my various relations, and my feelings were embedded within the work. We may seek a way to express regret or forgiveness, and—while not capable of providing closure—these mended objects may signal a desire to move forward. The symbolism of the material damage is mobilized; a trace of the damage remains, yet it was attended to. 98

Repairing objects can be a means to communicate an interest in conciliation, but these gestures are not the work of reconciliation, they are the opening toward it. Entering a Space of Conciliation Reconciliation is a turn of feeling that unfolds mutually between two people or parties, but if the efforts of one lean too heavily on another, those efforts will pinch and bind the process. Indeed, the apology is flawed at the outset; it is an ask. The apology can pressure the harmed person to find or feign forgiveness. In Toni Morrison’s 1981 novel Tar Baby, the white wife and mother, Margaret, asks her black servant, Ondine, for reconciliation: “You have to forgive me for that, Ondine. You have to.” And Ondine replies: “You forgive you. Don’t ask for more.”4 Apologies are often made in the self-interest of the apologizer, who is looking for relief. The apologizer may create the damage and ask for what they are accustomed to: for someone else to lift and hold their grief and shame. Those harmed hold painful feelings and memories, and no expression of regret—genuine or not—will necessarily make these disperse. An infliction may be too deep to ever fully repair. Still, an apologizer can process some of the shame and damage by taking responsibility and committing to change. Writer and performer Kai Cheng Thom elaborates that “being accountable is not about earning forgiveness…one shouldn’t aim for forgiveness when holding oneself accountable. Rather, self-accountability is about learning how we have harmed others, why we have harmed others, and how we can stop.”5 I do not imagine a world where everyone holds damage and feels badly. But can the apologizer express amends and bear the weight of the harm? Turning Away < < Turning Toward Modern societies are comprised of deeply rooted traumas—inflictions that have been successful implementing the capitalist project of modernity/coloniality.6 So let us reconsider the type of success that we, as colonized and/or colonizers, are trained to

At what point it breaks: Sink, 2017. Performance by Mairead Grace Delaney, Photo Tif Robinette.

La Ropa Sucia se Lava en Casa, 2012. Performance by Tzitzi Barrantes. http://tzitzi.metzonimia.com. Photo courtesy Zonadeartenacción.

Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman? 2011, Performance by WuraNatasha Ogunji. Photo WuraNatasha Ogunji.

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aspire to. Success as we often encounter it in capitalist modernity demands a negligence of the altruistic self, a denial of mutuality. It requires an individualist subject/object worldview disconnected from relational interdependence and collectivity. Dismantling individualist-led capitalism will require personally turning away from our oppressive relationships. In his 1952 study Black Skin White Masks, Franz Fanon describes a “turning away” from the master.7 For the privileged this turning will demand shifting away from the ego-drive and toward mutual care. Feminist scholar Sara Ahmed conceptualizes a “double turn”: in turning toward our own roles and responsibilities, a turn toward others is required.8 I view these turnings as forming a collectivity, and each turn is particular, with many people already more adept or trained/subjugated into a constant consideration of others. Feminist theorist Gayatari Spivak has written of the inherent contradiction in an ethics of “other-directedness” when “women in the underclass are socially obliged to care for others.” Thus, to become an other-oriented collectivity “we are obliged to work within this contradiction” and rotate the practice away from its current oppressive cultural manifestations and requirements.9 Those forced into other-oriented roles and occupations may need to do some turning away from others in order to turn inward and to prioritize self-affirmation and self-care. I do not imagine a world where everyone carries their own weight. I imagine a world where everyone shares the weight to collectively be more free. Carrying the Weight of the Pivot For Ahmed, the double turn presents a clearing that “might provide the conditions for another type of work.”10 We can therefore utilize the double turn as a mode of being and doing (emotional and physical labor), rather than solely as a way of seeing and thinking; this is embodied commitment in turning toward the other. It is labor to become attuned to the needs of others—to listen, to show up. Thus, embodied, in-person 100

commitments may require slowed movement and progress, a retraction of motivations that lean in, that ask, that are caught up in projections and laudable results. Industrious and enterprising energies might transfer into the load of daily chores and care. To carry the harm and to lean under the burdens requires more than a claim of empathy, which implies a completion of the double turn, thus pre-empting its process. Following Aruna d’Souza, empathy might describe those intimate, intersubjective understandings born of shared experience; love might describe something else.11 Understanding and empathy are not prerequisites for the hard work of love. Love, as solidarity, might require a triple turn—towards the other, towards yourself as you are seen by the other, and towards the work that the other is carrying. To turn into, to take up, the work of and for others—this is the work of love today. Entering a New Phase Many projects that center around social repair are generated from sites of privilege and whiteness. We must therefore question if they are intrusive in their reach, aiming for swift community impacts with their own career-minded agendas in tow. Many elite projects are equipped with some level of pretense with regard to social justice. Circulating in luxury markets, capitalism is reaffirmed by many repair initiatives that appropriate long-established subsistence practices and care ethics. These methods are employed to develop careers, rather than to create better relations or propose alternatives outside capitalist systems. Maintenance and repair are continuous parts of everyday, working-class life, whether it be rewiring a community generator, getting a neighbor’s car to run, mending laundry or fixing a smashed window. Yet Repair has become instrumental in the social practice projects that are now an established and collected genre within the discipline of contemporary art. Repair circulates in green design projects that nonetheless proliferate aspirations of globalized gentrification.

Repair can be mobilized by small businesses sourcing sustainably grown fibers and handmade processes, even as they construct luxury branding campaigns using underpaid BIPOC models and interns. Gestures toward repair end up as advertising, become profitable, and reaffirm saviorism. As lawyer and activist Dean Spade describes, “this is typical of the kind of ‘innovation’ that the social justice entrepreneurship model celebrates— it embraces ideas of paternalism central to the charity model, focuses aid on making donors ‘feel good,’ and has no connection to work that aims to get to the root causes of the problem.”12 These moves increase likes on social media, provide glossy images, add lines to résumés, and bolster already accomplished egos. Intellectual and creative elites often see their work as critically interrogating systemic injustice, while not acknowledging their own dependence on those same systems, and those that are exploited by them. Allan de Souza points to how “artists, curators, academics, and museum and gallery professionals don’t consider themselves to be fat-cat insiders feeding off the labor of others,” and occupy “the romanticized position of ‘infiltrating outsider’ endemic to art industries.”13 Indeed, it took years of intellectual avoidance before the activist Silvia Federici finally absorbed her mother’s insights into Marxism’s blindspots—insights which ultimately inspired Federici’s lifelong commitment to socialist feminist movements.14 What could a mass movement be like, one that turns away from ego-driven actions and into collective, embodied commitments toward each other? Resource return is not only about the resources of land and water but also exploited resources of time and labor.15 This shift depends on distributing the burden of care such that more of us will be cleaning and caring for each other: for children, the elderly, the unwell, or differently abled. A commitment to equitable human rights hinges on deliberate and coordinated changes within political and cultural structures. People from all strata of society must participate in the care

economy, allowing for transformation in the home, community and workplace. The lighter (white) side of the colonial/modern gender system can stop and listen, and the male side of the colonial/modern gender system can bend themselves into the service of care.16 Entering Together There is an insidious attitude that menial jobs are held because they are the best or only jobs available or suitable to particular social positions. But social positions are maintained and enforced so that certain jobs can be avoided by a privileged class. In the words of Audre Lorde: “In a society where the good is defined in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, there must always be some group of people who, through systematized oppression, can be made to feel surplus, to occupy the place of the dehumanized inferior.”17 A privileged class is both trained and spatially arranged to be unaware of the essential workers which bolster them. This lack of awareness leads to a non-responsiveness—a loss of practice in caring for others. Riika Prattes’s recent essay, “‘I don’t clean up after myself,’” examines how cycles of negligence accompany upper-class dependencies. She writes: “The unequal distribution of reproductive work leads to a specific pattern of epistemic ignorance, which, in turn, aids the reproduction of unequal power relations…and becomes a breeding ground for further ignorance and irresponsibility.”18 Whether surface or discreet, seen and/or unnoticed,19 gendered and racialized care relations inform the minutiae of everyday. Failure to acknowledge or respond to our interdependence perpetuates cultural deficiencies signature of privilege and whiteness. As the white boss and father, Valerian, realizes in Tar Baby: “He had not known because he had not taken the trouble to know. He was satisfied with what he did know. Knowing more was inconvenient and frightening.”20 Perhaps one thing the global pandemic has offered is the chance to dramatically encounter our structural realities—namely, to witness essential workers and comprehend our entangled interdependence. These real101

ities are only newly apparent to those who have been trained to turn away, a privileged class held to high standards of ignorance and negligence. But this chance is why Arundati Roy conceives of the pandemic as a portal.21 The people who provide our motherwork as their jobs—cleaning, childcare, eldercare, nursing, and counseling—are predominantly women who carry the double burden of supporting this type of work in their own homes. Ordinary additional factors in this impossible mix are poverty, single parenthood, generational and childhood trauma, mixed abilities and racialized inequity. In the United States, the crisis of the pandemic has placed further strain on essential workers and mothers, who, in the absence of substantive economic policies, receive minimal financial support.22 There has been a well-documented trend of gendered pandemic burnout.23 In a New York Times feature about pandemic-era motherhood, Pooja Lakshmin reminds women that this is not a problem of personal capacity or ability, but a broken system.24 It is a “betrayal” by the state and, I also argue, the people around them. A plethora of recent articles and blogs offer guides and self-help practices directed to and shared among women in these unworkable roles.25 But why is this a question of self-help? What about everyone else? Examine the care-work that supports your life and lifestyle and reckon with whether you contribute fairly and effectively. How can you better care for the people around you—whether children, elders, or other caregivers? How can you offer more support to your employees or students, so that they might then extend practices of care? If you are uplifted by the labors of others, how can you turn and lift their labors? I have positioned repair as a hinge—as a piece of hardware that is part of a material system and larger infrastructure. It is also a crucial turning point. Efforts to improve these moving, structural systems might step into another sort of holding practice: that of carrying and loving the pieces and people without defaulting to re-enforced functionality. This is a sticky praxis, involving proximate relations that materialize in excrement, 102

sweat, tears and time. Care-work may not be noticed or feel especially innovative. It may not be convenient or affirm us immediately, if at all, in the narrow ways we have been trained to value. Committing to these everyday needs requires radically different political and social orientations from our instituted norms. As Johanna Hedva so clearly states: “The most anti-capitalist protest is to care for another and to care for yourself. To take on the historically feminized and therefore invisible practice of nursing, nurturing, caring. To take seriously each other’s vulnerability and fragility and precarity, and to support it, honor it, empower it. To protect each other, to enact and practice community. A radical kinship, an interdependent sociality, a politics of care.”26 Intentions of repair may be pivotal in pushing us towards a different world—towards abolition of a racial, gendered, and ableist capitalism—because repair is a moment of seeing, of cognition, and of recognition. But recognition alone will not manifest redistribution. The commitment that follows is as vast as all the emotional and physical work that needs care and carrying.

NOTES: 1 For an introduction to intersectionality, see: Kimberlé

Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum: Vol. 1989: Iss. I, Article 8; and Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefning Difference,” Sister Outsider (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984): 114–123. 2 I am connecting to a lineage of discourse that examines

“woman” as a class category outside of biological taxonomies and essentialisms. For reference see Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch (Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia, 2004): 11–17; Maria Mies, Patriarchy & Accumulation on a World Scale (New York: Zed Books, 1986): 44-66; Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration and Domestic Work (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001): 61-79. 3 Mierle Laderman Ukeles, “Manifesto for Maintenance Art

1969! Proposal for an exhibition ‘CARE'," 1969. 4 Toni Morrison, Tar Baby (New York: Penguin Books,

1981): 241. 5 Kai Cheng Thom, “What to Do When You’ve Been Abusive”

in Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement, ed. Ejeris Dixon and Leeah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2020): 77. 6 The formulation “modernity/coloniality” was developed by

Aníbal Quijano and further developed by Walter D. Mignolo, Maria Lugones. 7 Franz Fanon, Black Skin White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1991): 221. First published in English in 1967. 8 Sara Ahmed, “Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Per-

formativity of Anti-Racism,” Borderland ejournal, Vol. 3 No. 2 (2004): 11–12. 9 Gayatri Spivak, “Can There be a Feminist World,” Lecture

at the Columbia University Global Center in Amman, Jordan, November 16, 2013. Transcript provided by Public Books May 15, 2015: https://www.publicbooks.org/can-there-be-a-feminist-world/. 10 Ahmed, “Declarations of Whiteness,” 11–12. 11 Aruna D’Souza, “Against Empathy: The Value of Mistranslation in Art and in Life,” Center for Social Equity and Inclusion, Rhode Island School of Design, March 5, 2020. 12 Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) (Brooklyn, NY: Verso Books, 2020): 51. 13 Allan DeSouza, How Art Can Be Thought (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018): 51. 14 For an introduction to Federici’s work, see: Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012). 15 Other examples I would cite include housing, education,

and healthcare. 16 These “sides” of the colonial/modern gender system

were formulated by Maria Lugones. It is her strategy to point to sided tendencies while simultaneously acknowledging variation, to not reaffrm strict binaries of gender or race. Gender and race are co-constituted within the colonial/ modern system, in multiple and particular ways, yet still these tendencies for “sides” of power emerge and may be tracked along gendered norms and racialized privileges. 17 Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Rede-

fning Difference” from a paper delivered at the Copeland Colloquium, Amherst College, April 1980. In Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Trumansburg, NY: The Crossing Press, 1984): 114–123. 18 Riika Prattes, “‘I don’t clean up after myself’: epistemic ignorance, responsibility, and the politics of outsourcing domestic cleaning,” Feminist Theory Vol 21. (2020): 35.

childcare. For data, see: OECD Family database, PF2.1 Parental Leave Systems, last modifed August 2019, http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/PF2_1_Parental_leave_systems. pdf: “Among 41 countries, only U.S. lacks paid parental leave,” Pew Research Center, December, 2019, accessed March, 2021: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/16/ u-s-lacks-mandated-paid-parental-leave/; “Falling behind the rest of the world,” Washington Center for Equitable Growth, Jan 2017, https://equitablegrowth.org/falling-behind-therest-of-the-world-childcare-in-the-united-states/. 23 Helen Lewis, “The Pandemic Has Given Women a New Kind Of Rage,” The Atlantic, March 10, 2021: https://www. theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/03/pandemic-has-made-women-angry/618239/. 24 Pooja Lakshmin, “This Isn’t Burn Out, It’s Betrayal,” Special

section series “America’s Mothers Are in Crisis. Is Anyone Listening to Them?” The New York Times, February 7, 2021: 11. 25 Beth Berry, “We Don’t Want Pre-Pandemic Motherhood

Back,” ModernMom, April, 2020, accessed January, 2021: https://www.modernmom.com/we-dont-want-pre-pandemic-motherhood-back/; Beth Berry, Motherwhelmed (Revolution from Home Publishing, 2020); LaDonna Dennis, “3 Ways to Help Your Kids Stay on Top of their Studies During the Pandemic," MomBlogSociety, December 15, 2020: accessed January, 2021: https://momblogsociety.com/3ways-to-help-your-kids-stay-on-top-of-their-studies-duringthe-pandemic/; Andrea Hsu,“'This Is Too Much': Working Moms Are Reaching The Breaking Point During The Pandemic,” All Things Considered, NPR, September 29, 2020, Audio, 4:00. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/918127776/ this-is-too-much-working-moms-are-reaching-the-breakingpoint-during-the-pandemic; Monica Mo, PhD, “It’s possible to make mom friends during a pandemic: Here’s how (and why it’s so important),” Motherly, accessed February 1, 2021: https://www.mother.ly/love/its-possible-to-make-momfriends-during-a-pandemic. 26 Johanna Hedva, “Sick Woman Theory,” Mask, The Not

Again Issue, January 2016. http://www.maskmagazine.com/ not-again/struggle/sick-woman-theory, accessed February, 2021, adapted from the lecture, “My Body Is a Prison of Pain so I Want to Leave It Like a Mystic But I Also Love It & Want It to Matter Politically,” delivered at Human Resources, sponsored by the Women’s Center for Creative Work, in Los Angeles, on October 7, 2015.

19 I argue that some things can certainly be both seen and unnoticed. 20 Morrison, Tar Baby, 242. 21 Arundati Roy, “The Pandemic is a Portal,” A Conversation with Arundati hosted by Imani Perry, Haymarket Books, April 23, 2020, via zoom: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/ blogs/130-arundhati-roy-the-pandemic-is-a-portal. 22 At the time of writing, the United States minimum wage

has remained at $7.25 per hour for 12 years, since 2009. The United States lags behind 41 industrialized nations in not mandating paid family leave or subsidized preschool

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Kurhirani no ambakiti (Burning the Devil):

Since That’s the Only Way They Listen to Us

The harm inflicted by the Michoacán state police on the P’urhépecha community of Arantepacua (México) on April 5, 2017 is irreparable. At 2:45pm an operation involving thousands of armed units (300 according to the media) took place: the entire police force of the state of Michoacán headed to Arantepacua.1 The church bells resounded: this was the community’s emergency call. The police did not come to have a dialogue but to generate a confrontation: they entered, shooting tear gas, with a “rhinoceros” (colloquial name for a kind of armored tank) and with dozens of pickups and vans, in addition to three helicopters. The shooting lasted between 2 and 3 hours; it looked like a war. Four community members were killed and another nine were detained. Families had to hide from the police, who looted their houses. The comuneros—a term that in Spanish implies that community members are not only neighbors but share a commitment for the common good—had to defend themselves with sticks and stones, run to the hill, flee. At 5.30pm a military convoy approached Arantepacua from its other entrance. They were coming for a red truck; which they took away with them. The use of blockages and the holding of trucks are some of the few strategies left for 0pposite Embroideries from the Archivo Bordado de la

Resistencia (embroidered resistance archive), 2020. Photos Marco Antonio López Valenzuela.

Arantepacua’s community members (and for many other marginalized communities in the region and in the country) to make themselves heard by the government: it’s the only way they listen to us. That red truck was one of 20 trucks held in Arantepacua to protest the arrest by the police of 32 comuneros who had traveled to Morelia (the state’s capital) the previous day to negotiate the boundaries of their territory with the neighboring community of Capácuaro. This is an ongoing and ancient dispute. Years ago, when Arantepacua supported the Teachers’ Union strike instigated by the educational reforms imposed by the federal government—which required, amongst other things, the standardized testing of teachers, a measure that clearly penalized marginalized normalistas in rural areas—more than 30 vehicles were detained in the town, and no one came to claim them. We believe that that truck had something illegal: weapons, drugs, organs, bodies since no operation against drug trafficking has ever been this big. Arantepacua has always been a community en pie de lucha, always ready to fight and to support social struggles; a pebble in the government’s shoe, since social conscience has always proved an obstacle for power and oppression. The lack of state support and social projects for Indigenous communities has led to marginalization, and a lack of opportunities and employment in the community have encouraged 105

reparativ e p r actic es _ wou nds , su t u r es, a nd s c a r s

Adela Goldbard

Documentation of the burning of El Rinoceronte (the rhinoceros), Arantepacua, December 4, 2020. Photos Marco Antonio López Valenzuela & José Luis Arroyo Robles.

migration to the United States. The loss of the P’urhépecha language due to acculturation processes, accelerated by migration, is one of the greatest concerns for the community, especially for the normalista elementary school teachers. Their constant struggle to defend their ancestral territory, their sovereignty, and self-determination, based on the practices of their Tatakeri grandparents, seeks to strengthen and revitalize the P’urhépecha language and culture within the community and in other communities of the region, to become a tool against acculturation and in defense of communality. This fight for the well-being of the community requires opening people’s eyes and awakening social conscience; the fight for justice and the social good is the fight against dispossession, private property, and neoliberalism. A saga of resistance against oppression that can be traced back to colonial times is what allowed a small and marginalized 106

Indigenous community to recover from an extreme act of incommensurable and incomprehensible sanctioned violence. What was our crime, being Indigenous, being marginal? The damage caused by the April 5 attack is irreparable; we will never be able to forget; there are many consequences of psychological trauma. But mourning did not result in silence, as the government expected. Repression fueled rage, which in turn invigorated the demand for sovereignty. On the evening of the day of the attack, the community, although devastated, called a meeting for the purposes of political reorganization. After the traumatic event, Arantepacua decided to reject and effectively expel political parties and the local police. Community members stayed on guard for several nights in case the police came back. On April 7, a barricade was built at the entrance of the community and on April 8, at 12:30pm, the community patrol, the kuaricha, was founded. The state

of Michoacán officially recognized the community’s decision to adopt self-government in 2018; but Arantepacua still demands that those responsible for the April 5 attack are brought to justice. The aftermath of these events might be irreparable, but the way this moment in history is narrated and remembered can either be empowering or defeating. Resisting being silenced is as important as resisting repression. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot points out in Silencing the Past, history is the fruit of power, and there has always been unequal access to the production of historical narratives. But this condition can be challenged, I argue, by dismantling and subverting the perpetrator/victim, victor/defeated, and oppressor/oppressed dichotomies, through re-enactment, performance and the dramatic use of violence and destruction; by adding a decolonial how to Peter Burke’s important question about the politics of memory—who wants whom to remember what and why?2 Who gets to narrate and how are both questions about power, since the latter implies questioning imposed modes of memory-making that need to be disarticulated in order to break the silences, delink, and reclaim power. Last year I was commissioned by the XIV FEMSA Biennial to develop an art project in Michoacán, central México. The resulting project/art installation is titled Kurhirani no ambakiti (Burning the Devil): Since That’s the Only Way They Listen to Us and was co-authored with Arantepacua’s Communal Indigenous Council. This project brings together performance and sound with local, traditional textiles, pottery and woodwork, in order to craft a retelling of the events of April 5 from the perspective of the community, in support of their ongoing fight for justice. Kurhirani no ambakiti proposes a decolonial deconstruction of silences through the affective use of violence and destruction, tactility and orality, as materials for communal memory-making. Archivo Bordado de la Resistencia (embroidered resistance archive)—to which the images and quotes in the first section of this chapter belong—comprises two parts: a sound piece that weaves narratives generous-

Documentation of the burning of El Rinoceronte (the rhinoceros), Arantepacua, December 4, 2020. Photos Marco Antonio López Valenzuela & José Luis Arroyo Robles. 107

ly shared with me through interviews, and 25 cross-stitched textiles crafted by female embroiderers from Arantepacua and the neighbouring town of Turícuaro. The photographs and video stills used as reference were sourced from Arantepacua’s Indigenous Communal Council’s archive and comunero Auani Pascual, who has consistently documented the community’s and the Teachers’ Union struggles. The interviews conducted with comuneros, normalista teachers, council members, embroiderers, and kuaris (members from the communal security of the town) were assembled chronologically, narrating the events that led to the attack, its aftermath, and its consequences. This cascade of voices forms the contextual basis of the installation presented at Centro Cultural Clavijero, in Morelia (December 2020–March 2021) by providing intimate, first-hand, unfiltered narratives of the events. Based on the communal archive, the embroideries also develop a chronology that, besides illustrating the oral narrations, adds tactile, sacred, feminist, and critical layers to the events represented. Despite its colonial origins, embroidery has been subverted by many Indigenous communities by becoming a tool with which to conceal and preserve their culture, traditions, identity, and narratives. It has been a device for epistemic decolonisation usually deposited in the hands of women. Photographs and still images from videos taken by community members became pixelated tactile images reinterpreted by female embroiderers who, through their labour and affect, transformed them into tools for remembering and resisting, against silence and repression, and into pulsating artifacts of collective memory. The main component of Kurhirani no ambakiti is a life-size papier-mâché rhinoceros that functions as a stand-in for the “rhinoceros” tank used by the police forces and that allegorically embodies the harm and evil inflicted in the community of Arantepacua. Made by a collective of pyrotechnicians or coheturis in Cherán—the first and largest P’urhepécha community to gain political autonomy back in 2011, through an armed 108

movement led by women—the effigy was carried in a procession along the same route of the yearly commemorative procession of the April 5 events. Afterwards, the rhinoceros was destroyed with fireworks and burnt in the main plaza of Arantepacua, while local pireris (traditional P’urhépecha musicians) performed compositions that narrated the events of 2017 and the community’s subsequent fight for self-governance. For the finale, the coheturis cut off the animal’s head, which was then hung as a trophy, accompanying the video documentation of the performance, at Centro Cultural Clavijero. Pyrotechnics were introduced in the sixteenth century in what is now Mexico by Franciscan priests, as spectacular and violent components of Autos sacramentales or conversion plays that were crafted to spiritually conquer the Indigenous peoples and convert them to Catholicism. Fireworks were used as a tool to frighten and punish; as a sensorial representation of hell and suffering. But, since then, pyrotechnic effects have been integrated into popular festive traditions in Mexico and other parts of Latin America as a form of catharsis, purge, celebration and even criticism and protest, which reveals, I argue, that the violent tools of the oppressor have been subverted and turned into tools for resistance. Anchored in popular culture and in cultural traditions from the margins, from the subaltern, popular effigy-burning rituals such as the Burning of Judas are self-determined, self-organised, and community-funded celebrations in which social roles and rules are challenged to allow new and empowered narratives to emerge. They are subversive carnivals, similar to what Mikhail Bakhtin describes in his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics; celebratory political acts of resistance to what Aníbal Quijano calls the coloniality of power, through a performative, immersive, cathartic, excessive, destructive, and disobedient decolonial aesthetic experience.3 These rituals allegorically eliminate evil, harm, and treason collectively, using violence and destruction as materials to purge but also to make visible and remember. According to Trouillot, “any historical

narrative is a particular bundle of silences, the result of a unique process, and the operation required to deconstruct these silences will vary accordingly.”4 I argue that a first step with which to deconstruct the bundle of silences brought by assault and oppression is to reject “the victim” as a disempowered political figure, since victimization is a strategy of control and oppression, as Daniele Giglioli in his Critique of the Victim points out. Against victimization, I propose challenging the monopoly of violence—the exclusive use of physical force by the State now turned duopoly through its extension to organized crime—by using dramatic violence as decolonial aestheSis. According to Walter Mignolo decolonial aestheSis (with a capital S for emphasis) “is an option that delivers a radical critique to modern, postmodern, and altermodern aestheTics and, simultaneously, contributes to making visible decolonial subjectivities at the confluence of popular practices of re-existence, artistic installations, theatrical and musical performances, literature and poetry, sculpture and other visual arts.”5 In my work, I use dramatic violence and destruction to make visible, remember, and purge, but also to delink. I argue that when violence is torn from the dominant and colonising discourse, its aesthetic, ritual, collective, and affective potential can be unleashed, challenging overpowering dichotomic categorizations that lead to victimization. Dramatic violence pushes against hegemonic formal means for the production of historical narratives, by adding performative layers to the narrations: it allows a shift from recounting to re-enacting, from the verbal, to the embodied, thus delinking from Western canonical modes of retelling and remembering. The aesthetic violence of the burning of “the rhinoceros” in Arantepacua was intended as a form of purging, of catharsis, but above all, it sought to undermine the politics of memory, empower community members, and support the healing of collective trauma by dismantling the oppressor/oppressed, perpetrator/victim, victor/defeated dichotomies. It used dramatic violence to challenge state

violence by making visible the excessive use of force by the police. Destruction was used as a memory-building artifact to contest and subvert physical, ideological, and structural violence, and to recover and celebrate situated narratives. The aesthetic and affective potential of violence was employed as a tool for epistemic decolonisation and liberation, to delink from the conventional (Western) construction of historical narratives, to carnivalize victimization, against silences, and for a restructuring of the politics of memory, considering that, as Frantz Fanon maintained: “decolonisation is always a violent event.”6 •••• The project is dedicated to the memory of the four victims of the attack: student Luis Gustavo Hernández Cohenete, comunero Francisco Jiménez Alejandre, nurse José Carlos Jiménez Crisóstomo, and comunero Santiago Crisanto Luna.

•••• Menkixi uantakuriakaxi ka noxi meni kuantantojka kuapini juchari ambe We will always raise our voices in the face of injustice, we will never get tired of defending what is ours

autonomy, self-goverment and free determination

NOTES: 1 All italics are quotes from personal communications with

comuneros, teachers, council members, embroiderers, and kuaris (members from the communal security) of Arantepacua, August, 2020. Translations are mine. 2 Peter Burke, Varieties of Cultural History (NYC: Cornell,

1997), 56. 3 Anibal Quijano, “Coloniality and Modernity/Ra-

tionality,” Cultural Studies 21, Nos. 2–3 (March/May 2007): 168–178. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ abs/10.1080/09502380601164353?journalCode=rcus20. 4 Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the

Production of History (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), 27. 5 Walter Mignolo and Rolando Vazquez, “Decolonial Aesthe-

Sis: Colonial Wounds/Decolonial Healings,” SocialText online (July 15, 2013). https://socialtextjournal.org/periscope_ article/decolonial-aesthesis-colonial-woundsdecolonialhealings/. 6 Franz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: GrovePress, 1961)

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112 Borderlanders: A Political Concept for Repair Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar 120 Repair on the Move Bec Barnett and Tristan Schultz 130 My Grandmother’s Mended Socks: Layered Design Thinking and Durability Christina Kim 136 Is Business Beyond Repair? Gary Blythe 144 Repairing Imaginations: Rethinking the Ethics of Growth and Degrowth Ijlal Muzaffar 150 Is Repair Repairing Architecture? Olga Ioannou 160 Trans-Repair: Emancipatory Techno-Poetics Paula Gaetano-Adi

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Reparative Thinking_Alternative Ways

Chapters in Reparative Thinking_Alternative Ways engage with the questions and issues raised in the previous sections and illustrate potential alternatives to broken societies and ecologies, things, and systems. In lieu of usual solutions to brokenness—novelty, growth, and/ or returning to recent conditions—this section presents alternatives that might inspire us to rethink and repair, to tackle problems creatively, critically, directly, and minimally while embracing diversity and inclusivity.

3

The chapter offers alternatives, and opens up opportunities with which to redirect current brokenness in far less intrusive ways than conventional modes of social and environmental fxing, making, building, purchasing, processing, and discarding. These writings explore alternatives to various states of brokenness and explore ways of implementing repair, suggesting alternatives based on indigenous, technical, and business concepts, and investigating economic, aesthetic, environmental, and social concepts in alternative ways.

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A STRANGER’S RIGHT TO BELONGING 112

Borderlanders: A Political Concept for Repair Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar

from: “My Borderlanders: Notes on Coming of Age in the Age of Repair”1

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” —karl marx

2

“The old world is dying, and the new world is struggling to be born.” —antonio gramsci 3

The true leap, Fanon wrote at the end of his Black Skins, White Masks, consists in introducing invention into existence.

And we of no nations of the world, whose heads have been bowed to the dust, will know that this dust is more sacred than the bricks which build the pride of power. For this dust is fertile of life, and of beauty and worship. —rabindranath tagore 5

I feel at home in the entire world, wherever there are clouds and birds and human tears. —rosa luxemburgh 6

0pposite Photo courtesy the author. 113

reparativ e t hink ing _alt er nativ e ways

—sylvia wynter 4

Apartheid | Partition | Repair I address you with all the ache in my heart as you must inherit the blood-seared lines that divide the world, and will have to walk into its very wounds, and begin this work of repair. It is because you are so young, and because it is not the task of healer, but rather the task of trickster, artist and inventor that I want to bequeath to you that I am forging here a political concept for this task of repair. While there are many senses attributable to the word repair (and examined in this book), by repair here I mean something quite specific—I do not mean simply fixing that which is broken, but rather taking what is already at hand in devastating pieces and remaking to create a world we can all inhabit, we can all belong to. The world we repair may not look like the world before the nation-state colonized our worldliness. Indeed, the work of repair is not to make it like it was before, as a kind of nostalgia for a lost past, but rather it is to transform the closures of national borders where refugees are interned, into the gracious opening and companionship of Borderlanders. Although we are taught absurdly discrete national histories in our schoolrooms to make us feel we belong to an ancient, timeless political community that has always existed, nation as a political concept is only a few hundred years old. And the global spread of this political form (a contagious idea) into an expanding international system of nation-states is largely a twentieth century phenomenon. It is so recent and yet so ubiquitous, like Jorge Borges’ one-to-one scaled map,7 that it devours us; it is hard to imagine or believe in any other way of organizing our world, of belonging to each other. But we must imagine another way, for the birth of the nation-state was the result of two kinds of violent processes that I am going to name apartheid (to hold apart, in Dutch/Afrikaans) and partition (to divide into parts, from Latin). We know the term “apartheid” from the settler colonial system of racial segregation and oppression formally established in South Africa in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet apartheid can 114

Anna Egger (1922–2018) and Anthonia Egger (1916–1980), Wörgl, Austria.

also be understood more broadly as a concept that came to govern encounters of difference in the making of the modern world.8 When the Westphalian nation-state emerged in Europe as a basis for sovereignty, this claim to sovereignty was not just meant to secure a state’s territorial borders against “foreign” invasion and interference; it was tied to a “standard of civilization,” such that those deemed uncivilized could be denied sovereignty, and legitimately colonized and brutally subjugated or enslaved. As the multi-ethnic and multi-religious empires of the long durée came to be replaced not just by the nation-state but rather national empires, it did so by inventing and instituting a cleavage, a structural violence, between the civilized and uncivilized, colonizer and colonized, European and non-European, white and non-white, modern and traditional, progressive and backward, and so on. To fight against this structural violence,

Tirol, which became divided into Austria and Italy—to me partition underpins something more fundamental about the process of inventing a territorially distinct and bounded many (but not all) anticolonial movements nation in a system of nation-states. Partition embraced nationalism—for only by claimis a concept that declares the historic pluraling to be a civilized nation could they claim ity of lived worlds untenable, and sets about “national self-determination,” freedom and transforming some differences into incommensovereignty. Even though formal colonial rule surability.9 ended by the 1970s, with the whole globe Once incommensurate, those differences “decolonized” to become a patchwork of then require separations (creating minorities), nation-states, the apartheid history of the and expulsions over the boundary (creating nation and national empires continues to refugees). It is what Zygmunt Bauman debe acutely felt in the enduring racism that scribed as “weeding” the garden—what we do governs most of our institutions, debt, Third when we declare some plants as undesirable— World labor, and especially at the barbedto explain the Holocaust as not an aberration wire borders. of nationalism, modernity, or civilization, I have spent more than two decades doing but rather an ordinary exercise of its scienresearch on the long Partition of 1947 in the tific rational basis.10 While we can regard the Indian subcontinent, comparative partitions, Holocaust as a horrifying extreme result of and the creation of minorities and refugees. trying to produce a mono-ethnic nation, what While the catastrophic experience of partiwe call ethno-nationalism today, we see these tion as a line that divided my family between tendencies of ethno-nationalism in every India and Pakistan haunts me—and such national project, in every nation-state, making imperious lines were drawn all over the world the work of repair a matter of urgency. in the twentieth century, including alpine Some might say that we should simply Safya Furniturewala (1890–1966) and Vazira Tawawala (1905–1960), Bombay, India.

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Collage, Vazira Zamindar, 2021

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replace the monoculture of nationalism with the multiculturalism of nationalism, that multiculturalism is our solution to nationalism’s ethno-national tendencies. But let me stay in Bauman’s planned garden, and say this: multiculturalism rests on essentialisms of cultural identity that may allow us to plant manicured colorful flowerbeds, but where “weeds” still don’t belong. What would it mean, instead, to wild the landscape again? We need some conceptual shifts to let grow, seed and braid with wild meadow sweetgrass, so we can repair our broken relationship with the divided earth and with each other.11 To dream of the wild is to dream together. A Gathering of Borderlanders As you well know when you go out into the divided world you will be asked, “Where do you come from?” The reply can only simply be “I am a Borderlander.” And yet when you reply, “I am a Borderlander,” you will be asked where is this country—where is this “Borderland”?—as if we all must belong to countries that have been drawn into the earth with blood to divide it. The Borderland is both a no-man’s-land and an every-man’s-land—it is a country we can all belong to, where citizenship is claimed through acts of love and care, where the “foreigner” resides within each of us, and is that yet unknown, unfamiliar part of us, within us, that we seek to get to know. The search for knowledge requires us to welcome the stranger, and become a stranger to ourselves at the same time, in order to truly know ourselves and each other. There are some like you who have in fact been conceived of two very different parents and histories, and born in yet another “country” and raised in yet another—sure, there is something biological and ontological that makes you a Borderlander—a tribe born of intersections and possibilities that have always existed when people went on journeys (so it is an old tribe, as old as nomads), but now this tribe has a new role to play as the very idea of country can no longer simply be the “nation-state” that wages wars and

cultivates hate to create an insider and an outsider as a necessary border for creating the illusion that “it” exists. Indeed, the idea of the nation-state, only a couple of hundred years old, is so insecure that it doesn’t know it exists without this border—it constantly needs to invent the thing and cannot without transforming beautiful differences into something deathly— sometimes its language, sometimes its race, sometimes its religion, and sometimes just its long hair, and when there is just nothing then it is through papers and documents. I mean I could hold any passport in my hand— and this can decide so much about who I am allowed to be—it’s one of the most ridiculous and yet powerful ideas that organizes our world. You can’t really ignore it. But the passports you already have, and the passports you may acquire—well they, as a Borderlander you already know this, do not describe who you are. They are privileges, but as a Borderlander you know your country, the one you truly belong to, is not a nation-state with a passport—it is common ground; it is a way of sharing our world with others. You will meet others who are intuitively Borderlanders like yourself—you will spontaneously recognize each other as members of your tribe. Some will come and find refuge in the Borderland, while others will just want to become Borderlanders because this is where they belong. Welcome to all, O beautiful Borderlanders! A Stranger’s Right to Belonging For most of human history, moving people, the nomads, mystics, and traders, and those who settled into sedentary communities, birthing cities, coexisted in mutual interdependence, heaving and shaping old amorphous empires. But then the commons began to be enclosed, first in Europe and then elsewhere, turning land, trees, and the blades of grass into private property, and belonging the prerogative of the nation-state. But like “the right to have rights,” belonging cannot rest in a narrow conception of citizenship bestowed by the nation-state 117

alone. Hannah Arendt, as a philosopher-refugee fleeing the denationalizations of German Jews and the genocides that would follow, understood with acuity this new predicament of statelessness created by the nation-state: this was not just a crisis of rights (previously presumed to be inalienable), but also a profound crisis of belonging (previously presumed to be solved through assimilation, an impossible erasure of difference to achieve an impossible sameness).12 Statelessness as a condition is not simply an evisceration of rights (on which there has been considerable deliberation), but rather a simultaneous dereliction of the right to belong. You may have a passport, and yet belong nowhere. You may have an abode, and yet be homeless. It is because you rightly refuse the narrative arc of migration. Once ejected by one national construction which declared you an incommensurate difference, should you now assimilate in another national construction? The right to belonging is the right to refuse assimilation. It is the right to refuse assimilation on the terms of the nation-state synonymous with apartheid and partition. It is this right to belonging that Borderlanders as a reparative concept restores to us, by bringing back the other, the “foreigner,” the stranger, as our very own. In re-wilding the barbaric borderlands, Borderlanders refuse the violent arc of migration, and reclaim belonging as born of journeys, adventure, and encounters with the unknown, the unfamiliar, for we don’t know what it is we don’t know until this encounter takes place. Therefore, let me seed the idea of the “foreigner” as an ancient one, of the wanderer and the seeker who goes “out” to other lands, and arrives as a much sought-after “outsider,” and represents some kind of discovery, of difference, the yet unknown. Such a wanderer could be an intrepid boundary crosser, like tricksters of folklore, or an experimental practitioner of disobedience who defies the rules that subjugate, or someone with divine intimations of how to cohabit with the unknown and unknowable. It is time to undo the “foreigner” that was invented by decree of nationality laws, 118

and documentary regimes like passports, and which then required endless and expansive policing to find the elusive “foreigner,” now an “illegal alien.” What is terrifying about this invention is that it has required of us, in order to keep the “foreigner” out, to turn against ourselves, to make us fearful of strangeness. My fearless Borderlanders, that stranger, the “foreigner,” is that essential part of us that inaugurs all enquiry, that is necessary for all self-knowledge, and knowledge of the world we share with others, and that we must hold dear as we do our kin, as we make our tribe. Nomads and tribes are now regarded as ethnological curiosities to be studied as remnants of a “backward” past, but they once traversed borderlands with elaborate traditions of hospitality, for welcoming the stranger. By allowing such a stranger a resting abode in the home, inviting the stranger to share bread and stories, old and new forms of living together were shaped and reshaped, and passed on. As the old nomadic world is now a new nomadic world rife with checkpoints, highwire fences, detention camps, and border patrols that let boats full of people sink—of fiercely guarded apartheids and partitions of ethno-nationalisms—we as Borderlanders need to cultivate our own practices of hospitality, and forge our own genealogies that allow us to cohabit, share and protect, as a right to belonging together, to each other. So let me craft a genealogy with you, welcome my grandmother and namesake, and your great-grandmother, into our gathering of Borderlanders. Vazira Tawawala (1905–1960) sits with her elder sister, Safiya Furniturewala (1890–1966), in the doorway of the Souter Street house in Bombay where many family photographs were taken over her lifetime. It is said that on the night Ebrahim Tawawala had a heart attack, Vazira-bai did not send for a doctor; she sent for Safiya-bai, for together they weathered miscarriages and debts, rationing and the Congress and Muslim League rallies on Mohammad Ali Road, the distant world wars, and the long-awaited end of British colonial rule that separated their surviving children across two belliger-

ent nation-states. Anthonia Egger née Margreiter (1916–1980) was born to farmhands in Wörgl, Tirol in the midst of war and poverty as the pluriverse of the Austro-Hungarian empire crumbled to nationalisms, and by the time her younger sister Anna Egger née Margreiter (1922–2018) was born, Tirol was already divided into newly wrought Austria and Italy. The sisters in the photograph are so young and tender, for this was taken before the firestorms of Hitler and Mussolini’s wars into which they were drafted, and which Anna would recall as the years of such desperate hunger that she was unable to nurse her wailing newborn. The sisters survived, and married two “Italian” brothers from the other side, and Anna became a socialist and ran for local office. Safiya-bai and Vazira-bai, Anthonia and Anna held together their social and political worlds by continuously tending and repairing in the face of strife around them. Yet their stories are rarely histories, and their histories are never ever written together. What would it take to place them in a shared history of a world cleaved, in pieces? They did not know each other then, but are now known to each through the words I sow, and they would have understood each other’s extraordinary grief and ordinary triumphs. If their historic experiences overlap in the cartographic exercises of the twentieth century, if as women they bore children and with it had to shelter conditions for their survival, their ethnographic distinctness is as significant, as are the necessary misunderstandings. When strangers and refugees can belong, and when we can belong to each other again with all our differences, it will not be an end to strife. O Borderlanders, this is where our work begins: to braid and craft our own histories in between what has already been foretold, and to make preparations, seed and repair what we have yet—the open borderlands—to inherit.

NOTES: 1 The original version of this essay was written for my sons,

Kabir and Elyas, on the eve of their leaving home into a world of great strife. It was called “My Borderlanders: Notes on Coming of Age in the Age of Repair.” So this remains for them, and all the members of their tribe, for their age and ours. 2 Words attributed to Karl Marx as inscribed on his grave in

Highgate Cemetry, London, UK. 3 In “Wave of Materialism” and “Crisis of Authority” Antonio

Gramsci speaks of the old and the new, and his fears for the interim between them. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers, 1971, pp. 275–276. 4 Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/

Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review, vol. 3 no. 3, 2003, p.331 5 Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, Norwood: Norwood Press, The Atlantic Monthly, 1917, p. 60. 6 Stephan Eric Bronner (ed.), Letters of Rosa Luxemburg. Atlantic Highlands: Humanity Books, 1993. 7 Jorge Borges in “Del rigor en la ciencia,” (1946), https:// medium.com/@diego./borges-on-rigor-in-science-ba3cd98a40af. Accessed on July 15, 2021. 8 Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/

Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—An Argument.” CR: The New Centennial Review 3, no. 3 (2003): 257–337; Anghie, Antony. Imperialism, Sovereignty, and the Making of International Law. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005; Manela, Erez. The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007; Azoulay, Ariella, Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. New York: Verso, 2020. 9 Eley, Geoff, and Ronald Grigor Suny. Becoming National: A Reader. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996; Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali. The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007; Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, "Zarina’s ‘Dark Roads’: Exile, Statelessness and the Tenacity of Nostalgia," Third Text Online, November 28, 2018. http://www.thirdtext.org/zamindar-zarina; Clark, Bruce, Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006; Ophir, Adi, Michal Givoni, and Sãri Hanaf. The Power of Inclusive Exclusion: Anatomy of Israeli Rule in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. New York: Zone Books, 2009. 10 Bauman, Zygmunt, Modernity and the Holcaust. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2000. 11 Kimmerer, Robin. Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientifc Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2013, p. 61 writes that wild meadow sweetgrass grows long and fragrant when tended by humans. 12 Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968; Honig, Bonnie. Democracy and the Foreigner. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

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Repair on the Move Bec Barnett and Tristan Schultz

0pposite and all illustrations in essay Courtesy the author.

reparativ e t hink ing _alt er nativ e ways

This chapter explores the affordances of repair on the move, amidst the maelstrom of broken modern worlds. People across the globe are now more than ever having to adapt their lives in relation to the impacts of climate change. Some of these challenges include sea-level inundation, poisoned water sources from fossil fuel extraction, land degradation due to rising heat, and destructive agricultural practices.1 Although these issues are globally significant, wicked problems, this discussion centers primarily around an Australian context. In this geographical region, there is potential for adaptive repair practices to move with people relocating; while at the same time repair practices already exist within host communities and could be applied by those who are relocating within the country. Most importantly, there also exists an extensive and embedded ethics of care and repair within the tens of thousands of years of First Nations cultures in Australia. These communities, territories, and ontologies are, and should be understood as, an equitable weft in the weave of pluriversal2 futures. Repair is practiced all over the world. Examples include: jugaad in India; gambiarra in Brazil; kintsugi in Japan and repair cultures in Egypt and Angola.3 This chapter asserts that repair, practiced in culturally specific ways around the globe, is anti-capitalist, or as Elizabeth Spelman frames it,“the creative destruction of brokenness.”4 Put simply, actions of repair prevent things from becoming trash. This is an inherently radical act of creatively destroying Western modernity’s consumer-capital newness machine. Yet the process of repairing goes beyond the material. It encourages an understanding of how an object functions, thereby contesting the concealment of hidden processes and things. In this context, the aphorism “out of sight, out of mind” becomes invalid. As one goes about the disassembly, assembly, and repair of the object, the presence of that which is hidden builds empathy within the person undertaking the work, increasing their appreciation of the craft, labor, and technological ingenuity in things. In turn, the behavior that repair stimulates encourages a connection with others. When one repairs, one reflects on the cognitive mapping act of mending material things. In this act, cognitive pathways open up mental thoughts related to the mending of immaterial things, such as relationships. As K. Wilson explains, “There’s a connection between the way society treats material objects and the way it treats people.”5 Repair has been a focal topic of conversation for design scholars for at least the last decade. Our colleagues in the field include, but are not limited to, Alexandra Crosby, Jesse Adams Stein, Guy Keulemans, Markus Berger and Kate Irvin. During this time, businesses have been getting in on the act, with the retail industry prioritizing repair services as part of their overall model. Patagonia, Nudie Jeans, Mud Jeans, Taylor Stitch, Finisterre all offer repair services to their customers, including in Australia. Yet, between 2018 and 2019, the population 121

of some 25.5 million people collectively generated 76 million tonnes of waste, a 10% increase since 2016–2017.6 Manufacturing, construction, and households all contribute over 12 million tonnes each to this figure.7 Despite the work that has been done to-date, there is more to do.

Design Fictions, Repair, and Education Our design practice, Relative Creative, dedicates a large number of its projects to waste and repair initiatives, which center specifically around children’s education. In this context, the material ramifications of waste in the modern Western world are connected to cultures of newness and concealment, as well as a disassociation with the handmade and an ongoing lack of collective care. We work to trace and share, in practice-based settings, how these affordances manifest— what Naomi Klein describes as “broken infrastructures of care [in] … schools, hospitals, and elder care facilities”8 and as destructive forces on the natural environment. We illuminate how these affordances take place on unceded sovereign land, in denial of the violence enacted upon First Nations people. Design fictions are the predominant tool we deploy to encourage children and adults to creatively and expressively navigate their way out of these broken modern worlds.9 Six Repair Knowledge Transfer Gaps In this section, we explore repair, in the context of the challenges previously mentioned, through six frames. As Schultz has articulated previously: two of these knowledge acquisitions are not present in a host geography in stasis:10 1. People with repair skills are relocating from their geography (moving adaptive repair transferrers); 2. People are deliberately unshackling from centers of oppressive power and/or climate constriction through a departure from their geography (moving adaptive repair amplifiers), creating further opportunity for host geographies to draw on their situated cultures of repair; 3. People are elevating perceptual aptitude for identifying new innovative bricolage and repair (adaptive repair preppers); 4. People are making do with the ruins of modernity/coloniality, inculcating cultures of repair (hosting adaptive repair bricoleurs); 5. People are coming to terms with the precarity of their stasis and, in a prefigurative decolonizing act, are in the early stages of bringing forth new perceptual aptitudes for exploring innovative bricolage and repair (hosting mitigative repair decolonisers); and, perhaps most significantly, 6. Non-sedentary culture is still, and has been, existing for many thousands of years, whose localized movements are bound with an ethics of care and repair (hosting cultures of ontological repair). A series of case studies are explored through these frames, supplemented with experimental design fictions. These near-future scenarios highlight “repair knowledge transfer gaps” and reveal how they may be considered as leverage points with the potential to nudge pluriversal worlds towards futures of sustainment.11 We draw these framings of repair into narratives of potential futures in order to draw attention to the ways that repair could be embedded in everyday life, as people navigate the climate crisis. These framings are explored for the opportunities they provide, with the intention of thinking about repair as a potentially decolonizing political act that mitigates the violence of coloniality. In this spirit, we encourage the following design fictions to be adapted and utilized by readers for their own participatory means.

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1 Moving Adaptive Repair Transferrers Over the coming decades people will increasingly move out of the way of the changing climate, taking with them potentially futuring repair skills.12 Opportunities for repair will arise from the mass-movement of climate refugees.13 People with repair skills are likely to move to locations where repair practices are not commonplace, providing opportunity for them to share their skills. The transfer of these repair skills may contribute to the creation of kinder, more caring communities. 14 In this narrative we explore how Hassan transfers the skill of white goods repair as he relocates from Cairo, Egypt, to Melbourne, Australia.

Hassan walks through the back door of his grandfather’s repair shop one last time. He takes a quiet moment in what has been a busy month of wrapping up his life in Cairo and getting ready to leave the city. He steps into the quiet shop, not yet open in the early hours. He can smell the freshly brewing coffee at the café across the alleyway, as the city slowly rises from sleep. The shop, tiny and crowded, is filled with parts to repair. He hears his father leave to begin his collection of rubabikya—to source unwanted appliances and electronics that he will bring back to the shop for repair. The shop is full of spare parts, white goods under repair, electrical wiring and tools that are needed to take everything apart. His grandfather always said, “if something can be fixed, we fix it, even if something new can be bought.” His father would finish the day at the Souq al-Gomaa, the Friday market in the City of the Dead, but for the first time in over a decade Hassan would not be joining. Instead, he would be leaving behind the rising waters of the Nile, the rising cost of food (due to climate-damaged crops) and the growing risk of water scarcity. He would seek a new life, taking his repair skills and his eye for repairable white goods with him. When Hassan arrives in Melbourne, a modern world of culture and comfort, cleanliness and whiteness pervades everyday life.15 Hassan transfers his skills to this new geography by creating a small business—a mobile white goods repair service that doubles as a coffee cart. Hassan works to normalize repair in his new home by presenting his work as a social experience for his customers.

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2 Moving Adaptive Repair Amplifiers The climate crisis is forcing people to move out of the way of, in this instance, rising sea levels. In this narrative we explore how Edna may inculcate a culture of celebrating repair in a new geography.

Edna wraps up her speech, to the applause of the crowd. Looking around the room she sees the other festival hosts, tired but happy. It has been a big week: The Pacific Festival of Repair. Edna relocated to Queensland, Australia a decade ago, leaving behind her sinking island home. Thanks to The Pacific Australian Climate, Culture and Unsettlement Program (PACCUP), she did not have to leave behind her culture. The speech she has just delivered details the last decade of her life in Queensland, setting out ways for climate refugees to start a new life without losing or avoiding their native culture, and also understanding how it could enhance the culture within their host country. Edna remembers her first journey from Honiara to Saibai, the first stop of her relocation. Arriving there, Edna lived at the local PACCUP Hub. The Hub allows residents to learn skills from those originating from other countries, such as how to grow produce and cooking techniques, alongside the culture of local Torres Strait Islander people. Edna relayed to others her experiences of moving to another country, highlighting how achievable it is to continue drawing from local and personal cultures from home, whilst embedding them into new traditions. Edna’s next move was to the mainland, where she continued to experiment with urban agriculture and alternative living practices that are adaptive to harsh environments. Over the last five years, she has been sharing this knowledge with the local community. In doing so, Edna has helped her host community to learn practices of bricolage and repair, which have transformed their ability to deal with the changing environment. This has enabled Edna to maintain many of her own cultural practices, adapting them as necessary. 3 Adaptive Repair Preppers Under the surface of the broken modern Western world there is a movement of people who recognize that we need to reduce our impact on the environment both in terms of waste creation and depletion of the natural environment. This can be detected through the presence of repair cafés and tool libraries, as well 124

as the growing reliance on DIY and tinkering. These practices seek to normalize repair, making it accessible whilst also using it to create an ethical framework for daily living. Repair communities are the forerunners of the repair and bricolage cultures that are confronting an uncertain future. In coming to terms with this precarity, such communities are bringing forth new perceptual aptitudes for exploring innovative bricolage and repair.

Marlee helps River lift pieces of furniture one by one off the cart, redirected from the council’s recovery center. These larger loads are becoming rarer now as customers have become used to returning their furniture for repair, adaptation, or resale. Three months into her apprenticeship, Marlee is getting better at identifying what pieces might work together and how to approach the repair process. River, a journeyman, further along in his journey to becoming a craftsperson, guides these decisions. They consult with a designer and a member of the repair hub’s platforming team, who are preparing for further adaptation processes that will be required as the climate crisis worsens. Noticing an armchair that has a similar style to a two-seater which has not yet had its top cover put on, Marlee discusses the possibility of making the two pieces into a suite that can be hired. This kind of initiative within the workshop is becoming a popular option, allowing people to return furniture when their circumstances change. The workshop also offers a delivery and pick-up service, making hire and return easy. Working closely with River, Marlee begins to take the chair apart. One of the woodworkers will adapt the frame so that it can be packed smaller, becoming easier to move. As resource scarcity has transformed supply chains, communities have begun to understand that when fire or storm surges cause damage, furniture needs to be easy to store or move out of the way, to avoid further losses. Under the watchful eye of her master craftswoman, Marlee reupholsters the armchair. Once the top cover has been fixed in place, a small patch of the original fabric is sewn on. This serves as a reminder of the chair’s previous life, prompting the next owner to consider the importance and value of repair. The chair is placed in the workshop’s retail space alongside the matching two-seater.16

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4 Hosting Adaptive Repair Bricoleurs The French term bricolage became the subject of theoretical development in anthropological theory in the 1960s, largely driven by the work of Claude LéviStrauss. The concept cannot be translated directly in English but involves using “the means at hand” in the creation of something new and necessary through adapting, cannibalizing, and mixing existing things. Practiced to varying levels in the West until the early twentieth century, the presence of bricolage waned with the development of consumer culture, as discussed by Susan Strasser in her 1999 book Waste and Want. Bricolage became prominent in Australia, often imposed through the colonization of Aboriginal cultures across the country.17 Aboriginal bricoleurs are border thinkers, able to juxtapose forms from the broken modern world with their own worldviews. In this narrative, bricolage provides a starting point for considering how the detritus of modernity/coloniality might be used to adapt to our new environments. Figure: Hosting adaptive repair bricoleurs

As she rides over the hot dusty ground on the tray of an old Holden ute, back from when they were still made here, Saffy scours the horizon line. She’s traveling through this piece of stolen land, looking for scraps left behind on the exodus out of this drought-ravaged country, collecting the remains of the materialism that once existed here; a different type of materialism to what existed in the bigger cities, but nonetheless an easy pool of resources to collect. Saffy has a list of things to prioritize running through her head. Some things were infinitely more useful. Older cars, bicycles, and machinery that lent themselves to repair were prioritized. All metal was to be salvaged, separated into parts and scrap. Any metal that couldn’t be used in its current form was scrapped, remade to serve a new function. Wood was taken for building repair, retrofitting, and, when necessary, building something new. White goods were collected for repair and retrofitting. If they were beyond this, they would be turned into scrap, with the precious metals inside them recovered where possible. Clothing and fabric were collected for repair or recycling. Everything would be repaired, recycled, or bricolaged with other items to make something new. The people who lived here have moved due to the extreme heat, towards the bigger towns and cities, and the coastline. Failed farms and the death of the mining industry mean that swathes of the population became climate refugees in their own country. Property was abandoned as people fled extreme heat, bushfires, and dust storms. As well as keeping an eye out for promising properties along the old highway to the north and out to the horizon line, Saffy and her team keep an eye out for takers. Saffy sees herself as a bricoleur, only taking what is left 126

behind by these broken worlds. In contrast, the “takers” indiscriminately intimidate others for scrap material for their own bricolage; these armed groups of scavengers roam the lands taking what they see as rightfully theirs, contradicting their own post-truth, post-ownership world. Saffy hits the roof of the cab. “Out West,” she shouts, a glint of something metal catching her eye. The ute lurched down the next dust road towards the detritus of modernity/coloniality. 5 Hosting Mitigative Repair Decolonizers David Bowman explores the potential of the Gaians—those who come out the other side of the Anthropocene—to make “their life’s work, their cultural work, about ecological restoration … Everything will be about restoration.”18 It is arguable that Gaians are already living among us. Bruce Pascoe, author of Dark Emu, has established Black Duck Foods to bring First Nations’ food knowledge back to life. The team at Black Duck are planting and cultivating a variety of native foods for production, exploring how Indigenous knowledge can repair a broken food system. Pascoe’s vision is “to explore the Old People’s knowledge and to share it with wider Australia for social, nutritional, and environmental purposes. This work is my obligation. I do it because it’s the Lore.”19 In this narrative, mitigative repair becomes a decolonizing political act of mitigating the violence of coloniality, thereby ontologically designing redirective futures at a civilizational scale.

Illuka carries the tray of seedlings carefully to the area that is being replanted. His hands, shoes, and clothes are sprinkled in a light layer of the local dirt. He is helping to replant the most recently returned land, preparing it to become a Lifezone. Lifezones dot the east coast, providing a buffer between the fire-ravaged west and the rising sea levels of the east, which cause extensive flooding in the cities and towns built along rivers and over marshland. These areas have been returned to Traditional Owners and reparations have been paid to support the recovery of the land. Today Illuka and his team are planting mandadyan nalluk (Yuin for what is known as “dancing grass”), a native plant that will be harvested in a few months’ time. Drawing on the knowledge of his ancestors and the work of the Confederacy of Clans,20 Illuka’s work in the Lifezone helps to grow food using less land, water, and resources. In the giving back of the land and the practice of traditional knowledge, the local food system is rapidly decolonizing. Once the land has been sufficiently generated, the Elders will meet to decide on the future of the land. Some of the southern Lifezones, as well as acting as agricultural hubs and wildlife corridors, have 127

begun the process of turning into emergency shelters for those affected by the climate crisis. In this way, these shelters also act as knowledge centers for sharing culture. 6 Hosting Cultures of Ontological Repair Futuring is often thought of as the relational pattern that binds knowledge of all “things” within Indigenous lives, communities, territories and ontologies. This should not be subordinate to the needs and satisfiers of people adapting to broken worlds on the move, or of their own enmeshed border communities, or settler-states practicing bricolage with the warped remains of modernity/coloniality. First Nations’ lives, communities, territories, and ontologies are an equitable weft in the weave of pluriversal futures, too. Non-sedentary cultures have existed for many thousands of years across the globe, their localized movements already bound within an ethics of care and repair (cultures of repair). This is explored from an Aboriginal context in the following narrative.

Maliyan, a Gamilaraay man, has been noticing patterns emerging and novel autonomous systems assembling across his Country. It is a certain kind of Country-agency mitigating violating acts of the broken modern world by moderating human agency on that part of Country. He has seen that the grass is now tougher to chew, the soil less likely to retain water, and, generally, the land is now less livable for the settler-colony he shares the Country with. The intelligent Country is speaking. It utters: “time for humans to go, time for me to repair.” Maliyan looks around; he sees waste and decay and thinks, it’s no wonder Country-agency speaks. She is a natural system far greater than human-agency and in her expression of eviction, she is simultaneously expressing ontological design-patterns for being in the world reconceived as within natural systems. Maliyan can see this visual philosophy playing out on an episodic scale on his Country. He knows it’s time to design this visual philosophy into a form that others can see, too. He gathers the settler-colony, his town, in a circle and says, “we are going to have a visual dialogue.” He knows Country-agency patterns will emerge. After hours of respectful dialogue, sitting together in a circle, with each settler-colonist visually inscribing their thoughts on cards and placing them in the middle, a shared consciousness emerges. The autopoetic assemblage of all the cards creates the conditions in which all members agree that there is an image on the floor within the circle, made from the silhouette form of all the cards. Country-agency throws up a form of a river, with one card blocking what everyone agrees is the north of their 128

town. A member turns over the card. On the bottom of the card, where all participants were invited to write whatever they liked, one word is written there: repair. From the group’s perspective, this one potent word means just one thing: it is time that they faced up to repairing the bioregion of their town’s river inlet, so that the rest of the biosphere downstream can repair. Some take it as coincidental, or kind of whimsical. Nonetheless, this important sign cannot be escaped. The ecology of minds in the room is such that the message, the vision, cannot be ignored. Maliyan on the other hand knows that “the outcome … [in this case, the imperative to repair the river inlet] … is not magic and special; it is simply inherent to the structure that a visual and relational outcome will emerge from a visual and relational process in a way that reveals a visual and relational world.”21 Maliyan knows that Country-agency spoke, and that she said “repair.” NOTES: 1 J. Campbell and O. Warrick, Climate Change and Migration

past and present.

Issues in the Pacifc (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacifc, 2014).

10 Tristan Schultz, “Design’s Role in Transitioning to Futures of Cultures of Repair.” In Research into Design for Communities (Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, 2017).

2 The notion of the pluriverse (“a world where many worlds

ft”) is drawn from the Zapatista and formed through decolonial theory. Work by Arturo Escobar and Walter Mignolo provide useful starting points. 3 These practices are explored by various authors, including:

Thomas Birtchnell, Jugaad as Systemic Risk and Disruptive Innovation in India (Contemporary South Asia, 2011), 19(4): 357–372; Felipe Fonseca, Gambiarra: Repair culture (Makery, 2015); Michael Meade, Golden Repair of the Cracks in the World (Huffpost, 2015); Arwa Aburawa, Cairo’s Fixers: Repairers That Are Helping Heal the Planet (Green Prophet, 2011); Helder Pereire and Coral Gillett, “Africa: Designing and Existence” in Design in the Borderlands, ed. Eleni Kalantidou and Tony Fry (Routledge, 2014). 4 Elizabeth V. Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a

Fragile World (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002). 5 Katherine Wilson, Mending Hearts: How a “repair economy” creates a kinder, more caring community (The Conversation, 2019). 6 Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2020, Waste Account, Australia, Experimental Estimates, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/environment/ environmental-management/waste-account-australia-experimental-estimates/latest-release. 7 Ibid 8 Naomi Klein, A Message from the Future II: The years of repair

(The Intercept, 2020). 9 Design fctions provide a useful tool to begin creating a new

narrative about the sort of future we want as well as some of the means to begin getting there. They provide the ability to “put on stage” possible futures, stimulating democratic and productive discussion between various social actors concerning desired futures (Ezio Manzini and François Jegou 2013). Design fctions can and do draw inspiration from the

11 Sustainment is a term coined by design philosopher Tony Fry to describe a project that goes beyond sustainability and acts as the counterforce of defuturing (the taking away of futures). 12 Futuring refers to actions that help to create futures; it’s opposite—defuturing—refers to actions that take futures away. 13 Abrahm Lustgarten, The Great Climate Migration (New York Times, 2020). 14 Katherine Wilson, Mending Hearts: How a “repair economy” creates a kinder, more caring community (The Conversation, 2019). 15 For more on the culture of comfort, cleanliness, and

convenience see Elizabeth Shove’s book Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience, 2003. 16 This narrative has been adapted slightly from Bec Barnett’s 2014 Master’s Honours thesis Retroftting Furniture; Rethinking Waste. 17 Krim Benterrrak, Stephen Muecke, and Paddy Roe, Reading the Country (Freemantle Arts Centre Press, 1996), p. 169. 18 Jo Chandler, “Weekend in Gondwana,” Living with the Anthropocene, ed. Kirsten Wehner, Jenny Newell, and Cameron Muir (NewSouth Publishing, 2020), p. 69. 19 Gemma Pol, Farming for Our Future (Roaring Journals, 2020). 20 Ibid. 21 Norman Sheehan, Indigenous Knowledge and Respectful Design: An Evidence-Based Approach (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2011), pp. 68–80.

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Grandmother's mended beoseon.

My Grandmother’s Mended Socks:

Layered Design Thinking and Durability Christina Kim

When I’m hand-stitching alone, I go through many stories in my head. The movement of hand and needle conjures memories. Muscle memory leads to reflection. And it all goes back to my grandmother’s teachings that in turn bring my attention back to my stitching today and the way that I make for the future. When I came to the United States from Korea, I was only allowed to bring a small suitcase that held just a few things. Among the possessions I chose to bring with me were my grandmother’s mended beoseon (socks). They stood for the time we spent together, just the two of us, one stitching and the other one in the kitchen. My grandmother was the one who taught me how to sew. From when I was five or six, I had a tutor every afternoon after school, and sometimes when my tutor didn’t come my grandmother would set up a beautiful lacquered table inlaid with abalone shell, and she would sit with me on the floor. I would do my homework, and she either studied with me or she sat and mended her socks. I tended to wish I was stitching rather than doing homework, so sometimes I’d tease, “Grandma, why don’t you do my homework and I will mend your beoseon?” In the 1960s, when I was young and living in Korea, hand-spinning and hand-weaving were a big part of everyday life; everything we used was hand-spun and hand-loomed, including our sheets. Every year, my grandmother would go to the market and buy bolts of really narrow, hand-woven cotton fabrics and bring them home. Before sewing

the narrow pieces together to make bedding, she would wash them, hang them to dry, and then spray them with starch and fold them in a particular way. We would then iron them in a process called dadeumi: on a piece of marble or a thick wooden board, we’d beat the textiles with two wooden sticks. My grandmother and I would often do that together. She would give me a small marble stone and two sticks, and we would sit opposite each other and beat. It was almost like a call and response. When you got into bed on the first day, it felt so smooth, almost like you were going into an ice rink. You could feel how much energy went into making it like that, not to mention the hours required to stitch the sheets onto the thicker futon. I now realize that a lot of the stitching that I’m doing right now is coming from hand-stitching sheets Women ironing by beating with sticks (dadeumi), 1910s. Korea.

0pposite Grandmother’s mended beoseon. Photo courtesy the author.

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Liquid2solid, 2021. Christina Kim. Installation view, Mingei Museum, San Diego. 132

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Pojagi, twentieth century.

0pposite Tiny Bubbles (detail), 2020; Kaya (‘mosquito net’) (detail), 2020; Liquid2solid (detail), 2021. Christina Kim.

for our bedding that I learned from my grandmother. When she washed the sheets, my grandmother would keep an eye out for sections that were worn and thin. She would mend these areas by unstitching the seams and sewing on newer fabric. She’d then put the worn-out sections aside, piling them together and wrapping them in a pojagi, saving them for another use to come. When she needed new beoseon, she would take me to the outdoor market called Namdaemun (South Gate) Market. There we would head to a group of women sitting on a kind of hand-woven basket-like floor, and they’d bring incredibly fine hand-spun, hand-loomed cottons for her to inspect and buy to use for her socks. Beoseon are double-layered: she made the outer layers from fresh fabric that she had just purchased; and for the inside, she would use the saved wornout bedding cotton. And when she cut the new cotton fabric for her socks, she would save the leftover scraps. She would also put an extra layer of fabric on the outside of her socks for strength and to guard against wear and tear. These stories and memories are my North Star for how I work today. They have guided me to understand and honor natural resources. My grandmother would save everything, and I am sure it’s not just my 134

grandmother but many of those who grew up in her generation. She would organize and sort the scraps, separating them into piles according to whether they were big, medium, small, new, or used. This is how she lived her life: structuring the way she used resources with elegance, grace, and efficiency. This is what I call layered thinking. And now I utilize all the ways she thought about structuring and organizing in the recycling projects at my clothing label dosa and in my art installations. As I make, I’m already thinking about recycling and the next generation of making. That’s in me from my grandmother. That’s who I am. In light of the dire environmental issues we’re facing right now, I think about repair in terms of durability. If we build the potential for long life into the design of everything that we create, then we will ultimately use far fewer resources, as well as create less waste. Designing with durability in mind is a form of repair. It’s reparative thinking and doing. It may not always immediately involve physical repair, but it’s repair writ large. You can create durability by repairing, and you can try to get a step ahead and make things that are durable to begin with. Perhaps what I’ve learned most from my grandmother is layered thinking that both leads to and signifies durability.

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Is Business Beyond Repair?

Business is undoubtedly a significant contributor to environmental degradation and social inequity. Given the fundamental conflict between notions of profitability and social responsibility, how can business possibly be reparative? If we are to address the urgent demands of the climate emergency, an exploration of this paradox is imperative. Such a study will bring together multiple and opposing views and expectations, stitching together self-interest and selflessness.1 This chapter will explore how business activities built on Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) strategies can provide a path towards urgently needed reparative practices.2 ESG investment strategies are an evolving set of criteria that evaluates the quality of a company, specifically its ability to comprehend the value of sustainability and any concomitant risks to the success of the overall company. Potential ESG investors will study a company well beyond its financial reporting. They evaluate its environmental impact to ascertain if steps are being taken to actively reduce their carbon footprint and hazardous waste output, and whether renewable energy or energy efficiency is being

0pposite View of Barbara Owen’s studio. Photo courtesy the artist.

considered as part of a company’s response to climate change issues. Potential investors also analyze social dimensions with regard to equal opportunity, commitment to diversity, and community engagement, along with other factors such as ethical sourcing, human rights awareness, and safety issues. The government aspect measures internal governance, structure, and performance, such as the selection and organization of board and senior management teams, corporate policies on human capital, shareholder influence, executive compensation, and anti-corruption policies and practices. Every business is inter-networked with environmental, social, and internal governance solutions and risks. In essence, ESG investing necessitates a holistic consideration of an organization’s social life-world, including its human and natural resources, as well as its shareholders and stakeholders. The Covid-19 pandemic has amplified calls for a great reset in the name of social equity and environmental care. In this chapter, I examine the fundamental conflict between notions of profitability and social responsibility.3 ESG strategies suggest a way beyond this paradox through socially responsible investing and financial decision-making. Sociologist Max Weber argued that capitalism was born from the Protestant ethic of hard work and the accumulation of 137

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wealth from labor, which would guard against damnation. Similarly, the Catholic practice of morality-based investing ties profit to salvation. Conversely, in Islam, the principle of usury contends that one is not allowed to unjustly profit from lending money or receiving money. Likewise in Judaism, the concept of tzedekah contends that justice is arrived at through the preservation of equality within the community. The link between capitalism and religion,4 with its inherent tension between the rational calculation of profit and belief in a higher moral order,5 can be detected in ESG investing with so-called “sin” stocks pitted against socially responsible or “saintly” investing.6 This approach to sustainable development (SD) as defined by the Brundtland Report7 suggests a peace deal between profit and responsibility. In this sense, ESG is neither the dogma of socialism nor rampant capitalism, but an economics of transformation within a rapidly growing socio-economic network of change. As Andrew Hoffman writes: “Business is responsible for producing the buildings we live and work in, the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the automobiles we drive. The energy that propels them, and the next form of mobility that will replace them. This does not mean that only business can generate solutions. But with its unmatched powers of ideation, production, and distribution, business is best positioned to bring the change we need and the scale we need it.”8 Businesses and their operations are tightly intermingled with networks that either help or hinder the pursuit of SD. This unfolding process continuously demands further development of corporate business practices.9 SD has become its own field of study that is quickly evolving to embrace multiplying layers of actors, namely consumers, non-profit organizations, civil society organizations, intergovernmental agencies, social movements and commercial strategies. Such multi-stakeholder participation requires multi-track approaches10 and heterodox economic thinking,11 both of which are fundamentally shifting business practices away from the simple economics of supply and demand, and instead towards a 138

state of awareness regarding external threats and drivers. Bruno Latour’s actor network theory (ANT) helps us to comprehend these multiplying factors, whether investments and economics, or forces that accelerate climate change.12 Added to this, we must also consider managerial, relational, structural, and ontological decision-making.13 Latour’s ANT allows us to consider the holes or spaces that exist between the evolving networks, including unforeseen externalities relating to financial, social, and environmental costs. Such externalities are not always accounted for in these networks, yet they are component parts of SD structures; for instance, unanticipated costs arising from greenhouse gas emissions.14 As Boze et al. write, externalities are the “cost of a commercial activity that is not incorporated in the cost of the goods or services provided and is borne by third parties.”15 In this case, greenhouse gas emissions carry much larger consequences, impacting society at large. ESG investing surveys the tension between profitability and responsibility by factoring potential externalities into business considerations. This means that the focus is on long-term sustainable investments, rather than short-term gains. If executed with care, this approach can lead to a number of positive outcomes, such as successful management of people and reaching climate change goals. This in turn leads to further opportunities relating to renewable energy, healthcare, housing, diversity, and pay equity. Recent reports from Goldman Sachs, General Motors, and Walmart offer a new picture of action and awareness.16 For example, in an effort to enhance its social ESG rating, Walmart set about restricting a range of assault rifle and ammunition sales, to the surprise of many.17 This change in business practice was spurred on by the work of John

0pposite Dark to Light, 2020. Barbara Owen. Photo courtesy the artist.

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Streur, CEO of Calvert Research and Management, whose work in socially responsible investment includes launching a mutual fund that avoided investing in companies that operated in apartheid-era South Africa.18 Streur encouraged Walmart to make this change, in order to increase their ESG rating. Under his leadership, Calvert Research and Management has intensified its efforts to address the issue of systemic racism within the business sector: “Ending racism in America is a responsibility of corporations, and corporations must recognize that their current efforts to promote their core values, and their diversity and inclusion programs, fall far short of what is needed today … Let us be clear. This is an ESG problem.”19 If business is to be credited with contributing to economic growth and the creation of jobs, as well as providing access to education and healthcare, then it must also dig deeper into the very society within which it is incorporated. To complete this ambitious undertaking, major corporations need to fully understand their complicity in perpetuating systems that work against a more equitable and environmental society. Externalities are not just the unforeseen costs of pollution, geo-political tensions, or water scarcity, but also the residual inequalities and harm caused by violent political conflicts, environmental colonialism, and structural racism—issues that are never factored into the bottom line. Many popular economists will persuasively contend that rapid economic growth, rather than stagnation, is key to effecting political and social democratic governance. For example, Benjamin Friedman argues that economic momentum leads economic growth, which is intimately tied to better living standards, and increased productivity.20 This creates the conditions for more tolerance and openness, encouraging sociopolitical progress. According to this logic, continuous prosperity and the pursuit of happiness lie in the construction of a future utopia maintained by unswerving production and economic growth. Can we continue with this pursuit without con140

sidering internal repair at the corporate level, or the concomitant effect of externalities such as rapacious climate change and environmental degradation? Herein lies the problem. The pursuit of happiness becomes an engagement with cost benefit analysis and the habitual cognitive biases that guide this decision-making.21 Economists habitually frame social and environmental costs as marginal, otherwise as externalities.22 As a contributor of destructive externalities, the business community is uniquely placed and morally bound to face these complex challenges that they have little or no training for. To meet these needs, business practices, and those who carry them out, must evolve to be inclusive of the environment, and the civil society within which they operate.23 This requires decision-makers to mediate an increasingly complex interactant field.24 Business leaders must consider taxing issues and strategies far beyond their training and experience. While once they were beholden to their shareholders, they must now also attend to issues relating to (growing) income inequality and environmental degradation, amongst others. Business leaders also need to be trained to manage a range of increasingly complex challenges, such as disclosure. Such training would require business schools to re-envision their curriculums to include cultural competency, conflict resolution, and critical race theory. This would allow the emerging challenges of an interactant ESG landscape to be properly managed, whilst decision-making would be practiced that prioritizes internal corporate repair—crucial to ESG strategies. In 2018, BlackRock, the world’s largest fund manager, supported less than 10% of climate-related shareholder proposals.25 Two years later, BlackRock had reallocated capital toward ESG investments. In a letter to his shareholders, CEO Larry Fink wrote that “climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects. .... In the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant reallocation of capital.”26 As their website reports, “the firm delivered on its goal of having 100% of

our approximately 5,600 active and advisory BlackRock strategies ESG integrated – covering U.S. $2.7 trillion in assets. BlackRock introduced 93 new sustainable solutions in 2020, helping clients allocate U.S. $39 billion to sustainable investment strategies, which helped increase our sustainable assets by 41% from December 31, 2019.”27 This ESG shift marks an about-turn that has a direct bearing on social relations and political will, and which will affect economic growth. As recently as 2019, BlackRock, like most fund managers, used to help companies defeat environmentally friendly proposals in the name of shareholder margin. Now the fundamental risks to their assets stem from irreversible climate change, meaning that investing in SD is a matter of survival. One can argue that reallocating capital, away from fossil fuels and toward SD, marks a paradigm shift toward the possibilities of what Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung described as “positive peace”—a condition where further violence is untenable.28 Galtung viewed peace and conflict as a triangular and integrated process in which structures, attitudes, and behavior are constantly remaking, repairing and interacting with one another. We have driven our climate crisis to a tipping point in which survival is a question of practical decision-making and further destruction is simply unfeasible. This type of shift has spurred decisive commitments on the international stage, including Denmark proclaiming the end of the “fossil era” and President Joe Biden re-committing the USA to its pledge to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, placing climate change at the center of US policy.29 These are just some of the steps towards remaking capital markets, galvanizing political will-power, and igniting behavioral changes—all motivating factors for today’s leaders as they attempt to manage the social, economic and political impacts of environmental degradation.30 Through ESG strategies, business can help chart a course where nation-states can work together toward SD, instead of simply preparing their militaries for the climate conflicts of the future.31

Can ESG strategies engage in reparative work by highlighting the unforeseen externalities of business and by turning the spotlight on the harmful blind spots inherent within business decision-making and practice? As stakeholders become aware of their influence, they add momentum to the ESG entrepreneurial cycle. Many environmental and commerce groups around the world are forging coalitions to help disclose information, audit major corporations and make space for SD and knowledge sharing.32 The more we are able to directly quantify and address the non-marginal costs of self-interest, and the unintended consequences of externalities, the greater opportunities there are for SD and reparative business practices. Those who refuse to believe in the climate emergency and the need for new business models will ultimately benefit from the work carried out by others. Businesses must prepare for the impact of climate-related setbacks, including an increase in the severity, frequency, and distribution of natural disasters, as well as the issue of mass migration and the probability of resource wars.33 Integrating and creating a more equitable, consequential, and responsible distribution of knowledge and resources benefits everyone. While the point seems obvious and is one that most CEOs can accept, adopting new practices can seem like an insurmountable hurdle. Education and support are crucial. Organizations like Ceres are working with CEOs to strengthen business practices in line with the goals of SD.34 Employing ESG strategies, they speak the language of the CEO and build greater awareness of anomalies in social, environmental, political and economic systems. A financial case for SD is established by designing solutions to climate change that are relayed through an economic framework. As a discipline, economics favors self-interest. It fundamentally relies on the precondition of personal advantage in and through a system of production. As production expands so do the possibilities of personal gain not just for the individual but for society at large. As the Scottish economist Adam Smith 141

argued in the eighteenth century, individuals acting in self-interest produce personal gain that can appear to have prosperous consequences beyond the individual and benefit society at large.35 However, externalities reveal to us that over time such benefits also come with a significant shared cost. While we cannot abandon economics altogether, we can acknowledge and embrace the inherent tension between profit and responsibility by creating new patterns and modes of being that exist between, in and around these two objectives. Self-interest might manifest in the pursuit of happiness through hard work and profit,36 social justice, religion, economic equilibrium, habit, or post-colonial economic engineering. Whatever its form, self-interest has created a world in which the supply and demand system has accelerated, creating disastrous externalities that put every pursuit at risk. To pull ourselves back from the brink to a path of “positive peace,” businesses must account for their positionality and the full impact of the multi-verse of self-interested behavior. We must recalibrate all practices to quantify rather than write off climate change and its imminent, even present destruction. ESG investing offers one path towards a networked and integrated approach to tackling the seemingly intractable conflict between personal profit and planetary existence. As such, ESG strategies then become part of a deeper expanding network of economic transformation on track for the conditions necessary for a more sustainable world.

NOTES: 1 Goran Calic, Sebastien Hélie, Nick Bontis and Elaine Mosa-

kowski, “Creativity from paradoxical experience: A theory of how individuals achieve creativity while adopting paradoxical frames,” Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 23, No. 3 (2019): 397–418. 2 Brandon Boze, Margarita Krivitski, David F. Larcker, Brian

Tayan, and Eva Zlotnicka, “The Business Case for ESG“ (May 23, 2019). Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University Closer Look Series: Topics, Issues and Controversies in Corporate Governance, No. CGRP-77. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3393082. 3 Milton Friedman, “The social responsibility of business is to

increase its profts.” In Corporate Ethics and Corporate Governance (Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 2007): 173–178. 4 Max Weber; Peter R. Baehr and Gordon C. Wells, The

Protestant ethic and the “spirit” of capitalism and other writings (New York: Penguin, 2002). 5 Steve Schueth, “Socially responsible investing in the United States,” Journal of Business Ethics, Vol. 43, No. 3 (2003): 189–194. 6 David Blitz, and Frank J. Fabozzi, “Sin stocks revisited: Resolving the sin stock anomaly,” The Journal of Portfolio Management, Vol. 44, No. 1 (2017): 105–111. 7 As stated by the Brundtland Report, “…development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs,” World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future (Oxford and New University Press, 1987). 8 Andrew John Hoffman, “The next phase of business

sustainability,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Vol. 16, No. 2 (2018): 34–39. 9 Hoffman, Ibid. 4-5. 10 Louise Diamond and John W. McDonald, Multi-track Diplomacy: A Systems Approach to Peace (Washington, DC: Kumarian Press, 1996): 182. 11 Timothy J. Foxon, Jonathan Köhler, Jonathan Michie, and Christine Oughton, “Towards a new complexity economics for sustainability,” Cambridge Journal of Economics, Vol. 37, No. 1 (2013): 187–208. 12 For actant theory see Latour, Bruno, “On recalling ANT,” The Sociological Review, Vol. 47, No. 1_ suppl (1999): 15–25. 13 Latour, Bruno, “Network theory, networks, societies, spheres: Refections of an actor-network theorist,” International Journal of Communication, Vol. 5 (2011): 15. 14 Nicholas H. Stern, Siobhan Peters, Vicki Bakhshi, Alex Bowen, Catherine Cameron, Sebastian Catovsky, Diane Crane, et al., Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change, Vol. 30 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 25. 15 Boze et al., op cit. 4. 16 Goldman Sachs, “The Goldman Sachs 2020 Sustainability Report,” https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-commitments/sustainability/sustainable-fnance/documents/ reports/2020-sustainability-report.pdf?source=website (accessed June 1, 2021); General Motors, “The General Motors 2020 Sustainability Report,” https://www.gmsustainability. com (accessed June 1, 2021); Walmart, “Using Our Strengths

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to Make a Difference,” https://corporate.walmart.com/global-responsibility (accessed June 1, 2021).

tal relations and international organizations,” World Pol., Vol. 27 (1974): 39.

17 Clare Curran, “Walmart and Guns: A Case Study in Modern Corporate Governance,” Colum. Bus. L. Rev. (2020): 1071.

31 Lee-Anne Broadhead, “Environmental Insecurity: Another Case for Concept Change,” Peace and Confict Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1 (2019): 1.

18 Environmental Finance, “Personality of the Year: John Streur,” https://www.environmental-fnance.com/content/ awards/impact-awards-2020/personality-of-the-year-johnstreur.html (accessed May 22, 2021). 19 John Streur, “Ending Racism in America is a Responsibility of Corporations,” Investment News, June 2, 2020, https:// www.investmentnews.com/ending-racism-in-america-is-a-responsibility-of-corporations-193551#:~:text=As%20 CEO%20of%20Calvert%20and,by%20corporate%20leaders%20and%20boards.May (accessed May 22, 2021). 20 Benjamin M. Friedman, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth (New York: Vintage, 2010). 21 Ottmar L. Braun and Robert A. Wicklund, “Psychological antecedents of conspicuous consumption,” Journal of Economic Psychology, Vol. 10, No. 2 (1989): 161–187. 22 Wen-Fang Liu and Stephen J. Turnovsky, “Consumption

externalities, production externalities, and long-run macroeconomic effciency,” Journal of Public Economics, Vol. 89, No. 5–6 (2005): 1097–1129. See also Stephen J. Turnovsky and Goncalo Monteiro, “Consumption externalities, production externalities, and effcient capital accumulation under time non-separable preferences,” European Economic Review, Vol. 51, No. 2 (2007): 479–504. 23 Wilfried Bolewski, “Corporate diplomacy as global management,” International Journal of Diplomacy and Economy. Vol. 4, No. 2 (2018): 107–135. 24 Wendy K. Smith and Marianne W. Lewis, “Toward a

theory of paradox: A dynamic equilibrium model of organizing,” Academy of Management Review, Vol. 36, No. 2 (2011): 381–403.

32 For example, the Paris Agreement, UN Sustainability Goals, and organizations such as Ceres and the Investor Corporate Governance Network, Global Investor Coalition on Climate Change, Global Reporting Initiative, BlackRock and Global Sustainable Investment Alliance, Task Force For Climate Related Financial Disclosures, and Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, and many others. 33 Susan Lund, James Manyika, Jonathan Woetzel, Edward Barriball, Mekala Krishnan, Knut Alicke, Michael Birshan, Katy George, Sven Smit, Daniel Swan, and Kyle Hutzler, “Risk, Resilience, and Rebalancing in Global Value Chains,” August 6, 2020, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/ operations/our-insights/risk-resilience-and-rebalancing-in-global-value-chains (accessed December 21, 2021). See also, World Economic Forum, “The Global Risks Report 2020,” http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risk_ Report_2020.pdf (accessed December 21, 2020). 34 For example, the nonproft organization Ceres highlights a growing global initiative of “87 investors managing 37 trillion ... committing to net zero goal,” April 20, 2021, https:// www.ceres.org/news-center/press-releases/global-initiative-grows-87-investors-managing-37-trillion-worlds-three (accessed April 29, 2021). 35 Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations: An inquiry into the

nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations (London: Harriman House Limited, 2010 [1776]). 36 William R. Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York: Vintage, 2011).

25 Rob Berridge and Natasha Nurjadin, “Why do large asset

managers vote against most climate-related shareholder proposals?,” GreenBiz, March 18, 2020, https://www.greenbiz. com/article/why-do-large-asset-managers-vote-againstmost-climate-related-shareholder-proposals (accessed June 9, 2021). 26 Larry Fink, “A Fundamental Reshaping of Finance,” Black-

Rock, 2020, https://www.blackrock.com/us/individual/larryfnk-ceo-letter (accessed May 18, 2021). 27 BlackRock, “Our 2020 Sustainability Actions”, https:// www.blackrock.com/us/individual/about-us/our-2020-sustainability-actions (accessed May 18, 2021). 28 Johan Galtung, “Violence, peace, and peace research,” Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 6, No. 3 (1969): 167–191. 29 Adrienne Murray, “Denmark set to end all new oil and gas exploration”, BBC Business Reporting, December 4, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55184580 (accessed December 21, 2020); Joseph R. Biden, “A Proclamation on Earth Day, 2021”, Presidential Actions, April 22, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefng-room/presidential-actions/2021/04/22/a-proclamation-on-earth-day-2021/ (accessed May 18, 2021). 30 Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, “Transgovernmen-

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DESTRUCTION EQUALS GLOBAL INEQUALITY

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Repairing Imaginations:

Rethinking the Ethics of Growth and Degrowth

In 2018, my colleague and co-editor of this volume, Markus Berger, and I submitted a proposal for the United Arab Emirates pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale. The centerpiece of our proposal was an installation on degrowth that comprised two floating rectangular planes inclined toward each other. The planes met at a shared short edge, as if forming a crease. The entire surface, which had a short lip along the periphery, formed a large tray of sorts that we proposed to cover with sand brought from the desert in UAE. On this sand surface, we intended to project a large interactive map of the coastline between Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Visitors could “erase” a major structure on the map by quickly moving the sand back and forth at that spot with their hands. The motion sensors on the ceiling detected the movement and an algorithm calculated a series of changes in the environment as a result. As visitors erased artificial islands, major water and transportation infrastructure supporting them also disappeared afield. When they erased worker camps deep in the desert, the skyscraper projects dependent on that workforce disappeared from the map as well. Because of the slope toward the center, each erasure forced the sand to migrate slowly toward the center crease, which had a narrow slit in it. As more and more visitors changed the map, sand started to pour out slowly from this slit like an elongated hour glass. Sanitation workers, also brought from UAE, stood at the periphery of the room and collected this pile of sand—and that which spread throughout the room with visitors’ feet—at every hour and poured it back into the planer trays. 0pposite Photo courtesy the author.

With this installation, we wanted to make visible other possible futures that have been sequestered with the pursuit of unlimited growth in UAE for more than half a century. We also wanted to draw attention to the tremendous environmental and labor costs of such growth, often rendered invisible by placing labor camps out of sight, adding more and more water purifying and sewage treatment plants along the coast, not to mention, thousands of miles of pipes carrying water and sewage in and out of self-declared protected environmental zones. Growth, we wanted to show, was not for everyone. It was divided between the visible and the invisible, the supplied and the suppliers, the local and the foreigner, the fantastical and the hidden. Unsurprisingly, in a biennale organized around nationalist outlines, where countries strove to hide politically thorny questions in their midst by presenting themselves along apolitical themes as harbingers of “human-centered designs” or outposts of “cultural heritage,” a proposal speculating on the environmental and social detritus left behind by both did not gain any traction. Retrospectively, we would have been much better if we had presented our scheme at the 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale, seeking submission around the same time, which had the theme of degrowth itself, particularly how it related to architecture.1 Yet, our framing of degrowth, one that seems to also be promoted at the Oslo Triennale, had something in common with models of economic and technological growth, and the tourist-friendly visions of “cultural heritage” they sustained, celebrated at the Venice Biennale. Like our project, the Oslo Triennale 145

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was focused on imagining alternative futures, how a certain city or locale would change if shared access to social benefits was not seen as a secondary effect of maximizing production and increasing profits, but the primary purpose of economic activity itself. But in imagining these alternative futures, a certain localism creeps into these proposals of degrowth. Despite all the references to globalization, connections to the rest of the world, both in the present and the past, remain at an obfuscating abstract level. Most reviews of Oslo noted in passing the glaring absence of non-Western examples from discussions of degrowth that claimed to be global.2 It is as if we have to trade our imagination. If we need to imagine an alternative future for a place, we have to forget its connections to the rest of the world. And this is indeed a problem of imagination, not just of ideological bias, theoretical perspective, or limitations of research. This aspect became evident in a recent public confrontation between Andrew McAfee and Jason Hickel representing the two sides of this debate. In October 2020, McAfee, a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management, published an article in Wired titled, “Why Degrowth is the Worst Idea on the Planet.”3 The article tried to promote McAfee’s recent book on “green growth” by taking a stab at the recent book on degrowth by Jason Hickel, an economic anthropologist and a Senior Lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London. As the title of his article made explicit, for McAfee, degrowth was a disastrous idea that would only produce perpetual recession and staggering unemployment. Even if it produced environmental benefits, no one would be willing to pay the social price for it. We should instead, McAfee argued, follow the path of “green growth” that leading nations in the world economy have already been charting. Over the last half century, McAfee advanced, the economic leaders of the world economy have increased food production while reducing the use of fertilizers and have increased their GDP many times over while reducing air pollution. This was proof 146

enough that technology could save the day, and the world. We could grow endlessly and still go visit polar bears in the Arctic. Finding himself as the foil for McAfee’s claims, Hickel soon published a response to the article.4 The green growth argument, Hickel urged, was a carefully orchestrated fiction, cherry-picking data to paint a rosy picture of an ever-growing and improving world while dismissing as hearsay the environmental damage and social inequality we could witness all across the world. In counting growth only through the outdated metrics of GDP, green growthers like McAfee, Hickel argued, not only ignored how the leading economic nations of the world have offshored pollution-intensive production across the world, but have also increased the “material footprint” of the world economy, which includes all the resources needed to produce the economic activity counted by GDP. Interestingly, the largest ingredient in the material footprint of world economies is architectural materials: the sand excavated from beaches and river beds across the world to make concrete, the stone pulled from quarries and crushed to produce paved surfaces in cities the world over, and the iron ore mined to produce steel to put up all the skyscrapers, factories, and infrastructure they employ. Added to all this consumption is the footprint of the energy used by trucks, ships, diggers, and cranes required to move this material from one end of the world to another. Despite all the emphasis on digital labor, the gig economy, and the service industry, the world economy still depends upon physical infrastructure and physical labor. Before anything can be produced, before we can store our data in the “cloud,” the walls of a building need to go up somewhere. As Hickels notes, in recent years, economists, particularly economic anthropologists, have made strides in calculating the global material footprint. But these calculations are still largely conservative estimates, drawn from rough shipping volumes and export tonnages reported by different economies. The actual footprint, Hickel stresses, is much

larger, something we can only witness from disappearing forests and species and mounting pollution and environmental damage across the world. It is on how to count the material footprints of nations or, alternatively, the world economy that green growth and degrowth arguments clash. For McAfee, Hickel’s arguments are simply alarmist. The fact that we cannot “scientifically” calculate the material footprint, McAfee holds, makes it inadmissible to the calculations of economic growth. Estimates of material footprint are nothing but scare tactics to push people into suffering the social cost of a crisis that is not actually there. For Hickel, the same fact, that we cannot precisely calculate the material footprint of the world economy, should scare us into taking more radical measures, like degrowth, because the crisis is much larger than what we can ever prove. I am here siding with Hickel’s argument. Data, too, is cultural, an abstraction that we shape with our biases for particular goals. It is not the hard truth that can override the testimony given by billions of lifeforms,

human and non-human, with their shortened lives. But I would like to approach the degrowth argument from a different perspective. I would argue that understanding the scope of the global material footprint is not primarily a problem of scientific calculation to begin with. For all economic proofs in the last instance are imaginative exercises. The challenge to imagine a degrowth alternative to an economic and social system of growth is precisely that, a problem of imagination. It is here that our proposal for UAE’s Venice Biennale failed and where the spectrum of proposals at the Oslo Triennale came short. It is here that architecture design as well as history can contribute to making concrete not only the connections across the world in the present but also the material footprints of the past stamped across the world

Design Proposal, UAE pavilion Venice Architecture Biennal, 2018. Ijlal Muzzaffar, Markus Berger, with Eun Lee.

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through colonization and slavery. We can certainly calculate scientifically how much timber was stolen from ancient mahogany forests in Haiti that left its land denuded and crippled its chances of growth well before the prolonged revolution that resulted in the world’s first independent black republic.5 But, first we have to imagine that environmental and human destruction to be immediate and relevant to our current discussions of global inequality. This destruction was as much the work of imagination as of science. William Corlett has argued that we can see this understanding at work in Marx’s theorization of capital and Althusser’s take on it in Reading “Capital” as well.6 Marx didn’t take his theory of capital, or the bourgeois society, to be an explanation of an actually existing reality, Corlett stresses, but an attempt to coherently understand a web of relations which were necessarily discontinuous and chaotic. Marx saw his work as a meaning giving exposition. The very idea of bourgeois society was irreducible to the social reality it commented on. It is this reading that Corlett urges us to note in Althusser’s understanding of Marx’s theory. By stressing that the capitalist society could be understood as a two-tier structure, with a “scientific base” and an “ideological superstructure,” Althusser was not claiming to know the actual nature of capital, but one possible way in which we could understand it. And the possibility presented by Althusser—the two-tier structure—maintained a necessary gap in between it’s two visible layers. It is here, Corlett argues, that we are asked to confront the limits of the theory of capital itself and exercise our imagination. The gap between the base and the superstructure points to the irreducible difference between what we try to understand as capital and the actual social relations it is supposed to designate. “Capital” always draws on more than class and economic relations. Its “exploitation” is saturated with proclaimed hierarchies and differentiation of race, gender, and sexuality. Even these categories merely grasp at the excess of social relations they represent. Corlett points to Spivak’s warn148

ing that there are people “outside (though not completely) the circuit of international division of labor,” whose consciousness we cannot grasp if we don’t shape them into convenient targets of our benevolence.7 For Corlett, Althusser’s distinction between a scientific base of capital and an ideological superstructure was an attempt to show both the limitations of theory (and practice) to reality and the need to supplement that limit, fill the gap between the two, through imagination. I have argued elsewhere that Weber, too, had pointed out the work of imagination in all sciences.8 All scientific claims, Weber had argued, were necessarily supplemented by theological assumptions, assumptions that needed to be imagined to bring up objects that science then studied. Following these readings, we need to expand our scientific understanding of the global material footprint, surely, but we also need to stress that no matter how much data we get, it would always be necessarily inadequate to the reality it claimed to express. That reality is not just less than our calculations, as McAfee stresses, but also always more. This excess haunts any calculation of economic, social, and political inequality today. And it is not just what is left out of our calculations and data in the present. This excess also points to the ghosts of the past, if only we open our imagination to global connections that still bind our present to colonial history. No amount of data alone can stand witness to their continued impact. How should our proposal for the UAE pavilion at the Venice Biennale have treated the appearance, or disappearance, of Louvre Abu Dhabi on the interactive map on the sand? Should our algorithm have only calculated the water, sewage, energy, and sand, that the building drew from its surroundings? Or should it have also connected its appearance or disappearance with the destruction of the Haitian countryside, the ancient forests of mahogany felled by slave labor to build thousands of ships for the French navy on which the colonial loot of centuries accumulated in the Louvre Paris that was now being loaned

to its moniker in Abu Dhabi? Should the appearance or disappearance of this building, by a celebrated French architect, also result in the appearance or disappearance of French military fortresses dotting the coast of West Africa where these slaves were imprisoned before being shipped to the Caribbean out of Gates of No Return?9 Should its appearance or disappearance be tied to the appearance of sugar cane plantations and rum factories on denuded Haitian landscapes, exports which were shipped back on the mahogany ships to procure more slaves from Africa? Or should its appearance or disappearance be tied to the countless mahogany bureaus, commodes, tables, desks, chairs, and armoires that appeared in bourgeois homes all across North America and Europe to retell the story of colonization as one of “refining” untamed, unutilized nature in distant lands?10 Without this cycle of destruction, enslavement, and military and domestic production, there would have been no resources, nor cultural appetite, for the Napoleonic campaign into Ottoman territories in Egypt and Syria, without which there would be no looted Egyptian antiquities in the Louvre’s collection, in Paris or Abu Dhabi. Should the $1.2 billion Louvre plans to collect from UAE for lending its name and collection be considered a partial repayment of the $21 billion France forcefully collected from Haiti over six generations as a price for independence?11 Should we remember, and yes, imagine, these connections anew, or should our memories and imaginations also follow the amnestic directive issued by the slavers’ Gates of No Return? There is a connection between a mahogany bureau sitting in a bourgeois home in Paris, the sunshine percolating through the latticed roof canopy of the new Louvre in Abu Dhabi, and the scorched shadeless landscape of Haiti visible even from space. They are all intimately connected in the circuit of long colonial material footprint across space and time. It is the work of imagination to grasp these connections. Surely, this work will never be sufficient. There will always be more connections. But to not even try to connect propositions of degrowth and global

justice, nevermind fictions of green growth, to these past global networks would be to show the scarcity of our own imagination in the present.

NOTES: 1 The 2019 Oslo Architecture Triennale was titled, Enough:

The Architecture of Degrowth. See http://oslotriennale.no/ en/aboutoat2019. 2 See Jason Silver, “Deconstructing Degrowth at the Oslo

Architecture Triennale,” in Metropolis, October 11, 2019. Accessed July 20, 2021 at https://www.metropolismag.com/ architecture/cultural-architecture/oslo-triennale-degrowth/. 3 Andrew McAfee, “Why Degrowth is the Worst Idea on the

Planet,” in Wired, 10.06.2020, https://www.wired.com/story/ opinion-why-degrowth-is-the-worst-idea-on-the-planet/. Accessed July 20, 2021. 4 See Jason Hickel, “Response to McAfee” on his blog:

https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2020/10/9/response-to-mcafee. Also see, UNStats’ “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns” report that outlines that exponential increase in the global material footprint relative to population and GDP growth: https://unstats.un.org/ sdgs/report/2019/goal-12/. Accessed July 20, 2021. 5 See Sudhir Hazareesingh, Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). 6 William Corlett, “Containing Indeterminacy: Problems of Representation and Determination in Marx and Althusser,” in Political Theory 24, no. 3 (1996): 464–492. Louis Althusser, Reading “Capital,” trans. Ben Brewster (London: Verso, 1979). 7 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, C. Nelson and L. Grossberg, eds. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313. 8 See Ijlal Muzaffar, “House Without a Core: Capturing Intent

in Ghana,” in The Periphery Within: Modern Architecture and the Making of the Third World (Austin, TX University of Texas Press, forthcoming 2022). 9 The Louvre in Abu Dhabi was design by the offce of Jean Nouvel and completed in 2017. 10 Jennifer Anderson has explored how mahogany extraction from the Caribbean turned barren one island after another and fourished a new culture of display and claims of refnement in both North American and European colonial centers. See Jennifer Anderson, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). 11 See, Dan Sperling, “In 1825, Haiti Paid France $21 Billion To Preserve Its Independence—Time For France To Pay It Back,” in Forbes, December 6, 2017: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ realspin/2017/12/06/in-1825-haiti-gained-independencefrom-france-for-21-billion-its-time-for-france-to-pay-itback/?sh=1435d4c4312b. Accessed July 20, 2021.

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HOW TALL DOES YOUR TREE GROW? 150

Is Repair Repairing Architecture? Olga Ioannou

The title of this chapter implies that architecture is broken. It defies and exacerbates contemporary urgencies such as climate change and the depletion of natural resources caused by the production of the built environment. It also continues to gratify capitalist society’s obsession with growth, celebrating individualistic values while downplaying social relevance. At the same time, the title suggests that repair might be able to reverse the damage. These are the two pillars around which this chapter is based: in the first part, I explain why I believe architecture to be broken; and in the second part, I show how repair, in the framework of a circular economy, could be employed at present as a key strategy for restoring such damage.

PART_A

In the Aftermath of Continuous Growth In his 2018 article “Reweaving Webs of Relationships,” Pete Buchanan vividly describes our current entrapment between the great challenges we face (mainly in regard to the devastation of planetary resources) and our inability to react, using the “jumping rabbit in front of a car” metaphor. We are, he claims, living through what will prove to be “the greatest of pivotal shifts in human history,” one that will force us to re-examine and re-evaluate our identity and sense of belonging.1 But what is it that brought us to this bleak reality in the first place? Buchanan, without hesitation, attributes our current impasse to modernity. In his 2020 lecture entitled “Design after Design,” Jeremy Till also concurs: “many of the principles on 0pposite Photo courtesy the author.

which design has been founded are principles of the modern project,” he claims, “and modern projects’ addiction to progress, growth and extraction has been the primary cause of the climate emergency.”2 Our financial, political and social addiction to growth is at the epicenter of Kate Raworth’s protest, as relayed in her June 2018 speech at TEDx.3 Waving W.W. Rostow’s 1960 book “The Stages of Economic Growth” in the air, she solemnly lists those five stages, which she claims brought us to “our current state of flying into the sunset of mass consumerism for over 50 years with no possibility of landing.”4 Raworth further identifies in Rostow’s model the rational economic man; the individual who made decisions on rational analysis and acted out of his (or her) own 151

reparativ e t hink ing _alt er nativ e ways

Brace for Impact

rational self-interest. Perhaps that innocent love story between Howard Roark and Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand’s 1943 book “The Fountainhead” (a book I read as a student of Architecture and still remember as a sort of homage to the lone architecture genius) was not so innocent after all.5 But, of course, back then I was also under the influence of the modernist genius due to my professors’ affection for the great masters, and I was unable to tell the dangers the modernist tradition entailed—at least not as eloquently as Adam Curtis in his three-episode documentary series “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace.” In it, Curtis focuses on Ayn Rand’s examination of how humans perceive themselves: Rand claimed that by freeing one’s self from the powers of religious or political control and by letting one’s self be guided by selfish desires, one could, in fact, become a heroic figure.6 But apparently Rand, according to Curtis, did not stop at proclaiming the virtue of selfishness: she went on to challenge “the moral code of altruism, man’s moral duty to live for others.”7 In the first half of the twentieth century, individuality, along with consumerist propaganda, set the canvas for what became a “century of the self” for the Western world.8 Gorodnichenko and Roland argue that individualist culture led to more innovation and higher growth because individualist cultures grant higher social status rewards to personal achievements.9 Climbing the ladder of personal aspirations and ambition led to our detachment from moral or ethical considerations about otherness (in whatever form, whether other humans or the natural world) and ultimately, as Hutchins and Storm argue, to a separation of the inner mind from outer matter.10 Entering the Anthropocene For Barry Smart, consumerist habits originated in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries; however, as he points out, it was the mass production and mass consumption of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that led consumerism to develop into a more substantial and coher152

ent form, becoming “a distinctive way of life.”11 However, Nigel Whiteley argues, it was only after World War II when consumerism ultimately assumed its final form, “shifting the balance in design from a concern with solutions to utilitarian needs to an emphasis on an object’s emotional, psychological and social role,” forever biding the divide between the collective and the individual.12 In examining the impact of our consumerist ethics, Leslie Sklair suggests that “consumerism has made people believe that human worth is best ensured and happiness is best achieved in terms of our consumptions and possessions.”13 But the result of that attitude is perhaps most alarming: a progressive diminishing of the physicality of things and their increasing abstraction as signs.14 Jean Baudrillard was perhaps the first to have picked up on this shift, when he observed that we consume in a dematerialized way and that we know nothing of the artifacts we are purchasing or how they are made, thus leaving out the real cultural meaning of the artifact.15 We are not only consuming more than we need, but we have grown apart from the processes responsible for the production of these artifacts. Our curiosity about how the world is made has been subdued by our consumerist urges and abstract values directed towards the satisfaction of our individualistic needs, Baudrillard insists.16 However, only now do we realize that our insatiable thirst for consumption has not solely affected us; our growth frenzy has been damaging our planet to such a degree that now, halfway through the twenty-first century, we risk facing a systemic collapse. At least that was the conclusion Donella H. Meadows and another 16 researchers reached in 1972, when they examined eleven scenarios for the future of the planet using a computer simulation program called World3.17 The team fed the program with projected statistical data about population, food production, industrialization, pollution, and the consumption of raw materials.18 What they discovered was that in one of these scenarios, called the “standard run

marked by an attempt to lead Americans “to a more emotionally authentic and community-based way of life,” with its advocates turning their backs on the “mechanistic view of social life” and the “objective consciousness” that Rand had set the stage for a couple of decades earlier.23 The formation of a new design research domain was also initiated in the United States around this time and came to be known as “Environment, Behavior and Design” (EBD), merging human engineering traditions with the broader field of the environment. In the early 1970s, just when the study of design itself had started to take form, social psychologist Irwin Altman proposed the ecological model of the human, where human behavior and environment formed “a mutually constituting, dynamic ensemble” and promoted man “as an environment change agent” where the “environment becomes an extension of man’s being and personality.”24 Historian Peder Anker has explored the models for ecological design, devised in the 1970s, studying designers who were fascinated by the notion of life in space as an escape from industrial society.25 Influenced by the first picture of earth, as seen from space, which featured on the cover of the first edition of Whole Earth Catalog, numerous architects sought to reconcile the natural and the technological realms and live like astronauts using self-sufficient adaptive space technologies.26 The leading figure of that time, Buckminster Fuller, also propagated the idea of the astronaut living on spaceship earth: he believed that mankind was becoming more and more astute; later events have unfortunately proved him wrong.27 Architecture Broken: Architecture of No Resistance Despite the many ideas that flourished So here we all are, having entered a whole during those years, some of which persisted new geological age where we have become the until the mid-1990s, mainstream archidominators of the planet and are haunted by tecture never engaged with the premise of dark predictions of what our uncertain future ecology or sustainability. Instead, Modernist will look like. The most consistent moveand Post-Modernist architecture continued ment against this downfall developed in the to produce buildings without any regard for United States at the beginning of the 1970s. their environmental impact.28 At the same Known as the Counterculture Movement (or time, emergent forms of architecture that the New Communalist Movement), it was showed a concern for the environment were scenario,” the global system would collapse by the year 2070. At the time, the book was deemed to be controversial and was met with disbelief. Yet some 30 years later, Graham Turner of CSIRO used the World3 projection model to perform another simulation.19 Looking at historical data drawn from the period 1970–2000 (rather than mere predictions or indications like his predecessors), Turner discovered that the World3 model was valid for the “standard run” scenario.“The global system,” he argued, “is on an unsustainable trajectory unless there is substantial and rapid reduction in consumptive behaviour, in combination with technological progress.”20 In May 2000, Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer published an article in the IGBP Newsletter where they claimed that the impact of human activities upon the earth and atmosphere were reason enough to rename the geological epoch we are currently living in from Holocene (Recent Whole) to Anthropocene, marking humans’ dominance on the planet.21 Scholars are still debating the exact date of origin of this new epoch: Smith and Zeder claim that the Anthropocene age started “when evidence of significant human capacity for ecosystem engineering or niche construction behaviours first appear in the archaeological record on a global scale.”22 Crutzen and Stoermer proposed the latter part of the eighteenth century, not exactly a surprise considering that the onset of industrial mass production, along with our ever-growing consumerist habits, started at around that period, as mentioned at the beginning of this section.

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dismissed as ugly. Sustainability was situated as an aesthetically irrelevant issue.29 This cultural attitude persisted, leading to the creation of “Star Cult” or “Starchitects” whose architecture, guided by the financial objectives of investors, bore little or no relevance to society. Meanwhile, the level of energy that continues to be consumed in the making process, as well as the sheer volume

of waste that is produced during the construction process, is proof of unchanged attitudes—and unhinged minds.30 Where does this leave us? Are we already half-covered in the sand, or waste, with our head being the only thing standing out of that pile, waiting for the final disaster that will ultimately eliminate us?

PART_B

Circle Is the New Line Matters of Concern and Shifting Ontologies In Architects after Architecture, Harriet Harriss et al. present the work of a number of architects who have chosen to take an alternative course of action involving new forms of thinking and working that are committed to planetary consciousness and responsible humanism.31 In his recent manifesto “Non-Extractive Architecture,” Joseph Grima calls for a rethinking of the materials economy of the building industry, circling back to a similar call made by Pete Buchanan a decade earlier for “an architecture that is informed by what it means to be fully human.”32 But how are we currently positioned to collectively address “matters of concern” such as climate change and the depletion of materials, or to respect “shifting ontologies” for transitioning to a new paradigm?33 As Latour would argue, society is not a thing per se: groups are made, agencies are explored, and objects play a role in the process. So, how can one become a mediator for change now? How can we transform, translate, distort, and modify the meaning or the elements it is supposed to carry? Circularity and Circular Economy The most symbolic and revolutionary act of acknowledgment regarding the need to re-evaluate the importance of materials and objects (and by extension also planetary 154

resources) came from Thomas Rau in his treatise “The Universal Materials Rights.”34 As early as Article 1 in the declaration, Rau asserts the role of materials as a foundation of the fabric of life. He states that materials should be protected from receding to a state of waste (Article 9) and that their impermanence should be guaranteed through the consistent collection of data covering their history, as well as current and future applications (Article 18). What is the likeliness that Rau’s declaration actually comes into effect? Perhaps in the dominant paradigm of Linear Economy, his efforts would have been quickly dismissed as utopian and archived for historical purposes only. The declaration, however, becomes relevant when examined in the light of another paradigm: that of Circular Economy (CE). After all, Rau is one of its most prominent advocates. Considering the widely accepted, and by now famous, Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) definition, CE’s premise lies in maintaining the integrity of materials and promoting regenerative practices.35 The pairing of the term circularity to economy is perhaps a bit misleading, but it sounds less ambiguous when contested with CE’s main goal: that of decoupling growth and the application of materials. CE does not oppose growth, but relieves the pressure of primary material extraction by reducing the rate of their use.36

Real, Hidden and Imaginary Landscapes. Katerina P. Mousaka. Photo courtesy the artist.

Circularity builds on the 1970s tradition and applies a systems-thinking approach.37 This time around, though, it is imbued with a very practical toolset. The change that CE propagates manifests through specific strategies referred to as the R strategies—"repair" being one of them. Repair in the Building Products Industry In the EMF butterfly diagram,38 repair appears to be the first R strategy possible for prolonging the life cycle of a product or material and is therefore related to slowing resource loops.39 However, repair is often hindered by a lack of information related to the material in the first place, let alone the ability to properly maintain the material due to insufficient knowledge and skills, or even necessary materials, such as spare parts.40

The building product industry is one step behind the commercial sector when it comes to repair. Unlike the repair movement, which is now thriving, particularly in relation to products like appliances and electronic equipment, the building product industry is only now starting to integrate circular principles and to offer ways of making repair a viable option.41 But what does it take to make building products repairable? The following sections examine the evolving relationship between repair and material choice, as well as design approaches and business models, in order to highlight how the transition to CE ultimately relies on repair as a key strategy. Repair and Materials In the current literature, repairability of materials or products (in their capacity to be repaired) is only implicitly mentioned as one of the R strategies adequate for extending the service life of materials or products.42 Besides criteria that include high quality, sustainable origin, and non-toxicity, supporting 155

circular decisions at material or product level typically also includes considering their consistency with biological cycles and cascading, or one or more technical cycles, as Bob Geldermans argues.43 For this reason, he continues, composition and quality performance should be registered at all times, and product choices need to be adjusted to the use and performance span of the building.44 Material passports, as in the case of Madaster platform, another one of Thomas Rau’s ideas,45 are an innovative tool that keeps track of the materials that form the basis of products and buildings, relating to the origin and location of the material, as well as its circular and residual value. Assigning materials with a well-documented identity (just as in the premise of the Universal Material Rights Declaration) has a double benefit. Firstly, if repair is needed during the material’s service life, decisions can be based on its exact characteristics in order to avoid any damage. Secondly, information on repair processes will be registered on the passport, for future reference. This way, as soon as materials (or products) are decommissioned from a building, they can re-enter the market and be reused accordingly. Material passports and digital twins are only now beginning to be adopted in the materials market and, even then, many products are not included.46 Additional costs related to creating and maintaining a database for materials continue to hinder their full implementation. While it may be easier to register new products, it is difficult, if not impossible, to retrieve information for existing ones. Repair and Design Applying CE principles for the purposes of slowing the loop applies not only to the standardization of materials, but also to their design, and the design of their points of connection.47 In fact, Geldermans goes as far as to argue that if connections between elements are standardised, then the elements themselves do not necessarily need to be.48 The most important design feature thus becomes the way direct intervention is enabled within the building product or part 156

with the shortest life-span, for maintenance and repair, without affecting the rest of its shearing layers.49 Design methods that have been associated with CE such as Design for Disassembly (DfD) and Modular Design mostly aim to facilitate reuse, deconstruction, and recycling of products and parts after the service life of a building has come to an end.50 At the same time, these design principles also allow for the buildings’ parts to be repaired so that high performance can be maintained throughout the entire duration of the building’s service life. DfD and modularization are still met by most designers with suspicion: standardization is conceived as limiting creativity, while the challenges of disassembly are seen as aggravating factors in construction costs.51 Most important, design for deconstruction only makes sense if it is adopted by the entire chain, from suppliers all the way to consumers, and if it is supported by policies and regulations. Acquiring these additional competences, which are needed to support circular design decisions, largely depends on the initiative of designers. Repair and Business Models The reluctance of DfD adoption also relates to the construction industry’s lack of general coordination and the relatively small scale of supply companies.52 However, departing from CE’s premise of enabling buildings and materials to have multiple lives, new business models have started to be implemented to encompass the generation of revenue through different life cycles, as well as to anticipate and manage maintenance and repair costs. Among these models, Product-Service Systems (PSS) is probably the closest to CE’s goals and, in particular, to the concept of repair. PSS is a novel way of decoupling growth and material usage as ownership of a product is not transferred to the buyer but remains with the producer, and the buyer only pays for the performance of the product and not for the materials. PSS has the potential to restructure the market: as shortterm stakeholders receive incentives from

the long-term operational benefits offered by products, suppliers are driven towards making products that respect DfD principles. With proper maintenance and repair, this can guarantee the residual value of the building product. In this regard, the aluminum façade industry in the Netherlands is a forerunner: by using innovative technologies that allow for the continuous monitoring of their products through QR codes and other devices, companies can now consistently collect information regarding their products’ performance.53 By doing so, producers are now also assigned the responsibility of keeping their products in good order, which also allows for the safeguarding of high-quality materials, even when these reach the end of their service life. Is Repair Repairing Architecture? So far, CE implementation has been a major driver for change in the current landscape of building materials, products, and design. Repair now features as a key activity in safeguarding materials and extending the lifespan of buildings and their individual parts. Within this paradigm, novel business models have also been introduced that challenge the dependency of growth via material usage. They reconsider product ownership and seek to improve the overall quality of service and maintenance during the product’s service life. This is a pivotal moment in time where the essence of the design profession is being questioned. Materials are not simply what architects employ to consolidate form; instead, form is perceived as a temporary configuration of materials and products, all of which will eventually outlive the building. In the CE paradigm, the survival of the building’s various parts is far more important than the building form itself. Aesthetics now come closer to ethics; what is beautiful also needs to last. The autonomy of architects is also being challenged. The fate of materials and building products now depends on the synergies of all the stakeholders involved, with the designer being only one among many who are respon-

sible for the building’s service life. In the CE framework, repair subdivides accountability. The various figures involved include the designer, manufacturer, owner, supplier, and sub-contractor, as well as the ongoing maintenance team that will service the building. Systemizing repair as a practice for building materials (along with the rest of the R strategies) ultimately challenges the whole value system that has been in place over the last few decades. Repair steers architecture practices towards more sustainable goals and reinforces the relations of each party involved in the building process. The premise that what is broken can be fixed allows for a return to optimistic thinking: not only for the future of architecture itself, but for the emergence of a new understanding of our being in the world, which focuses less on the individual and more on the collective.

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NOTES: 1 Pete Buchanan, “Reweaving Webs of Relationships.” e-fux

architecture, 2018, last accessed July 20, 2021, https:// www.e-fux.com/architecture/overgrowth/221630/reweaving-webs-of-relationships/.

16 Jean Baudrillard, The System of Objects, trans. James Benedict (London; New York: Verso, 1996).

2 Jeremy Till, “Design after Design,” September 2020, last

17 Donella H. Meadows et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for THE CLUB OF ROME’S Project on the Predicament of Mankind (New York: Universe Books, 1972).

accessed July 20, 2021. http://www.jeremytill.net/read/131/ design-after-design.

18 “The Limits to Growth,” Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth.

3 Kate Raworth, A healthy economy should be designed to

19 CSIRO: Commonwealth Scientifc and Industrial Research Organization.

thrive, not grow (2018), TEDex, 1:50, https://www.ted.com/ talks/kate_raworth_a_healthy_economy_should_be_designed_to_thrive_not_grow/transcript?language=en. 4 ThoughtCo, "Rostow’s Stages of Growth Development

Model: The economist’s 5 stages of economic growth are often criticized,” February 11, 2020, last accessed July 20, 2021. https://www.thoughtco.com/rostows-stages-of-growth-development-model-1434564. In this article Juliet Jacobs describes how Rostow’s infuential model conceptualised countries’ development as a fve-stage process. From traditional society and agricultural economy (stage 1) to building the preconditions for take-off by developing manufacturing (stage 2), all the way up to intensive growth, industrialization and the actual take-off (stage 3). The next stage marks the rise of living standards (stage 4) and, fnally, development reaches the age of high mass consumption (stage 5). 5 Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (United States: Bobbs Merrill,

1943). 6 Adam Curtis, dir. All watched over by machines of loving grace (2011), Thought Maybe, online video, ep. 1, 2:53, https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machinesof-loving-grace/. 7 Curtis, All watched over by machines of loving grace. Quote is retracted from Ayn Rand’s 1959 interview with Mike Wallace. 8 The phrase refers to another Adam Curtis documentary

with that title. Adam Curtis, dir. The Century of the Self (2002), YouTube, video, last accessed July 20, 2021, https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3RzGoQC4s&ab_channel=DavidLessig. 9 Yuriy Gorodnichenko and Gerard Roland, “Culture,

Institutions, and the Wealth of Nations,” The Review of Economics and Statistics 99, no. 3 (July 2017): 402, https://doi. org/10.1162/REST_a_00599. 10 Gilles Hutchins and Laura Storm, Regenerative Leadership (Tunbridge Wells, UK: Wordzworth, 2019), 13. 11 Barry Smart, Consumer Society: Critical Issues and Environmental Consequences (London: SAGE, 2010), 7. 12 Nigel Whiteley, “Pop, Consumerism and the Design Shift,”

Design Issues 2, no. 2: 31–35, doi:10.2307/1511416. 13 Leslie Sklair, “Iconic Architecture and the Culture-ideology of Consumerism,” Theory Culture & Society 27, no. 5: 2 (September 2010). doi: 10.1177/0263276410374634. 14 Antti Ahlava, “Architecture in Consumer Society” (Doctor-

al Dissertation, University of Art and Design Helsinki, 2002), Aaltodoc, https://aaltodoc.aalto.f/handle/123456789/11839. 15 Jean Baudrillard, The Consumer Society: Myths and Struc-

tures (London; Thousand Oaks; New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 1970).

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20 Graham Turner, “A comparison to The Limits to Growth with 30 years of reality,” Global Environmental Change 18, no. 3 (August 2018): 397–411, https://doi.org/10.1016/j. gloenvcha.2008.05.001. 21 Paul J. Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, The “Anthropocene,” IGBP Newsletter, 41 (May 2000), https://inters.org/fles/ crutzenstoermer2000.pdf. 22 Bruce D. Smith and Melinda A. Zeder, “The onset of the

Anthropocene,” Anthropocene 4 (December 2013): 8–13, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ancene.2013.05.001. 23 Fred Turner, “Where the Counterculture Met the New Economy: The WELL and the Origins of Virtual Community,” Technology and Culture 46, no. 3 (2005): 493, doi: 10.1353/ TECH.2005.0154. 24 Theodora Vardouli, “User Design: Constructions of

the ‘user’ in the history of design research,” in DRS2016 Research Papers, eds. P. Lloyd and E. Bohemia, https://doi. org/10.21606/drs.2016.262. 25 Peder Anker, “The Closed World of Ecological Architec-

ture,” Journal of Architecture 10, no. 5 (August 2006): 527– 552, doi: 10.1080/13602360500463230. Anker discusses life in space as “the peaceful, rational and environmentally friendly alternative to the destructive, irrational, ecological crisis down on Earth.” He also describes ecological design as “a biologically informed vision of humankind embedded in an Arcadian dream of building in harmony with nature.” 26 Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog was perhaps the

most infuential publication of the time that celebrated the “disembodied, spiritual unity,” but also high technology (Fred Turner). 27 Richard Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (Baden: Lars Muller Publishers, 2008). 28 Pete Buchanan, The Big Rethink: Towards a Complete Architecture, Architectural Review (2012), http://digitalissues.arplus. co.uk/TheBigRethink/html5/index.html. 29 Lance Hosey, The Shape of Green: Aesthetics, Ecology, and Design (Washington; Covelo; London: Island Press, 2012): 2. Reference to Peter Eisenman 2009 interview: “[The term] green and sustainability have nothing to do with architecture” or to Raphael Vinoly’s statement: “Sustainability has, or should have, no relationship to style.” 30 Buildings and construction account for 36% of global energy use and 39% of energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. UN Environment and International Energy Agency, “Towards a zero-emission, effcient, and resilient buildings and construction sector,” Global Status Report 2017, https://www.worldgbc.org/sites/default/fles/UNEP%20

188_GABC_en%20%28web%29.pdf. 31 Harriet Harriss, Rory Hyde, and Roberta Marcaccio, eds.,

Architects after Architecture (New York: Routledge, 2021): 8–28. 32 Pete Buchanan, “The Big Rethink: Towards a Complete

Architecture.” 33 Reference to Bruno Latour and his book, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 34 The Materials Rights Declaration was drafted following the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The declaration consists of 30 articles. The Material Rights Declaration was founded on those same articles and translated them in regard to materials and material use (https:// theuniversaldeclarationofmaterialrights.org/wp-content/ uploads/2015/11/The-Universal-Declaration-of-Material-Rights-vOct3-2015.pdf).

40 “Empowering Repair,” EMF, 2016, https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/ce100/Empowering-Repair-Final-Public1.pdf. 41 Ibid. 42 Apart from repair, the other R strategies related to slowing the loop are Reuse, Refurbish, Remanufacture and Repurpose. Julian Kirchherr, Denise Reike, and Marko Hekkert, “Conceptualizing the Circular Economy: An Analysis of 114 Defnitions,” SSRN Electronic Journal 127 (September 2017), doi: 10.2139/ssrn.3037579. 43 Bob Geldermans, “Design for change and circularity—accommodating circular material & product fows in construction,” Energy Procedia 96, (2016): 301–311, https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2016.09.153. 44 Bob Geldermans, “Design for change and circularity—accommodating circular material & product fows in construction,” 301–311.

35 Ellen MacArthur Foundation: “Circular economy is based

45 Thomas Rau, “Madaster,” https://madaster.com/.

on the principles of designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems.” Defnition available at: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/what-is-the-circular-economy.

46 “Materials Passports—Best Practice: Innovative Solutions for a Transition to a Circular Economy in the Built Environment,” Matthias Heinrich and Werner Lang, BAMB, 2019, https://www.bamb2020.eu/news/publication-materials-passports/.

36 “Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth,” UNEP, 2011, https:// www.resourcepanel.org/reports/decoupling-natural-resource-use-and-environmental-impacts-economic-growth. The report also mentions the “Impact decoupling” term as increasing economic output while reducing environmental impacts.

47 Nancy M.P. van Bocken, Indrid de Pauw, Conny Bakker,

37 According to Van Bocken et al., CE principles relate to

Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” Kenneth Boulding’s essay on “The Economics of the coming spaceship earth,” and Barry Commoner’s “Four Laws of Ecology.” Nancy M.P. van Bocken, Indrid de Pauw, Conny Bakker and Brad van der Grinten, “Product design and business model strategies for a circular economy,” Journal of Industrial and Production Engineering 33, no. 5 (2016), https://doi.org/10.1080/21681015.2016.11721 24. 38 Reference to the butterfy diagram issued by EMF to

illustrate how the R strategies help close the loops of material consumption. Diagram available at “Growth Within: A Circular Economy Vision for a Competitive Europe,” https://www. ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/assets/downloads/publications/EllenMacArthurFoundation_Growth-Within_July15.pdf. 39 Slowing, narrowing, and closing the loop are the three approaches the R strategies refer to. Whereas narrowing relates to a more effective use of materials, slowing prioritizes activities like performance, access, and use. Closing of the loop refers to a more idealistic status where all output of current industrial activities becomes input for our future ones. Martin Geissdoerfer, Sandra Naomi Morioka, Marly Monteiro de Carvalho, and Steve Evans, “Business models and supply chains for the circular economy,” Journal of Cleaner Production 190 (July 2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.04.159.

and Brad van der Grinten, “Product design and business model strategies for a circular economy.” 48 Bob Geldermans, “Design for change and circularity—accommodating circular material & product fows in construction,” 301–311. 49 The term relates to the diagram by Stewart Brandt who

identifed six layers in buildings (site, structure, skin, services, space and stuff), each with a different life span. Stewart Brandt, How Buildings Learn: What happens after they are built (London: Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1995). In their London Circular Building, ARUP architects reproduced Brandt’s diagram in an attempt to showcase how DfD allows for direct repair of elements and parts regardless of their position on a building’s shearing layers. 50 Fernanda Cruz Rios, Wai K. Chong, and David Grau, “De-

sign for Disassembly and Deconstruction—Challenges and Opportunities,” Procedia Engineering 118 (2015): 1296–1304, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2015.08.485. 51 Jouri Kanters, “Design for Deconstruction in the Design Process: State of the Art,” Buildings 8, no. 11 (2018): 8, https:// doi.org/10.3390/buildings8110150. 52 Juan F. Azcarate-Aguerre, Alexandra den Heijer, and

Tillmann Klein, “Integrated facades as a Product-Service System—Business process innovation to accelerate integral product implementation,” Journal of Façade Design and Engineering 6, no. 1, (2018): 44,. https://doi.org/10.7480/ jfde.2018.1.1840. 53 Reference to the VMRG Quality Mark: https://vmrg.nl/

keurmerk/wat-is-het-vmrg-keurmerk.

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AN ACT OF RADICAL IMAGINATION 160

Trans-Repair:

Emancipatory Techno-Poetics Paula Gaetano-Adi

“Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.” —aimé césaire, Poetry and Knowledge “Ragpicker and poet: both are concerned with refuse, and both go about their solitary business while other citizens are sleeping; they even move in the same way.” —walter benjamin, " The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire" “In the face of such touching silliness about technofixes (or techno-apocalypses), sometimes it is hard to remember that it remains important to embrace situated technical projects and their people. They are not the enemy; they can do many important things for staying with the trouble and for making generative oddkin.” —donna haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin the Chthulucene “The praxis of repairing, healing, and caring for life’s web of interdependencies might be constituted as a pluriversal strategy to keep in tension the natural and the artificial and as a means to overcome the most destructive aspects of the technological construction of worlds, perhaps in tandem with those social groups not yet fully instrumentalized and with ongoing efforts worldwide at resisting such instrumentalization in the name of making and living otherwise.” —arturo escobar, Designing as a Futural Practice for the Healing of the

Let us talk about “Trans”-repair. Patacamaya, Bolivia. The Wall-e Andino, a technological ekeko of sorts, or—more than that—a truly Aymaran ch’ixi machine. Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: powerful indeterminate entities, neither white nor black but both at once.1 “The snake is from above and at the same time from below; it is masculine and feminine; it does not belong to the sky nor the earth but inhabits both spaces, like rain or like an underground river, like lightning or like a seam in a mine.”2 Like Kipi, the Quechua robot who travels in a mule through the mountains of the VRAEM valley in Huan-

cavelica, Peru, reminding us of the power of oral storytelling and the subversive nature of conviviality. Nairobi, Kenya. Brain-controlled machines. Jua Kali EEG. A prosthetic wearable device turning on light bulbs and operating a prosthetic arm. Animism reloaded: animist ethics boldly inscribed, or the practice of continually re-enchanting the world.3 “Opening up a whole new world of poaching possibilities, prepossessing the future, as it were, by laying claim to what in the present is yet to be invented.”4 A practice that evokes Kamkwamba’s windmills in Kasungu, Malawi, the windmill that Don Quixote could not have ever dreamed of. Like David Lawrence

0pposite Robocalyptic Manifesto, 2020.

Paula Gaetano-Adi.

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reparativ e t hink ing _alt er nativ e ways

Web of Life

Kamau in Nakuru, who dreams of bombsniffing robotic dogs fighting terrorism. This is what happens when technology meets humanity. This is repair beyond instrumental rationality. Technology on strike, the aporia of modernity. What is a technological reparative practice that began 500 years ago? A desire to live otherwise; a call to die otherwise. This is not technology from “below,” but from “beyond”: technology in and for the “pluriverse.”5 Strictly speaking, embodied, sensing, and situated machines that dwell outside instrumentation, efficiency, control, domination and the algorithmic binary logic either/or. This is technology beyond technophilia or technophobia. Technological recycling from within the landfills—oceans away from the garage and the repair café. It is not only a refusal of the rhetoric of the “new” as a means of progression and innovation, but the urgency to theorize everyday practices of struggle often obscured by Western maker movements and DIY tech. Is this “zombie media”?6 No. In the “anti-imperial South,”7 technology’s refusal to perish is not simply a conspiracy against “planned obsolescence,” but the political life of electronic waste. It is not a claim to the “right to repair,”8 but the intensification of repair zealotry as the “right to opacity,”9 a demand to not be reduced. This is yet another demarcation of the difference between upcycled technology and fugitive technology—that which refuses technical rationality as its rector principals. Like the “fugitive” maker/inventor/artisan/ technologist of the South, resisting all standards imposed from elsewhere.10 Is this, then, “broken world thinking”?11 Perhaps not, as what is broken will always be invisible to the Western mind. This is not an attempt to catch up with the modernities of the North and its techno-flashy imaginaries, but instead a deliberate action to mine its defuturing effects.12 Let us simply call it “trans”-repair: an emancipatory technological practice for a trans-modernity. If trans-modernity, as announced by Enrique Dussel, is the project 162

Kipi, the Quechua-Spanish bilingual robot with school students from rural Huancavelica, Peru. May-September 2020. Developed by Walter Velásquez. © Professor Walter Velásquez. Photo Walter Velásquez Godoy.

that affirms a new civilization from the exteriority of the Eurocentric totality of modernity, “trans-repair” is the ethico-political project by which electronic junk meets artisanal thinking to claim their status “as actors in the history of the world-system.”13 Trans-repair, then, is the impulse to rehearse an act of radical imagination in which the pre-modern, the mythological, the vernacular, and the ancestral emerge to subvert the authority of modern technologies and

institute a practice of reparability as a revolt to the West’s onto-epistemic despotisms and universalisms. If technology designates the truly distinctive feature of modernity, then Jugaad and Gambiarria14—as archetypal trans-repair techno-practices—are the irrevocable features of a trans-modernity.15 The assemblage machine of the South is ontological; always already relational. It is a new material entanglement in which dirt and the integrated circuit come together to reverse the violence inflicted by the false promises of the technoliberal project. Still, as with all processes of hybridization, or in

any genuine process of creolization, “it is not merely an encounter, a shock, but a new and original dimension … rooted and open, lost in the mountains and free beneath the sea, in harmony and in errantry.”16 Technological trans-repair is limitless and diffractive. Unlike Western repair, which assumes an available solution to scarcity, necessity and ecological survival, trans-repair is invariably unpredictable. It accepts that reparations are beyond brokenness, and so, implies unforeseeable consequences. Thus, for the sake of a provisional conclusion, let us come back here to the hacker 163

High schooler inventor David Lawrence Kamau with his robotic dog android canis familiaris, in Nakuru, Northwest of Nairobi, Kenya. January 2021. © David Lawrence Kamau. Photo David Lawrence Kamau.

in Bolivia, in Kenya, in the mountains, and in the city. “Splattering the object with all of his mobilized riches,”17 imagining new conditions for life beyond technological determinism. “Pregnant with the world,”18 working with failures (material, cognitive, political, and otherwise), and their sensitive formations, the techno-maker of the landfill sets up a new order of knowledge “born in the great silence of science.”19 “Gambling our first and last chance”, like Césaire’s poet, they 164

empirically actualize an emancipatory ethics of repair, one that is both—and for the first time—a true technological revolution and a new ground for a different techno-scientific expertise of hi-and-low materials, vernacular knowledges, and ancestral beliefs. Acknowledgments: This short chapter originated as a speculative annotation on the work developed by Bolivian robot maker Esteban Quispe, Peruvian school teacher Walter Velázquez, Kenyan inventors David Gathu and Moses Kinyua, David Lawrence Kamau, and Malawian engineer William Kamkwamba. With great admiration and gratitude for showing us that another technology is possible.

Robotic arm controlled by brain signals developed by Kenyan inventors David Gathu and Moses Kiuna. Kikuyu, north of Nairobi, Kenya. January 2021. © Gathu and Kiuna. Photo: EPA/Daniel Irungu. 165

NOTES: 1 Ch’ixi as described by Bolivian scholar and activist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui refects the Aymara idea of something that is and is not at the same time. The notion of ch’ixi, as oppose to the uncritical notion of “hybridity”, amounts to the “motley” [abigarrada] society of sociologist René Zavaleta and expresses the parallel coexistence of multiple cultural differences that do not extinguish but instead antagonize and complement each other—reproducing itself from the depths of the past and relating to others in a contentious way. In English, see Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: On Decolonising Practices and Discourses (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020). 2 Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: On Decolonising Practices and Discourses, xxi. 3 Nigerian poet and scholar Harry Garuba provides a renewed theoretical and analytical framework for reading the logic of contemporary African animist thought as the unconscious and creative impulse that operates basically on a refusal of the boundaries, binaries, demarcations, and linear-

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ity of modernity. See his article, Harry Garuba, “Explorations in Animist Materialism: Notes on Reading/Writing African Literature,” Public Culture 15, no. 2 (2003): 261–286. 4 Garuba, “Explorations in Animist Materialism,” 266, 271. 5 For a comprehensive and acute account of a “pluriversal” design practice and theory, see Arturo Escobar, Designs for the Pluriverse (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018). 6 See Garnet Hertz and Jussi Parikka, “Zombie Media: Circuit Bending Media Archaeology into an Art Method,” Leonardo 45, 5 2015. 7 Defned by Bonaventura De Sousa Santos, the “anti-imperial South” refers to the “epistemological non geographical South composed of many epistemological souths having in common the fact that they are all knowledges born in struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy.” Yet, given the uneven development of capitalism and the persistence of Western-centric colonialism, De Sousa Santos rightly clarifes that this epistemological South and the geographical South partially overlap.

0pposite Esteban Quispe at 17, holds a

replica of the Wall-E robot made with electronic waste, in Patacamaya, south of La Paz, Bolivia. December 2015. © Esteban Quispe. Photo: REUTERS/ David Mercado.

William Kamkwamba’s original windmill able to produce electric energy to power up 4 light bulbs and 2 radios, in Wimbe, 32 km east of Kasungu, Malawi. June 2007. © William Kamkwamba. Photo Wikimedia Commons/Tom Rielly.

8 “Right to Repair” refers to activist movements in the United States and Europe advocating for repair-friendly regulations in the electronic industry, and proposing government legislation that would allow consumers the ability to repair and modify their own consumer electronic devices. See, for example, https://www.repair.org/stand-up; https:// www.ifxit.com/Right-to-Repair. 9 This chapter was conceived in dialogue with Édouard Glissant’s demand for a “right to opacity” and in debt to his “relational poetics” against Western transparency—and against the ways in which the West has historically come to understand its “others.” In that, central to my argument is the need to attend to the specifcity of technological development outside the Western scientifc project of absolute truths, and outside the reduction of technological repair and upcycled e-waste to Western conceptions of need, scarcity, innovation, sustainability, development, and so on. See, Édouard Glissant, The Poetics of Relation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997). 10 I owe to Fred Moten (and by extension to many other black intellectuals) the use of the terms fugitive and fugitivity, and I am in debt to their generosity in providing us with a theory that unrelentingly resists sites of enclosure while offering us with new words and worlds for naming everyday and durable practices of refusal and resistance. For an introduction to “black fugitivity,” see Harney, Stefano, and Moten, Fred. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study (New York: Autonomomedia, 2013). 11 See Steven J. Jackson, “Rethinking Repair,” in Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, and Kirsten Foot, eds., Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality, and Society (Boston: MIT Press, 2014). 12 I use the idea of “Defuturing” here in the sense in which it appears in Tony Fry, Defuturing: A New Design Philosophy (London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2020). 13 Enrique Dussel, “World System and ‘Trans’-Modernity,” Nepantla: Views from South Vol. 3, No. 2 (2002): 221–244. 14 Jugaad and Gambiarria, in Hindi and in Brazilian Portuguese respectively, refer to the informal makeshift technological repairs made with only the tools and materials at hand.

Both terms are used colloquially to celebrate forms of quick and creative improvisation and everyday “hacking” practices. 15 I developed the concept of “Trans”-Repair working with Argentine philosopher Enrique Dussel’s notion of “Trans”-Modernity. For Dussel, trans-modernity is the horizon by which the excluded cultures of European–North American modernity will return as subjects of knowledge instituting a new order of the world. In that, I argue that “trans-repair,” as the world-making technological practice developed in the global south, could be a means for carrying out Dussel’s transmodern liberation project, and at the same time redirecting the practice of both repair and technology outside modernity’s rationality. See Enrique Dussel, “World System and ‘Trans’-Modernity.” Nepantla: Views from South 3, no. 2 (2002): 221–244. Also, a comprehensive analysis of Dussel’s decolonial project and work, see Nelson Maldonado-Torres, “Enrique Dussel’s Liberation Thought in the Decolonial Turn,” TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World Vol. 1, No. 1 (2011). http://dx.doi. org/10.5070/T411000003. 2011. 16 Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 34. 17 Aimé Césaire, “Poésie et connaissance,” Tropiques 12 (January 1945). 18 Césaire, Aimé. “Poetry and Knowledge,” xlix. 19 My account here is based on Aimé Césaire’s essay “Poetry and Knowledge” frst published in 1945. Opening with the proposition that “Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientifc knowledge,” Césaire attempts to demonstrate that poetry’s vitality is the kind of revolutionary, emancipatory, and transformative knowledge that humanity needs in order to overcome the world’s most urgent crises. As opposed to scientifc knowledge, which is “half-starved,” Cesaire argues that poetic knowledge is fully situated in the world and embedded with lived experience, thus, able to inaugurate a new science that can fnally “purge the past, orient the present, prepare the future.” See Césaire, Aimé. “Poetry and Knowledge,” in Aimé Césaire: Lyric and dramatic poetry, eds. Aimé Césaire, Clayton Eshleman, and Annette Smith, xlii–lvi (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1990).

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170 Community Repair in South Africa: An Interview with Kevin Kimwelle Esther Akintoye and Markus Berger 180 Fixing as Learning Steven Lubar 186 Make-Do-and-Mend: The Repair and Reuse of Existing Buildings Sally Stone 196 Hand Me Up Jussara Lee 202 Recovering a Sense of Place Evelyn Eastmond, M Eifer, David Kim, and Joy Ko 206 (Hi)Stories of Repair Lindsay French 214 Notions of Repair as a Pedagogical Dialogue Clarisse Labro 220 Toward Repairing the Social Fabric: Music Performance and Pedagogy at Work Sebastian Ruth

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Reparative Practices_Patched and Reassembled

Elizabeth V. Spelman writes that “humans engage with repair as a process in every facet of our material and spiritual life,” and “humans have learned to fx things, relationships and ideas all the time,” describing us humans as “homo reparans.”1 The chapters in the section Patched and Reassembled explore such practices and processes.

4

Contributors to this part illustrate various approaches to the mindful act of joining jagged edges, each requiring alternative thought processes and techniques that embrace multidirectional and cross-disciplinary approaches with which to fll the gap. The chapters analyze and catalogue distinct steps in processes of repair, showing how we fnd meaning in not just the act of repair itself, but also in the repair of communities and individuals. Thus, repair brings us back to world practices that were in use well before the reign of commodifcation culture.

NOTES: 1 Elizabeth V. Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002), p. x. 169

DESIGN NEEDS ACTIVE CITIZENS

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Community Repair in South Africa: An Interview with Kevin Kimwelle Esther Akintoye and Markus Berger

Reuse in architecture, such as Adaptive Reuse, is mainly focused on the reuse of the existing built fabric, such as buildings and the spaces they inhabit through forms of intervention and transformation. The reuse of waste materials—leftover materials in industrial production—is neither much taught nor practiced. Kevin Kimwelle from Nairobi, Kenya, now based in Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) in South Africa, has made a name for himself working not only with reused materials, but also in close collaboration with the communities that are part of the waste stream. We were fascinated to discover Kimwelle’s work as it relates deeply to various aspects of material reuse, community outreach, and the circular economy.

This interview with Kimwelle was conducted through a Zoom meeting in December 2020 by Esther Akintoye and later edited and condensed in April 2021.

EA: What role did your experiences at architecture school play in helping you to develop the work that you are doing now?

reparativ e p r actic es _ patc he d and r e a s s em b l e d

KK: My architecture schooling in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, was very much focused on producing traditional architects who would be ready to get into the industry. However, at the beginning of my undergraduate studies, I was traveling through Africa and saw the continent for what it is as a Black African. I backpacked from Port Elizabeth to Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, then Tanzania into Kenya, and noticed a common thread, which was the amount of ingenuity and innovation that these poor communities demonstrated. In Africa, everything gets used to the end of its life. This made me question my studies and turn my own approach to recycling and reuse. I then started asking myself, “How do I use my architectural training and incorporate it into the recycling and reuse culture that already exists?” As architects, we produce a huge carbon footprint, but it’s accepted that this is simply what we do as part of the building process. We have a lot of unused buildings, unwanted waste, and vacant utilities in our cities, and we continue to build more without getting rid of the mess we already created. Remembering how 0pposite Celebrations by the community in the opening of the multipurpose hall. Photo Joubert Loots. Image courtesy Kevin Kimwelle. 171

things were reused and repurposed during my travels through Africa, I questioned why we, as architects, aren’t doing that. Rethinking my practice, I figured that the only way I could do something meaningful was to challenge the status quo of architecture as it is and therefore decided to expand my studies as part of a PhD program. I started with the question: “Can we look at some of these approaches to reusing and repurposing lessons that we’re learning from an overlooked group of society—and bring them into the mainstream?” By seeing what was happening, challenging myself, and reflecting on my own actions, I realized that I needed to provide evidence that the contemporary practice [of architecture] can be rethought in the context of reuse, recycle, and repair. I started with very small, humble projects, such as tables and chairs in my home, and then began showcasing recycled and reused projects in exhibition spaces and galleries. Gradually, our projects were noticed and we then started working on very small community buildings, which led to our work on community-focused projects. These incorporate a circular economy-driven approach that is based on community involvement, such as creating businesses within communities, which again allows individuals to develop a skillset in recycling and reuse.

EA: How has your PhD research so far infuenced your work as an architect? KK: My work is part of my PhD program in Applied Art and Design (a multidisciplinary RDI incorporating Development Studies, Business Economic, and Alternative Design in Materials and Technology) at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, which is supported by Nelson Mandela University, Lawrence Technological University, and Wismar University of Applied Science. My approach to design in the context of South Africa was very new, which meant there were very few existing case studies and precedent studies on the subject. In order to build my research, I had to get into the communities and start developing projects from the ground up by mobilizing and working with those already involved. It’s an ongoing (practice-based) research, as it relates to academia but also to the profession. EA: Your process of using and repurposing reclaimed goods makes design accessible to more people. In your opinion, how have recycled objects and waste helped to bring social equity to the communities you have worked in? KK: Recycled objects and waste are very attainable; therefore the materials that we work with are highly accessible to these communities. At times, even the communities are surprised that we reuse waste materials in the way we do, because it’s right on their doorstep. If you want to make design impactful, it has to be accessible and acceptable to its community. Part of my criticism of the Green Agenda is that it is often based on expensive materials, high-tech gadgets, and apps that poorer communities cannot afford or access. The best way of engaging with poor communities is by looking at very doable, low-tech interventions that can be incorporated into the communities. 172

The multipurpose hall from 80% recycled materials. Photo Indalo World. Image courtesy Kevin Kimwelle.

One community I worked with, for example, owned a lot of industrial wood that was sourced from the Port Elizabeth locality. Using my architecture and engineering background, I started looking specifically at that material and questioned, “How would it be possible to re-engineer the inherent properties of the material so that it could function more effectively as a base material and help to better serve the needs of the community?” I sought to transform a material that in its original form disintegrates quickly. I also wanted to make it more appealing and beautiful, to give the community a sense of pride. We were able to elevate the value of a material because of this newly acquired way of perceiving and appreciating it. next page Créche owner standing in front of wine bottle wall. Photo Joubert Loots. Image courtesy Kevin Kimwelle. 173

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Waste Picker "Kusta" Moko collecting with his pushcart,

Waste Picker "Kusta" Moko sorting his collected waste,

Photos Indalo World. Images courtesy Kevin Kimwelle.

Photos Indalo World. Images courtesy Kevin Kimwelle.

For one of our projects, we worked with a local entrepreneur—a guy that owned a small welding machine. We built a workshop, which enabled him to employ other people, therefore creating opportunities for several individuals in the community. It is very important that our work, or work being carried out by others, leaves a deep socio-economic footprint behind that is only positive, whether that be skill sets, jobs, entrepreneurial activities, or dignity.

EA: What do you think is the connection between social equity and the reuse of repurposed objects and waste? How do you get people from various socio-economic backgrounds involved? KK: Different parts of society can play a role by helping poorer communities mobilize themselves by creating institutions, such as cooperatives and educational facilities. A plurality of backgrounds is necessary in order to avoid leaving poor communities disenfranchised and looked down upon. These groups often don’t have enough economic strength or know enough about policy to mobilize themselves. Through my involvement, I realized quickly that one has to be very active. The process needs active citizens, which demands participation, knowledge, and the development of a transparent community. Only such an active and multi-societal structure is able to approach a municipality for resources, such as existing infrastructure that is currently unused, abused, or decaying. From my experience, the most successful projects incorporate a bigger representation of society at large, with more collaborative and procreative engagements, from corporations to [educational] institutions to municipalities. Such collaborations are able to grow an idea, plant a seed in a community, and promote entrepreneurship capacity within a community. After such conditions are achieved, someone like myself is able to step away and allow the individuals of the community to prosper and advance the work.

EA: How do you fnd waste and view its potential as a building material? What processes do you go through from sourcing to building? KK: It’s very easy to find waste materials. We’ve done so much harm to the planet that you don’t need to struggle to find it. The question is which one is the appropriate material and how do you convince the community of its value 176

Waste Picker "Kusta" Moko at his home, Photos Indalo World. Images courtesy Kevin Kimwelle.

Waste Picker "Kusta" Moko with Kevin Kimwelle and the pilot waste bike, Photos Indalo World. Images courtesy Kevin Kimwelle.

and potential application. The next part of the design process is then on material science; knowing the carbon footprint, embodied energy, and the ability to transfer this gained information into a construction technology that can be applied or further modified. Because of [my] partnerships with [corporations], I learned where the material was coming from. For instance, the motorcar industry. I literally went into the yards of the car industry and was able to extract things that could be used. The manufacturing industries were willing to let me in, privileged through my education, to explore their [waste] materials. This access would not be possible for an individual in a community.

EA: Your process of participating in the circular economy is much larger than just the material aspect. Your engagement starts and expands with the daily life of the communities involved, with waste sourcing, processing, and its direct use. Can you tell us further about the community connections that you have made? KK: The engagement process is the part that really takes time because it has to be authentic and real. As a good example, I will give you the story of a 78-yearold waste picker “Khusta” Khulukile Moko we worked with who used a bartering approach, by trading in waste that he collected to get food for his family. When we met him, he was pushing this huge load of scavenged waste, which he had to do three times a day. This meant starting at 3 o’clock in the morning to get everything to the site, and, as well as this, he is only able to trade once on Fridays, by 11am. By exploring his daily routine, I realized that we could help improve his livelihood. We designed a custom-made pushcart that made it possible for him to hold and move larger loads more efficiently. People now notice him and his interesting cart. It’s not that he is pulling trash but rather, “Wow, that’s an interesting cart!” You create dignity in that process of acceptance and realization. Positive media coverage followed. People started talking about him and realized that this is a livelihood they should support; that they should make waste pickers acceptable in society. While life improved for him, we realized that the NGO helping him was struggling because people started to bring their waste to the yard of the church hosting the NGO and neighbors were complaining because of all the unsightly trash. We stepped in again, by creating a recycling depot. We designed and built a structure for recycled goods, with recycled materials—a sort of structure that is recycled in itself. We have also been working with the municipality who are aware of this illegal dumping. By fixing that issue, we dealt 177

with the municipality and the neighbors who in turn were more supportive of the NGO. After repairing the collect-and-trade aspect of the waste picker’s livelihood, we went to his home where we realized that we needed to step in and rebuild a workshop, so that he could collect and sort out the collected stuff quicker and easier. This also ended up being part of his new home. By looking holistically at the problem and looking for solutions that are very human and practical, you are able to impact the full cycle. Now he has a new cart that he can pull and push more efficiently, a [recycling depot] which is able to help more people like him, and his home, which can be replicated by other neighbors [who]realize that the home is recycled—it’s 90% recycled—that it’s decent, and they want that too. You create a positive impact and the community becomes aware of the work. If you think holistically and you’re approaching it systematically, you are able to create more meaningful solutions, rather than a group of architects wanting to fix the world but who create even more mess while seeking fame.

EA: You mentioned in our last conversation a new project with an elderly lady. Can you tell us more about this? KK: That’s our latest project, working with an almost 80-year-old lady, Selinah Ncanywa, whose daughter died at childbirth and who is now taking care of her 17-year-old granddaughter. She has [lived in a] one-room house, about 3 meters by 3.5 meters, and 2.5 meters high, her entire life. The elders of the community approached us, as the roof structure of her house was collapsing and she did not have government housing. Arriving at the site we realized that there was much more to be done than just a roof. The impact of the situation on the granddaughter, as a young person living in this space, was enormous, particularly as she is schooling. Also, as a woman-led household, it is easy for others to take advantage of their vulnerability. For example, half of their property was slowly being used as a dump yard without them realizing it. We arrived thinking that we were going to fix a roof but realized we needed to repair, metaphorically speaking, a story of South Africa: an elderly person with horrible living conditions and the impact it was having on the life of a young teenager. Engaging and working on such a project is going to take a lot of time and resources. Fortunately, with people knowing what I do, I had support from the community leadership, and access to recyclable waste from Isuzu Motors South Africa. The initial process we undertook was making the neighbors aware of the property lines and fixing what we call the “site boundaries.” Through this, the old lady was able to gain half her property back, which was also an issue of social justice because as a woman people took advantage of her. Through our intervention, the municipality fixed a new toilet line in her property. In the end, the project became an exemplary case for the community, challenging the status quo of traditional brick-and-mortar buildings. The community realized that: “Wow, this building is actually made out of recycled material, it looks different and we would not mind living in a house like that.”

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Gogo (granny) Selinah and Granddaughter Michelle in their new home. Photo Isuzu Motors South Africa. Image courtesy Kevin Kimwelle.

EA: What would you say leads your design—is it the material reclaimed or the needs of the project? How do you go about creating a balance between these two? KK: I think it’s a bit of heart and soul. It has to create a difference. If you just have technology and material, you will very easily create a soulless intervention, which is just another building that has to be reused by someone else later on. In my case, I look at the significance and meaning of potential projects, because if you get that right, the rest will just fall in place and it can be sustained. The intention and the significance of a work of design have to be very well calculated to have a strong impact, on the benefactor but also on the surrounding community. Therefore, the first aspect in my work is meaning, the depth of the community intervention, and, of course, the material it is being built with. Questions such as: What is accessible? What can you do with it? How far is it? What’s the carbon footprint? Are you choosing the right material? How long does it last? What technology do you need to make that house? Is it high-tech, and, if so, what’s the meaning of that? Is it not better to build a passive design house that regulates its own temperature than to bring solar panels and wind turbines? Next, you start appropriating the properties of any accessible material to fit into this building, so that it can outlast your intention by being able to be robust, resilient, and enduring. 179

TO REVEAL THAT WHICH IS HIDDEN 180

Fixing as Learning Steven Lubar

To fix requires to learn new skills: to diagnose, disassemble, fix, and reassemble. Repair entails gaining new understandings of materials and of the social world of things. The process

i fixed a lamp. the process took a long time because I had to learn new things and acquire new skills. New understandings: how was the lamp put together? How does it come apart? New social connections: where to get parts? New practical abilities: how to twist wires together when they’re hard to reach. Patience. The process of repair revealed issues of design and use and meaning and knowledge and skill otherwise invisible. Because repair means different things at different times there are many ways to describe it. Philosopher Elizabeth Spelman’s definition of repair as “Creative destruction of brokenness” is appealing because it acknowledges the creativity of the work, and its open-endedness. Conservator Barbara Appelbaum reminds us of the philosophical complexity of the “ideal state” of an object and the challenges of getting there. The howto’s of iFixit’s website balance the philosophical banner of “repair is freedom” with the banality of showing “step-by-step what must be done” and this reductionist ending for every guide: “To reassemble your device, follow the steps in reverse order.” Repair raises questions. When and how is something broken enough to need fixing? How fixed is fixed enough? The idea of repair is complicated.1 So too is the process. Repair requires a diverse set of skills, and the literature of repair often focuses on the description of those skills, especially the connection of mind and hand. Melville described the Pequod’s ship carpenter as “a pure manipulator; his 0pposite Photo courtesy the author.

brain, if he had ever had one, must have early oozed along into the muscles of his fingers.” Michael Polanyi gave the “brains in fingers” phenomenon the name “tacit knowledge,” arguing that “we know more than we can tell.” Tim Ingold broadens this notion, arguing for an ecological approach. Skill, he writes is a property of the total field of relations of not just body and mind but also a richly structured environment.2 Ethnographic and historical descriptions balance the practical and the intellectual, the tacit and the spoken, technology and the social and cultural environment. Sociologist Tim Dant highlights the tacit, but includes more than mechanical skill: “a complex repertoire of gestures, a variable emotional tone and the gathering of sensual knowledge.” That language might well describe Willie, anthropologist Douglas Harper’s Saab mechanic, whose expertise combines an understanding of materials, local culture, and kinesthetic knowledge. Historian Nina Lerman opens up repair skill more broadly, arguing for seeing it as part of “technological knowledge.” So too does Kevin Borg, who notes the importance of diagnostic work as the special skill of twentieth-century auto mechanics and calling attention to their “visceral knowledge of automotive technology.” The title of Mark Rose’s study of skilled workers makes this case nicely: The Mind at Work.3 How do we apply this broad framework to the study of actual repair work? The recently published Repair Work Ethnographies: 181

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reveals issues of design, use, meaning, knowledge and connection.

Revisiting Breakdown, Relocating Materiality gives examples, arguing that repair is situated practice, a place to understand both materiality and technical expertise as well as “the entangled background of material conditions, procedural knowledge, and social circumstances.”4 That’s what I try to do here. This chapter is an autoethnography of situated practice: the story of a repair. It differs from the works mentioned above in that it studies not an expert repairman, like the Pequod’s carpenter or Willie the Saab mechanic, but a very inexpert one: me. I am more enthusiastic than skilled; knowing that I don’t know, not knowing what I don’t know; but willing to try my hand. I like taking things apart, even knowing that putting them back together will be frustrating. Studying inexpert knowledge can reveal that which is hidden in the tacit, visceral, kinesthetic, entangled knowledge of experts, their complex repertoires of gestures, the social and cultural frameworks in which they are embedded. I frame what I learned in the process as repair lessons.

•••• It’s an unusual lamp, the Giocasta. Steel frame, diffusers of colored glass, dangling glass lapilli. Designed by Andrea Anastasio for Italian lighting manufacture Artemide in the 1990s, it’s something of an eccentric classic. It had hung in our house for about fifteen years when it began to fail. A bulb would go out, and you couldn’t screw it back in; there were no threads left. And then a disaster: one of the glass saucers fell to the floor. It turned out that these were two aspects of the same problem. Beneath the glass and steel that gave the lamp its charm were plastic holders that the bulbs screwed into, and to which the saucers were attached. These are made of plastic, and they were failing. The threads were giving way. You can see that in the picture. A design problem: the plastic doesn’t hold up well to heat, and shouldn’t be used in an enclosed fixture. Perhaps I could fix them. I tried filling the 182

end with Sugru, a moldable glue, and fixing the bulb in it to make the threads. No luck. I didn’t know enough about Sugru to know how to get it to set around the base of the bulb. And I wasn’t sure Sugru could take the heat, and I worried about a fire, or electrical malfunction.

repair lesson one: I didn’t have the skills to do this work. repair lesson two: A beginner doesn’t know how to weigh what might go wrong. Perhaps I could make a new plastic piece. It would be a great opportunity to learn to run a lathe … just three sets of threads (inside on the top and bottom, and the entire outside). What material? How did I measure the threads? What about those strange patterns, those four columns, on the inside? Were they important? I decided this was too difficult to even begin. I didn’t have the “visceral knowledge” of Borg’s auto mechanics. repair lesson three: Experts can make informed decisions even at the edge of their knowledge. Beginners can’t. Some years passed. Perhaps I could replace the holders. How hard could that be? Very hard, it turned out. repair lesson four: This is a social, not a purely mechanical problem; knowing the right language to ask for help is part of that “entangled background” repairers need to work within Ingold’s “richly structured environment.” What are these things called? Bulb holders? How do you search for them? I took pictures and visited a lamp parts store. No idea. Artemide dealers had heard from others in the same predicament, but had no advice. I tried again. Ferocious image googling uncovered something that seemed close: “Black E-12 Candelabra Base Phenolic Thermosetting Resin Lamp Socket with Fully Threaded Skirt.” I took a chance and ordered some. Would they fit? Could I fix the lamp?

repair lesson five: Repair is part of a social setting; you need to speak the language and understand the social infrastructure to get things done. Looking closely at the new parts that came helped me figure out how to take apart the old ones on the lamp. There are three connected parts making up the lamp socket: the base, which screws onto the fixture; the socket, which screws onto the base; and stuck in the middle, the piece that the wires attach to and the base of the bulb touches. (There’s also that “fully threaded skirt,” not needed on my lamp.) I tried taking apart the old sockets, turning them by hand. Then I tried harder, turning them with a vice-grip. They broke. I tried putting the new sockets onto the old. Not quite the same threading. Was it good enough? I decided that it wasn’t. That meant I needed to replace all of the pieces of the socket. First I had to take off the outer piece, then pull out the middle piece so that I could detach the wires, then unscrew the base. And then reverse the process with the new pieces: run the wires through the base, attach the wires to the middle piece with those screws, and then screw the outer part of the socket on. iFixit’s “follow the steps in reverse order,” came to mind.

Connecting the wires. Photo courtesy the author.

in that middle piece. The theory, the wiring, is simple. An electrical diagram would be simple straight lines. Out in the open, wiring repair lesson six, perhaps the most important couldn’t be easier: stick in the wire, turn the one: Even a simple repair is not that easy, screws. In practice, in the lamp: put on the because each repair is different, and you’re base, realize that the wires aren’t smoothed learning as you do it. How much force? so that they’ll fit in. Take off the base, groom When to replace? What’s good enough? them, put the base back on. Realize that they It’s not that easy because each of these really aren’t long enough. Take off the base, steps happens in the physical world, on a gently (how much force?) pull them out, 30-year-old lamp designed to look good, not hoping they don’t break. Put on the base. for ease of repair. All of the clearances are Try again to attach the wires again. Realize tight. Those plastic pieces are more complithat those screws are hard to turn in this cated than they look. tight setting. Take them off again, loosen the Repair lesson two, restated: Understand- screws, put a bit of oil on them. Try again. ing a thing in principle is not the same as With the wires attached, turn the middle knowing how to do it in the real world. Mate- piece so that it fits properly in the base— riality matters. Ingold’s “total field of relathat’s what those grooves are for. Hope the tions of not just body and mind but also a wires don’t come out. Realize that you can’t richly structured environment” applies. hold it in and screw on the top piece … inConsider getting the wires into the holes vent a way to hold it in with a pencil. 183

And this doesn’t even begin to cover the frustration when I need to attach two wires to each terminal, which is the case on three of the sockets. Here’s where I need to make up for my lack of manual dexterity with patience. Keep working at it until you get it right. The worker at the factory got good at this, or had specialized tools. The Pequod’s carpenter’s brain had “oozed along into the muscles of his fingers.” Mine certainly hadn’t.

repair lesson seven: Things are more complicated than they seem. You can only figure out what needs doing by doing it. There’s a lot of trial and error in repair. Look closely at the metal part on the top side of the middle piece. What’s that little flap doing there? Remember those four columns in the outside socket part? That flap locks the outside part in place. You can fasten it by turning it clockwise, but you can’t loosen it by turning it counter-clockwise; it’s locked, pushing tight against one of those columns. (That’s why it clicks when you screw it on, and why I broke the pieces when I unscrewed them the first time.) You have to take a screwdriver and press down on that flap so that it fits under the column. Then you can unscrew it. Repair lesson seven, restated: Order extra parts so that you can learn by breaking things. Learning means doing things wrong before you do them right.

Attach those wires, put those sockets in place, remember how to mount the light to the ceiling, how to put those glass bulbs on—and it’s done. Not only a beautiful lamp, but a lesson in repair, in the relationship of theory and praxis, of the recalcitrance of the physical world, of the need for brains to ooze into muscles, and memories, mostly fond, of the process. The lamp works now, but my relationship to it remains fraught. I know from our history together something of its fragility, as well as mine. Its history of use, decay, and repair imbricates with my history of skill in complex ways. I see the lamp now not as a finished, working object, but as an object always in motion toward brokenness, and my future with it as one of ongoing maintenance and repair. But while that relationship includes memories of frustration, even anger, it also has positive elements: an appreciation of the lamp’s complexities and of my new abilities that connect us in an ongoing joint adventure of understanding, doing, and hope.

Repair lesson eight, restated: Repair connects repairer and repaired, creating a joint past, present, and future. Repair is an ongoing, pragmatic relationship that looks toward a better future with a hopefulness tempered by knowledge that the material world is complex, objects are entangled in social relationships, repair is never-ending, and our knowledge and skill never quite enough.

•••• In “Repair as Transition: Time, Materiality, and Hope,” Steven Jackson argues that repair “engages the material and temporal organization of the worlds around us, and thus commits us to an attitude of pragmatic hope.” 5 that’s repair lesson eight : An attitude of pragmatism gives us a realistic goal for fixing things while acknowledging that the world is complicated and the process continues. It also commits us to hope, an imagined better future. 184

opposite

Artemide Giocasta lamp. Photo courtesy the author.

NOTES: 1 Elizabeth V. Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World (Boston: Beacon Press, 2002); Barbara Appelbaum, Conservation Treatment Methodology (Amsterdam; Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007); “IFixit: The Free Repair Manual,” accessed January 3, 2021, https://www.ifxit.com/. 2 Herman Melville, Moby Dick: Or, The Whale (Auckland:

The Floating Press, 2009), 893; Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009), 18; Timothy Ingold, “Beyond Art and Technology: The Anthropology of Skill,” in Anthropological Perspectives on Technology, ed. M.B. Schiffer (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001), 21. 3 Tim Dant, “The Work of Repair: Gesture, Emotion and

Sensual Knowledge,” Sociological Research Online 15 (August 31, 2010), https://doi.org/10.5153/sro.2158; Douglas A. Harper, Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); Nina E. Lerman, “‘Preparing for the Duties and Practical Business of Life’: Technological Knowledge and Social Structure in Mid-19th-Century Philadelphia,” Technology and Culture

38, no. 1 (1997): 31–59, https://doi.org/10.2307/3106783; Kevin L. Borg, Auto Mechanics: Technology and Expertise in Twentieth-Century America, Studies in Industry and Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 8–9; Mike Rose, The Mind at Work: Valuing the Intelligence of the American Worker, Reprint edition (New York: Penguin Books, 2005). 4 Philippe Sormani, Alain Bovet, and Ignaz Strebel,

“Introduction: When Things Break Down,” in Repair Work Ethnographies: Revisiting Breakdown, Relocating Materiality, ed. Ignaz Strebel, Alain Bovet, and Philippe Sormani (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 1–27, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-132110-8_1. 5 Steven J. Jackson, “Repair as Transition: Time, Materiality, and Hope,” in Repair Work Ethnographies: Revisiting Breakdown, Relocating Materiality, ed. Ignaz Strebel, Alain Bovet, and Philippe Sormani (Singapore: Springer, 2019), 337–347, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2110-8_12.

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REDUCE/ REUSE/ RECYCLE 186

Make-Do-and-Mend:

The Repair and Reuse of Existing Buildings Sally Stone

Throughout history, buildings have been reused and adapted. They are altered and updated to accommodate new users with different agendas; they can survive as cultures and civilizations change. As the function of the structure becomes obsolete, so different occupants with varying needs are able to move in to take advantage of it for their own benefit. The interiors, buildings, collections of buildings, and their immediate built environment may not provide a perfect fit, but it is possible for these buildings and contexts to be adjusted, or tailored, to accommodate the needs of the new users. The reuse and repair of articles of clothing is a well-known practice. The analogy of this process can be applied to the discipline of interior architecture. If the building or situation is no longer the right size or has simply become unfashionable, if the use is obsolete or outmoded, or the space may be simply the wrong shape and the rooms inadequate for the new use, then the building needs to be adjusted, altered, updated, or modernized. It can be customized to accommodate the different spatial requirements of a new generation. The building can be patched, dissimilar interventions. Disconnected elements can be tacked together to create a coherent whole. Small tears and fissures can be darned. Scraps and off-cuts can be up-cycled or reinvigorated to be endowed with new worth. Weak or worn areas can be reinforced, sometimes with the same material, other times with a contrasting fabric. The building can be sound and strong, but just unfashionable, so it can be whole-heartedly altered and tailored to new requirements. This chapter explores the connection between mending and interior architecture. It examines the practice of building reuse and compares it with the common tradition of handing clothes down from sibling to sibling, or family to family, and it looks at the process of altering clothes or buildings as they become unfashionable or outgrown to accommodate the distinctive expectations of different generations.

0pposite Interior of "patched” wall of church in Dornbusch,

Germany. Remodelled by Meixner Schlüter Wendt, 2005. Photo Christoph Kraneburg. 187

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not just with barely visible elements, but sometimes with elaborate and possibly

Make-Do-and-Mend A deliberately light-hearted British film made by the Ministry of Information shows the “substitution and conversion” economies that prevailed during World War II. The short production, which was part of the British Paramount News series, would have been aired in the interval between film screenings in UK cinemas. In it, the narrator, in his traditional BBC English, offers advice to “the housewife” on how to “turn old things into something quite different and good as new.” 1, 2 This short inspirational movie, called How to “Make-Do-and-Mend,” describes an exhibition organized by the Board of Trade, which was held in collaboration with the luxury department store Harrods of London. It includes an improvised cot, fabricated from old sackcloth stretched between two dining chairs (not the frilly vision imagined, but it doesn’t cost any coupons), a patchwork dressing gown constructed from odd pieces of material, and a frock assembled from Mrs. Clarke’s husband’s “old plus-fours and half a yard of new material.” The film features an improvised catwalk, with models wearing the remodeled designs, and from the podium the compère issues first a reassurance to women that all “MakeDo-and-Mend” garments are exclusive, and then a warning to men to “lock up your favourite old clothes before you leave home in the morning.” To reinforce this somewhat ironic message, the footage ends with an archetypical British businessman, complete with gloves, bowler hat, and umbrella, leaving home for work in the morning, though he is missing his pinstriped suit, so he sets forth towards his commuter train, wearing just his beautifully pressed white shirt and black socks. Reduce/Reuse/Recycle The British Board of Trade officially launched the “Make-Do-and-Mend” scheme in the autumn of 1942. One of the most important characters was Mrs. Sew and Sew, a wide-eyed doll that soon became a familiar sight emblazoned on posters and pamphlets. As a resourceful woman full of ideas, she 188

could turn a timeworn coat into a new winter frock and give any number of old things a new life.3 But despite this overt joviality, adaptive reuse was not a lifestyle choice for the population of the 1940s, but rather an unavoidable necessity; it was a time of harsh rationing, austere conditions, and deep frugality. Food was in short supply, petrol was rationed, and luxury goods were practically unobtainable. Parallels in attitude, although not in conditions, can be drawn with aspects of life in the twenty-first century. The environmental movement’s international slogan Reduce/ Reuse/Recycle is a manifesto for the way to live. It is based upon a concern for the environment, a deliberate decision not to inflict harm, and a need to develop, apply, and promote sustainable models and practices. This includes reusing stuff—mending, repairing, altering, adjusting, renovating, restoring, and just plain old using it again. Two of the most substantial challenges that the world faces are climate change and urbanization. Already more than half of the global population live in urban environments, and by 2050 it is projected that over 70% of us will live in cities. All societies need to be able to accommodate growth while at the same time reducing consumption. Continued horizontal expansion is no longer seen as a viable approach; different methods to accommodate a changing population need to be developed. The European Commission declared that 36% of the EU’s CO2 emissions are associated with the built environment,4 while at a global level, the UN Sustainable Development Goals5 provide a framework for action, suggesting goals and practices at various scales to regulate climate change in the built environment. It is clear that a carbon-neutral society cannot be achieved without also tackling the significant emissions from building construction and operation. This situation is complicated by the fact that about 85% of the UK building stock that will be in existence in 2025 has already be constructed.6 This percentage must not only be echoed elsewhere in Europe, but also must certainly have an international parallel.

Go through Your Wardrobe—Make-Do-and-Mend, 1939–1945. Donia Nachshen for Board of Trade.

Make-Do-and-Mend—Says Mrs. Sew and Sew, 1939–1946. 189

Thus, the existing building stock will need to become both more efficient and more resilient. Building reuse, refurbishment, and restoration work all contribute towards the development of the existing situation, making it useful and appropriate for an expanding and changing population whose needs and attitudes are also rapidly evolving. Reduce/Reuse/Recycle is especially pertinent to interior architecture and the adaptation of structures. The embodied energy in the existing elements can be saved through Interior of the Dry Bar in Manchester, 1989. Ben Kelly. The appropriated curtain display was placed upon the back wall of the space. Photo Dennis Gilbert.

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upgrade and reuse. Adaptation greatly reduces the amount of natural resources required to construct a building and encourages environmentally friendly usage. The sustainable adaptation of an existing building can be viewed as having four distinct components: environment, society, economy, and inhabitation. The reuse of the specific environment is sensible because the infrastructure and most of the building already exists, while new elements can be used in such a way that they promote carbon

‘tailor’ suggests that it dates from around the 13th century from the Anglo-French tailour, and the Old French tailleor. In turn, this originated from the words to cut or to split, especially in relation to stone, so the original tailleor was actually a stone-mason. It was the taliator vestium, in Medieval Latin, who was the cutter of clothes. It is clear that the empirical and pragmatic relationship between constructing buildings and tailoring clothes is long established. There are a number of terms used in relation to architecture, interiors, and adaptation that are interchangeable with the process of mending garments: from tailoring to patching, stitching, and embellishment. There are many instances where this simple analogy can be applied, for example, the Neues MuseMake-Do-and-Mend The “Make-Do-and-Mend” slogan can easily um in Berlin was a series of individual buildings on an island in the middle of the River be applied to the process of building adapSpree, which were stitched together by David tation and reuse, as both a metaphor and a method for remodeling existing structures. It Chipperfield Architects to create a coherent whole. The materials for the old and new is a powerful representation of the intricate could not be matched (it would be impossible and intimate process of reclaiming and reto authentically reproduce the many years of using old, outgrown, unfashionable, and neweathering and trauma), so the contempoglected structures. One of the most important aspects of building reuse that again aligns rary interventions deliberately contrast with the original. They are built to fit exactly in with clothing reuse is that every conversion places that were too ruined, but the language is unique or “exclusive.” The careful considof the “mend” is much simpler, less ornate, eration of the existing conditions, combined and more appropriate to the pared-down with the needs of the new users, means that expectations of the late twentieth century; each and every project is unique. A tailor makes garments to order and also the old and new connect almost as though by a looped running stitch. In Victorian alters articles of clothing. The tailor creates Edinburgh, Patrick Geddes used a process of clothes that are constructed or reconstructed darns and repairs to create collective gardens to precisely fit a specific individual, rather than a manufacturer who makes them ready- from disused and abandoned patches of land. Rather than demolition, he described his made for sale. The verb “to tailor” implies approach of careful reconstruction, renewal, an attention to detail, made to a precise and repair as “conservative surgery.”8 Withsize and shape, with little ornamentation, and generally constructed from substantial, out straying too far from the “Make-Doheavy and plain fabrics. The methodological and-Mend analogy, it is possible to see how connection with adaptive reuse is strong; the a surgeon may stitch a wound, patch a graze new elements within any remodeling project with a sticking plaster or Band-Aid, suture are by necessity built to fit exactly. They an open wound, or even use staples or glue to are designed to an exact shape and size, and reconnect broken skin. therefore to lie snuggly within or around the confines of the original structure. But this is Hand-Me-Down not the only connection between adaptation Many of us with older siblings or cousins and tailoring; the etymology of the word have received a “hand-me-down”: an article neutrality. Societal sustainable reuse is an intelligent approach that allows communities to be retained, and also encourages cooperation. Reuse is economically sustainable because, although it is often a more expensive process than building from scratch, adaptation requires a skilled workforce, and a wellkept environment encourages investment. The occupants of the remodeled building can be encouraged to inhabit it in an environmentally friendly manner.7 The manner in which the adaptation of existing buildings addresses each of these factors reinforces the idea that reuse is a sustainable strategy for the future development and redevelopment of the built environment.

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of clothing passed on from one person to another after it has become too small or outdated. The best of these are altered or refashioned for the next individual, with perhaps a skirt fashioned from a frock (maybe slightly shortened in the process), trousers changed to shorts, or the arms removed from a cardigan to create a waistcoat. A direct analogy with this approach can be found in the Dornbusch Church in Frankfurt, Germany, which was remodeled in 2005 by Meixner Schlüter Wendt. The original church building, a landmark within the locality, had become much too large for the dwindling congregation. The tall white bell-tower occupies a strategic point within the organization of the extremely flat town, and because it is visible from some distance away, it is an important element within the collective memory of the location. Keen to retain the building, the architects decided to reduce the size of the main building by shortening it, so that the building and the tower could live on and be transformed into a correct fit for its community. A distinct and substantial part of the building was removed, carefully detached or unpicked from the main body of the church, with the raw or open edge enclosed with a huge decorative covering. This new screen wall symbolizes the area that had been removed; it visually reflects the separated element by representing the previous altar as an embellished relief. Thus, the far-too-big building was handed down to the new, much smaller congregation, who cut it down to an appropriate size and then darned and bound the raw fraying edges with a huge applique patch. Too Short, Too Small The Make-Do-and-Mend pamphlet suggested that clothes that had been outgrown could have their usage extended with the addition of another piece of fabric: a skirt lengthened with the application of a wide band of either near-matching or complementary material, for instance. Or the life of a tight blouse prolonged either with the insertion of a contrasting band on the front, complete with new buttons, or by “letting in” a broad strip 192

of material at the sides underneath the arms. Again, it is possible to make a direct connection with remodeling architecture. The act of extending a building to accommodate a growing need is a long-established technique, and the Laurentian Library in Florence, designed by Michelangelo, is a fine example of such a practice. This sumptuous structure was constructed in the 1500s as an addition that was simply placed on top of Brunelleschi’s Basilica di San Lorenzo. Michelangelo’s intervention comprises an unexpectedly long reading room with double-height vestibule, linked by an almost fluid staircase. The length and width of the library were determined by the size and shape of the cloister that it sits upon, and the innovative interpretation of the classical language, in which the columns are recessed into the walls, was dictated by structural necessity. The original building was just too small to accommodate the intellectual ambitions of the Medici family, but the site was quite constrained, so it was extended in the only direction possible, upwards. The new library was constructed from rich materials highlighted by ornate detailing that emphasizes the status of the Medicis, who were no longer to be considered as merchants, but instead members of the intelligent and ecclesiastical society. Just as the addition of gold brocade, heavy embroidery, or embellished epaulettes signal the status of the wearer, so the jewel-like library indicates the elevated position of the users. The original building wears the new extension with flair and confidence. Another small but perfect addition in Florence is the Pazzi Chapel, built by Brunelleschi himself about 100 years earlier, in the 1440s. This ingenious geometric intervention is constructed from a simple square and circle, which were inserted into a niche within the cloister of the Basilica di Santa Croce. The existing walls of the church predetermined the size of the chapel, and architectural coherence was applied to the whole through the application of a decorative classical language—painted pilasters, arches, and vaults—that line the space and therefore impose exact geometrical compliance. The

Blood red piping in the stairwells of the Sporck Palace, Stanislav Fiala, 2019. Photo courtesy the author.

language of the exquisite exterior logia is quite different from the cloister in which it is situated. The applied decoration is in direct contrast to the simplicity of the surrounding buildings. It is an intimately embroidered brooch that extends and embellishes the simple space. Worn Out The Make-Do-and-Mend booklet also discusses the problem of what to do with clothes that are too worn out to renovate, advising to cut the quality material from the garment and use it to patch or mend other pieces of apparel. Again, the analogy works:

it was once a well-acknowledged practice to remove individual elements from a disused building, such as an ornate bay window, a magnificently carved doorway, or even a mosaic floor, and reuse them elsewhere. A worn-out piece of clothing may have been a particular favorite and to see key parts of it reused can provoke precious memories, just as the reuse of distinct and complete architectural features or components can also stimulate connotations of identity and recognition. A contemporary example of this architectural practice is the Swéerts-Spork Palace in Prague, although the connotations in this 193

context are somewhat sinister. During its renovation, the unwanted doors were collected to emphasize a particular aspect of the building’s past, so it retains certain disturbing qualities and now wears these, as it were, upon it sleeve. The palace has been transformed many times: from a beautiful aristocratic city home to a contemporary public museum. But in between these seemingly benign initiatives, the building underwent a sinister conversion. The original seventeenth/eighteenth century Swéerts-Spork Palace was gradually extended to become, by the first decades of the twentieth century, an amalgamation of three buildings with a fine unifying ornate frontage. Its favorable size and position meant that during the turbulent period in the middle of the century, it was requisitioned and occupied, first by the German Gestapo, and later by the local secretariat of the Communist Party. Subsequently, the building was used for a series of seemingly banal purposes, as a bank and office space, resulting in conversions that were not particularly sensitive—to the building or its history. However, recently the palace has undergone a massive renovation and remodeling, and thus entered the next stage of its existence. The aim of the architect, Stanislav Fiala, was to once again unite the different structures to make commercial office and leisure space, but also to retain the memory of that period of contentious heritage inherent within the patchwork of different buildings. This is immediately apparent within the stairwells, where painted lines of blood-red piping seem to dribble down the walls—sometimes against beautifully restored plaster surfaces and in other sections against raw untreated concrete. But the reference to the reuse of good yet unwanted material is within the lobby of the commercial office space. Here, somewhere that is usually a non-space, an innocent vestibule for waiting, an anti-chamber to loiter with or without intent, there are too many doors; there are doors that go nowhere, doors that lead to other doors, and doors with potentially unthinkable things happening behind them. 194

Fiala gathered all of the superfluous doors together. These seemingly innocent barriers, these unnecessary entrances and exits, were collected and transported to these crucial areas. Thus, the unnerving experience plays upon the collective memory of the menace, of a time of untold secrets, difficult relationships, and conflicting loyalties. Patching A less controversial and more compassionate example of architectural patchwork is the huge plaster display curtain that was uncovered during the remodeling of a typical Manchester warehouse into the revolutionary Dry Bar by Ben Kelly in the late 1980s. The threshold of the interior is organized through a series of three large vertical planes, which are placed at a tangent to the front façade. The first, which controls the entrance area, is constructed from riveted panels of aluminium, the second, which guides customers towards the bar, is made from polished plaster, while the third, the recycled curtain display, is attached to the boundary wall of the space. It is a massive discarded object that was repainted and rehung as a remnant of the earlier occupation (a soft furnishings supplier), a ready-made object that was elevated to decoration through the process of display. An ornamental patch or badge within the long interior of the radical bar. The restrained and modest building of the Burrell Museum in Glasgow, designed by Barry Gasson in 1983, houses the extensive collection of art and artifacts bequeathed to the city by the local shipping magnate William Burrell (1861–1958).9 The simple Scottish sandstone structure with a trussedtimber roof is punctured with antique stone doorways and aged ornate windows. The new and the old are clearly differentiated, and each enhances the other. These decorated patches, which are at once part of the structure of the building but also part of the exhibition, hark back to a time before the Reformation. They are long-lived objects that instill a sense of discovery and recognition within the visitor. The new material of the building acts as a frame or backdrop for the

careful placement of Burrell’s collection of ancient treasures.

NOTES: 1 Imperial War Museum, How to”Make-Do-and-Mend”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4RpJcVs1VI.

Conclusions Tailor is both a verb and a noun. As a verb, “tailor” is active and assertive, but also careful and controlled. To tailor suggests the effective integration of the body with the clothing: that is, the clothes are built to fit the exact dimensions of the person wearing them. Tailored outfits are constructed around the confines of the figure, but are also ingeniously crafted to allow for everyday movement. But “to tailor” also means to alter, to adapt to a changing shape, or to modify a garment for a different person. In order to be able to make these alterations, the tailor must intimately understand the acute nature of the existing garment, in terms of the manner in which it was constructed, the quality of the cloth, the grain of the fabric, and the areas that are old or worn and those that are strong and robust. The tailor must appreciate the size and needs of the new wearer, which dictates the function and context for the renewed garment. The same is true for adaptive reuse: the (interior) architect needs to understand the qualities and character of the existing building and combine these with an intimate understanding of the requirements of the new inhabitants. Thus, the remodeled building or situation depicts the narrative of both the culture that generated the structure and the story of the generation that altered it. At the end of this process, the product is a multi-layered complexity that is impossible to replicate in a new building; it is, as the Ministry of Information suggests, “exclusive.”

2 “BBC English” A non-technical term for the speech of

newsreaders and presenters of the national and international English-language programmes of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The phrase refers especially to the accent known to phoneticians as Received Pronunciation (RP) and sometimes informally referred to as a BBC accent: https:// www.encyclopedia.com/humanities/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/bbc-english. 3 Ministry of Information, 1943 (Reprinted 2007). Make Do

and Mend. Board of Trade Kent, UK. 4 European Commission, 2019. Available at: https://europe-

anclimate.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ecf--buildingsnetzero-fullreport-v11-pages-lo.pdf. 5 UN Sustainable Development Goals. Available at: https:// sdgs.un.org/goals. 6 https://royalsociety.org/-/media/Royal_Society_ Content/ policy/projects/climate-evidence-causes/climate-change-evidence-causes.pdf. 7 Stone, S. 2019. UnDoing Buildings: Adaptive Reuse and Cultur-

al Memory. Routledge. p.123. 8 Welter, V. 2002. Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life.

MIT, p. 116. 9 Ward, R. Architects Journal, August 9, 2017.

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A CONCEPT OF LUXURY 196

Hand Me Up

in the early days of my career as a fashion designer, armed with ambition and the bliss of ignorance, my intention was to design clothes to make people happy. In The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard playfully illustrates how we are convinced to believe, through cunning marketing campaigns, that consumption is the way to achieve such heights of contentment. The more we buy, the merrier we are.1 This perpetual pursuit of happiness through consumption ultimately proves to be unfulfilling. But until we arrive at such a conclusion, a significant level of damage has already taken place. The Hand Me Up proposition seeks to reverse the harm of the clothes that have already been produced by transforming them into precious “new” belongings through the hands of artists and artisans. The initiative originated as a redemptive act and encompassing solution to physical, social, emotional, and spiritual ailments. Hand Me Up is a celebration of the art of mending. On September 11, 2001, the attack on the Twin Towers in New York City marked a time of personal discovery. In tandem with the collapse of the World Trade Center, the blinders that hid a paralyzing truth came down. Professionally and personally, I was 0pposite

Custom hand-tailored cashmere coat; mended in 2016 using sashiko stitching technique. Jussara Lee.

contributing to the plundering and pollution of the environment. As a result, my actions and decisions were negatively impacting other people’s livelihoods worldwide. At that time, I learned that it takes 713 gallons of water to make just one T-shirt, equal to the amount of water the average person consumes over 900 days.2 I also realized that I was unintentionally polluting rivers with heavy metals from synthetic dyes to achieve the desired colors for my seasonal collections. Worse yet, I was dirtying the air with shipments of fabrics from overseas and all the jet-setting around the world to get “inspired.” I could not reverse these actions, but I knew I had the power to change the way I ran my life and my business. And so, I did it. I took advantage of being a small, owner-operated company and immediately shifted gears to reduce my carbon footprint. I downsized it by dissolving the wholesale operation and embraced custom-made clothes to lessen and contain the damage I had already caused. Clothes switched hands from factory operators to local master tailors who cut and sewed the garments by hand, one by one. I sourced organically grown domestic fabrics and dyed them with plant-based natural pigments. A few years later, I made another important discovery: the average American doesn’t wear 80% of the clothing they purchase.3 This research finding had a tremendous impact on my trajectory as a designer 197

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Jussara Lee

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and contributed to an epiphany—one that led me to shift my attention from making to repairing clothes. Hand Me Up initially began as an experiment, working with a few close clients keen to overhaul their closet. The project is now my core philosophy and primary practice as a designer. An inconceivable amount of clothes, trims, and textiles already exist, and tons of them, measured by weight and unit,4 are being churned out as I write this chapter. It is a problem of planetary scale that requires monumental action to be tamed. Hand Me Up’s solution engages local artists and artisans to tackle overconsumption and pollution by stealth. Using handwork techniques, we transform existing clothes, garments that clutter closets, fill up drawers, and hang fallow into what feels like a new purchase as we transform them into desirable “new” items. Hand Me Up recognizes that the ecosystem cannot survive at the present rate of pollution and extraction of its natural resources. We can no longer ignore the industrial-scale destruction caused by mass production processes without witnessing its backlashes. We must perceive the vicious consumption and accumulation of unnecessary goods as compulsive habits of a bygone era and aim to redefine and reshape mainstream aspirations. Hand Me Up’s (reversed) concept of luxury is attached to the idea of preservation rather than acquisition. Leftovers and scraps, paired with handwork, achieve zero waste as they become a mosaic that opens up an infinite array of imaginative and brilliant outcomes. Using a one-of-a-kind approach, we substitute raw materials with existing clothes and transform them to avoid plundering virgin natural resources. The artisan’s hands seize back from machines the power of creating and producing, and, as a result, no two stitches, brush strokes, or shibori dye patterns are alike. Working with our hands

0pposite Hand Me Up Glove Vest, 2019. Vintage Silk

Tafetta Ball Skirt. Courtesy of Pamela Peabody, Jussara Lee. Photo Billy Juno. 199

Bundle Dye Workshop with Master Kah Mun Ng, 2019.

in this freestyle manner re-humanizes our character. It extols our human uniqueness and diversity in taste, style, and experience— qualities often lost in the cookie-cutter digital era. Wood blocking, natural dyeing, felting, and hand painting are other examples of the artisanal approaches we use to cover holes and stains, simultaneously fixing wardrobe and world problems. Hand embroidery, for instance, manifests itself through the act of stitching art, rendering a meditative state that delivers sublime results. As a bonus, these processes activate the brain to achieve higher goals. There is a clear improvement in brain function when the hands lead the way 200

to carry out a creative act.5 Hand Me Up is socially equitable, inclusive, and engaging. The hierarchy between factory workers, their managers, and owners doesn’t apply to the relationship we form with artists and artisans. When I sit with the master tailor, the painters, the embroiderers, the natural dyer, or the leather craftsman, we are all equal. We might find ourselves working under a big tree canopy, at home, or in the studio. We navigate our lives while adding French knot embroidery or brush strokes to an idle garment recently plunged in a madder root bath. Hand Me Up also draws a connection between the makers, the consum-

er, and the environment by encouraging and engaging everyone to participate in this new alliance. It upgrades clients from being mere consumers to have an active voice. It invites them to join forces by pulling out items to be transformed into something “new.” We can slowly detangle the roots of environmental degradation by hand through cooperation, as we aim to solve overconsumption and waste with originality, creativity, and improvisation. There is an empowering component to caring for our belongings, and, metaphysically, this caring brings good karma. When we appreciate the sweat and sacrifices exercised to get existing items back to life, we also appreciate the gifts of nature. We mature and develop as a species when we realize that we are all a part of a single ancestry. We must reevaluate the absurdity and twisted notion that sending our trash to other countries will make it disappear. If I throw my garbage in your backyard, I will later be breathing in the smoke from its burning ashes. This paradigm shift in the way I see the world as one interconnected planet enlightened and propelled me to apply the same transformative Hand Me Up actions towards other areas of my existence. It made me reduce my flying patterns, purchase food exclusively from the farmer’s market, compost and reduce my garbage to almost zero, and most importantly, meditate! These acts helped me release the detrimental weight caused by negative thoughts and excess. A life that felt stagnant and sluggish at times is now free-flowing and uplifting. It afforded me renewed freedom, energy, and a lightness of being. We can no longer deny that the ecosystem that serves the 7.8 billion people currently living on Earth needs mending. I am hopeful the brain, having the capacity to think beyond our single existence, can overcome the pollution destroying our planet. I am optimistic we will realize that the health of the Earth concerns everybody6 and that our society doesn’t need to produce nor purchase more stuff. What we need is to mend and repair what already exists with artistry. When the world seems to be collapsing with the burden of a nonsensical system, we

embrace the Hand Me Up regenerative context. The rule of thumb is what benefits the environment helps us become better human beings. It is that simple. I invite everyone, you, friends, family, clients, and neighbors, to gather in unison to repair the damage around us and join the Hand Me Up movement. My initial desire to make people happy has not entirely dissipated in the filth of our world, but I now replaced it with a more urgent need to be relevant and valuable.

NOTES: 1 https://www.storyofstuff.org/movies/story-of-stuff,

accessed July 12, 2021. 2 World Wildlife Organization, https://www.worldwildlife.

org/stories/the-impact-of-a-cotton-t-shirt, accessed July 12, 2021. 3 Smith, R. (2013, April 17) "A Closet Filled with Regrets,"

Wall Street Journal, https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014 24127887324240804578415002232186418. 4 Niinimäki, K., G. Peters, H. Dahlbo, et al. (2020) “The

Environmental Price of Fast Fashion,” Nature Reviews Earth & Environment 1: 189–200. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017020-0039-9. 5 Hass, S. (2019, June 21) "Working with Your Hands Does Wonders for Your Brain." Psychology Today, https://www. psychologytoday.com/us/blog/prescriptions-life/201906/ working-your-hands-does-wonders-your-brain. 6 Hardin, Garrett (1968) "The Tragedy of the Commons." (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science).

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A SPACE FOR COMMUNITY 202

Recovering a Sense of Place Art and design schools such as Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) are unique among institutions for fostering community through frequent critique (crits). Such crits, usually held in spaces permitting pinup and physical interaction with work, are considered essential tools in studio classes. They enable faculty to better understand students and guide them, and they compel students to fully engage in a class topic as they present and see their own work alongside their classmates’ work. Crits are embedded in studio culture, but this model of teaching through discourse has come under increasing scrutiny given its European roots and the resulting power differentials, biases, and marginalization that the format has tended to reinforce.1 When RISD announced that, due to the pandemic, all Spring semester 2020 classes would be conducted remotely, faculty were challenged to radically re-imagine the studio experience. Amidst an overwhelming milieu of uncertainty and loss, we postulated that virtual reality (VR) might be an innovative way to offer an alternative crit experience for the interdisciplinary class “Digital Materiality.” This course, offered by the Textiles department (Instructor: Joy Ko), merges studio crit culture with the makerspace ethos of Co-Works (Director: David Kim), opensource software applications, and art-tech geek sensibilities. A convergence of the urgent need for effective remote teaching modalities brought upon by the pandemic and connection to deep expertise in collaborative, spatial VR tools (Senior Design Researchers at Microsoft: Evelyn Eastmond and 0pposite Photo courtesy the author.

M Eifler) positioned us to realize this vision of creating a place that could hold the class in a new pandemic-era dispersed reality.2 In a short four-week period, we created a bespoke crit space populated with student work, distributed headsets to students and guest critics, and successfully held weekly VR crits, including the all-important final crit. The use of VR for crit purposes, a practical solution implemented under duress, restored some normalcy and proved reparative for one class. Upon reflection, it has also provided a lens through which we might re-examine, challenge, and thus repair the way that “the crit” is incorporated into art and design education. VR platforms are conventionally focused on gaming and business use, but the emerging technology of social VR platforms has made inroads into sectors once irrevocably tied to physical space and corporeal presence, such as live performance, travel, even intimate ceremonies.3 Despite the relatively nascent state of social virtual worlds, examples informed by a utopian desire to start anew abound, acting as safe havens for social movements or holding space for marginalized groups within a broader community.4 This embodied technology, in contrast to videobased platforms, affords the richness of physical interaction. The presence of bodies, objects, and surroundings in this type of virtual setting provokes a “liveness” akin to a physical setting. Convening for the first time in the VR crit space was an emotional reunion. During pandemic isolation, students experienced 203

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Evelyn Eastmond, M Eifer, David Kim, and Joy Ko

Interacting with work and each other, the bespoke VR crit space designed on the social VR platform AltspaceVR.

a monumental and sudden loss of familiar surroundings. At RISD they lost access to individual studio spaces, as well as to digital fabrication equipment at Co-Works, itself an open hub for interdisciplinarity and a community recognized for breaking down silos. In addition to serving as a practical space for showing work ranging from sketches to fabric samples rich with color and texture, the virtual platform permitted the type of processing that happens when moving around in a physical room. Further, individual agency was engaged in the selection of an avatar identity who, controlled by the student, moved through the space. This allowed for real-time discussion in avatar-clustered groups, enabling close, deliberate, nonlinear examination and interaction, lauded hallmarks of the traditional crit experience. After having to disperse in such a drastic fashion, students found that the familiarity of occupying the same space to discuss creative output allayed their profound feelings of grief and trauma, creative paralysis, and general sense of loss of place in the world, bringing this class closer together in a reparative way. Beyond replicating key aspects inherent to a physical crit—active learning, self-directed experiences, and social behaviors—the VR space accommodated many types of so204

called “zones,” ranging in degrees of intimacy along the spectrum of public, private, and protected. The students’ works—including fabric designs—were communicated and immersively experienced as interior spaces; sometimes they were even traversed as full landscapes. Despite the inability to truly touch and feel, students developed an almost “tactile” virtual sense for how small spaces skinned with their textile designs could feel expansive, while fabric scaled up to wideopen terrain could feel private. In addition to reviving their senses, this embodied context was also a fitting backdrop to discuss immateriality and the physicality of material as an idea, central concepts for this class. An enhanced awareness of spatial potential catalyzed the class to blur and go beyond conventional distinctions of place and space. This collectively engaged students in reclaiming a sense of place by owning both their individual pieces and the sequencing in between. In this alternate crit context, technological agility and spatial acuity became additional levers that offered options for communication beyond verbal fluency and unabashedness, thus subverting conventional models of the art school crit and countering the biases embedded in the legacy of Eurocentric patriarchal modes of discourse.

A number of students who had been comparatively inhibited in their in-person crit presentations were able to shine in the VR space by making their pieces and sequencing speak in highly articulate ways. Greater cohesion was additionally evidenced by students who lingered or revisited the work of classmates outside of dedicated crit times, as well as by those who offered to help classmates in some aspect of VR implementation. The open-source platform presented a lower bar of entry in creating custom spaces that increased students’ agency and by which they were able to better embrace these virtual opportunities for healing and recovery during the pandemic.5 The use of VR revived a sense of place and provided a space for community and healing during the remote learning period. Indeed, the ineluctable truth is that, after the incorporation of VR, we found the class to be stronger than it was pre-pandemic. Perhaps the fact that everyone was new to the use of this technology for crit purposes was just destabilizing enough for another dynamic within the class to emerge, one in which the technologically intrepid could stand alongside the verbally uninhibited, and in which the generosity of spirit stoked in makerspace communities such of Co-Works emerged naturally. In the face of a reality so drastically altered and a community so unmoored, the VR crit space became a safe place that could hold people and objects and in which the experiences and imagination for one class could play out in a positive and restorative way. Now, over one year later, with the pandemic ongoing and the idea of returning to normal still garnering myriad interpretations, we dare extrapolate beyond the specific experience of one class to see how VR crits facilitated a re-examination of the traditional crit. As with many aspects of life that will not resume their pre-pandemic forms, our current use of in-person alongside VR crits is both a dismantling and a repair of the crit, and this hybrid form will, we believe, remain a viable and effective pedagogical tool for art and design institutions.

NOTES: 1 See: Lisi Raskin, “(Some of) The Mechanics of Critique”

(http://www.lisiraskin.com/https/vimeocom/manage/342173393/general); RISD & Race Forum 2020: A forum held on June 16, 2020, led by Jada Akoto and Sarah Alvarez, to confront the racism in the RISD community, and the lack of support they provide for BIPOC students; and The Room of Silence, 2016: Directed by Eloise Sherrid, in collaboration with co-producers Olivia Stephens, Ut Petit, and Chantal Feitosa, and the organizing efforts of the student group Black Artists and Designers; a short documentary about race, identity and marginalization at the Rhode Island School of Design. 2 M. Eifer, “VR Is Here to Help with Our New Reali-

ty,” WIRED, 14 April 2020. (https://www.wired.com/story/ opinion-vr-is-here-to-help-with-our-new-reality/). 3 See: Misha Sra, Aske Mottelson, and Pattie Maes, “Your

Place and Mine: Designing a Shared VR Experience for Remotely Located Users,” in Proceedings of the 2018 Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’18), ACM, 85–97; and Samaneh Zamanifard and Guo Freeman, “‘The Togetherness that We Crave’: Experiencing Social VR in Long Distance Relationships,” in Conference Companion Publication of the 2019 on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, 438–442. 4 See: Dane Acena and Guo Freeman, “‘In My Safe Space:

Social Support for LGBTQ Users in Social Virtual Reality,” in Proceedings of CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CH EAI ‘21), May 2021, ACM, 1–6; Divine Maloney and Guo Freeman, “Falling Asleep Together: What Makes Activities in Social Virtual Reality Meaningful to Users,” in Proceedings of The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY ‘20), November 2020, ACM, 520–521; Brad McKenna, “Creating Convivial Affordances: A Study of Virtual World Social Movements,” in Information Systems Journal (Oxford, England), 30(1), 185–214; Janíce Tisha Samuels and Kelvin Ramirez, “Building a Virtuous Cycle of Activism Using Art and Augmented Reality: A Community of Practice-Based Project,” in Augmented and Mixed Reality for Communities, ed. Josh A. Fisher (CRC Press, 2021), 212–241. 5 Based on this initial proof-of-concept, a subsequent iteration of this class participated in a four-class user study (led by Evelyn Eastmond and M. Eifer) at Microsoft to advance this type of immersive classroom environment and to develop novel research methodology for remote classroom observation in VR. After we piloted several platforms, and based on experiential feedback from students, the open source social VR platform Mozilla Hubs was found to have great advantages. See: RISD Media. 2020. Harnessing VR for the Arts. November 12, 2020 (https://www.risd.edu/news/ stories/risd-participates-in-microsoft-vr-study/).

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EXPRESSIVE OBJECTS 206

(Hi)Stories of Repair Lindsay French

0pposite Darning Egg. Photo Peter O'Neill.

we have to accept planned obsolescence? Do we have the right to repair things, or must we depend on manufacturers to make this possible for us? Students were raising many of the same philosophical questions about the ethics of repair that Elizabeth Spelman discusses in her book Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World, a key text for the course.1 Specific examples led to these more general questions. We extended these discussions when students brought in their own repaired objects (multiply patched jeans, an ancient afghan, a stapled china plate) and talked about why they were particularly meaningful to them personally. A Corset-Laced Repaired Bowl Finding willing subjects to interview on any topic is a challenge for oral history students, most of whom have few connections to people in the community and the environs outside of campus. I decided to start with a demonstration interview with someone close to home: Bob Vennerbeck, a long-term, now retired technician in the Film, Animation and Video (FAV) Department at RISD. Vbob (as he is known) was responsible for keeping the FAV equipment in working repair; he is a well-known and proud dumpster diver, from which he has furnished several rental apartments, and his work room was a veritable warehouse of old, sometimes broken, sometimes simply no longer used film, animation, and projection equipment. Vbob agreed to bring in a couple of repaired objects of his own to talk about. His featured object, and the story he told about it, could not have better encapsulated a creative and completely unlikely repair, and the way in which objects can contain worlds of experience waiting to be revealed. Vbob 207

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Introduction: A Darning Egg This is a story about stories of repair. It features objects that encapsulate stories and bring their history into the present, making material what was no more (or less) tangible than breath and memory. It is a story that weaves through many narratives represented in this volume, beginning with the Repair and Design Futures exhibition at the RISD Museum. With the exhibition concept in mind, as well as the repaired objects on display—objects that told stories opening onto worlds far beyond their material presence—I adapted an oral history course at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) around this theme titled “(Hi)Stories of Repair.” The exhibition’s vision of repair “as an active process of remembering—an ongoing acknowledgement of use, abuse, accident, and/or error—that insists on not forgetting the thing and its history” was our mantra throughout the course. The class began with the idea of objects telling stories, and specifically stories of repair. On the first day, I brought in my mother’s wooden darning egg—something I have never seen her use but has always been in her sewing basket—probably something she received from her mother, although I really cannot imagine my grandmother darning socks either. This one object prompted many observations and questions about the tools of repair and the idea of obsolete tools and forms of repair. What gets repaired and what doesn’t? When is something “beyond repair”? What used to be repaired but now is simply thrown away? Why are everyday material objects so disposable these days? Do

Corset-lacing mend. Barbara Smith Vennerbeck. Photo: Bob Vennerbeck.

brought a simple turned hardwood bowl, unremarkable except for a crack, which had appeared one day with a distinct “CRACK!” for no apparent reason, minding its own business on his family’s kitchen table in Foster, Rhode Island, sometime in the 1960s when Bob was in grade school; a bowl in which he and his brothers enjoyed the privilege, when they were old enough, to use a rounded blade to chop walnuts at Christmastime. The bowl had been a gift from a neighbor, an “ancient gentleman, probably in his 90s at that time,” an old Foster character who had been a well-dowser by trade and lived alone with a barnful of even older stuff, including this salad/chopping bowl. “He was sweet on my mother,” Vbob said, and when the bowl broke she was not inclined to throw it out. But the crack widened slowly over time, and many years later (“long after we were out of the house”) she devised a method to 208

pull the two sides together. Bob’s mother, Barbara Smith Vennerbeck, a student in what preceded the Apparel Department at RISD in 1948, called this technique “corset-lacing.” It was meant to be a temporary brace, to slowly narrow the crack so it could be glued, but it joined “a long family tradition of permanent temporary repairs.” This was a story about RISD and lives beyond RISD, but it circled back to an earlier era at the school as well as an earlier era in rural Rhode Island, when the repair of useful objects was a way of life.2 Barbara’s repair seemed in some ways very contemporary in its quirky elegance; it also recalled a similarly repaired gourd container from Cameroon in the RISD Museum’s Repair exhibition. From Material to Personal Repair Ensuing guests to the class introduced other forms of material repair. Leppi McCarthy,

who repairs fine china in Newport, Rhode Island for a living, excels in making invisible porcelain and ceramic repairs—no staples for her. Interestingly, many of the objects she brought for show and tell were not valuable pieces, but rather were unlikely items of sentimental value to their owners. Students asked if she was ever brought anything she refused to repair. The answer was yes: some broken objects she did not think she could repair, or she did not consider them worth the effort. These she advised against repairing, although if the owner was willing to pay, she would do the best she could. This was a business after all. Yuriko Saito, a philosopher of everyday aesthetics, and former colleague in the Liberal Arts Division at RISD, introduced classic Japanese concepts relating to material repairs: mottainai, “still useful; too good to throw away”; and kintsugi, the highly aestheticized repair of broken ceramics with lacquer and gold leaf. Yuriko’s examples included contemporary artistic “interventions” that draw attention to cracks in the urban landscape, classic Japanese kintsugi tea bowls, and a sweater her mother had knitted for her from two outgrown sweaters that she unraveled and knitted together in a remarkable mottainai tweed. These examples resurfaced later in students projects in unexpected ways. Yuriko also introduced The Repair Manifesto and the philosophy behind “repair cafés,” which began in Europe in 2009 and have since migrated to the US. Repair cafés have their roots in the environmental movement and concern about material waste and thoughtless over-consumption. Our discussions of concrete, material repairs shifted into the realm of environmental repair, and we discussed many examples of such repair efforts in the Providence area: Save the Bay, the Jacob’s Point marsh restoration project, the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council, and the Urban Pond Project, to name just a few. The topic of environmental repair segued directly into the realm of community repair among people who have experienced collective, historical injury. These discussions opened onto the

life worlds of different communities, the reasons for injury, the possibilities of repair, and the sustained effort required to influence complex community processes. Jordan Seaberry, a local artist working for the Center for the Study and Practice of Non-Violence in Providence, talked to the class about the ongoing work of repair in communities harmed by structural racism, deteriorated housing stock, limited employment opportunities, and the prevalence of drugs and guns. The mission of the Nonviolence Institute, as the center is now called, is “to teach, by word and example, the principles and practices of nonviolence, and foster a community that addresses potentially violent situations with nonviolent solutions.”3 Jordon’s studio practice reflects his work on the ground with the Nonviolence Institute, and connects to examples of other artists involved in community reparation through the arts, such as Sebastian Ruth and Community MusicWorks and Theaster Gates, with his many community revitalization projects in Chicago. RISD students who had never imagined there was a role for them in community activism were inspired by Jordan’s work and these other examples. Cambodian-American artist Amy Lee Sanford, whose work explores the intersection of trauma and healing, was the last class guest. Born in Cambodia, she came to the US with her American mother as a very young child a few years before the country fell to the Khmer Rouge in 1975. Her Cambodian father stayed in Cambodia and perished at some unknown point during the following brutal four years. As a teenager, Amy discovered 250 letters her father had sent to her mother during that period when the country was falling inexorably under Khmer Rouge control. By this time, unbelievably, her mother had also died. Amy’s journey as an artist has been to make sense of her own life story as it relates to Cambodia’s collective trauma and the process of social and cultural healing. In 2012 I had watched Amy perform “Full Circle,” at a gallery in Phnom Penh.4 This powerful performance stayed with me, and we invited her to present a small version 209

of this piece, which she titled “Break Pot: Benefit St.”, as part of the Repair and Design Futures exhibition. In this live performance Amy dropped a low-fired terracotta pot commonly used for storage in Cambodia and then methodically sat and pieced the pot back together with glue and twine. The first pot took about an hour to repair, at which point she put it to the side, stood, dropped a second pot, and repeated the process of repair. Not all the broken pieces could be incorporated into the repair; in the end these were swept up by hand and deposited inside each imperfect pot. The piece was mesmerizing, performed in complete silence. Having worked with Cambodians myself since 1983, I understand how hard it is to talk about these experiences. It struck me as both ironic and appropriate that the last guest to our oral history class had performed her piece entirely without words. It reminded me again how expressive objects, gestures, and actions can be, without the need for language at all. 210

Kintsugi Architecture, a Video Quilt, and a Dress for Grieving The students’ final projects re-presented stories they had gathered in their interviews recorded with strangers on a repair topic of their mutual interest. These creative projects wove together the various themes of repair discussed in class with their personal interests in repair in unexpected and sometimes surprising ways. Three examples are presented here to stand in for the range of stories collected and the various modes of their retelling. Taylor, an Architecture graduate student, focused on an unusual kind of repair performed on mass-produced prefab homes before they are handed over to their new owners: Gordon [a carpenter] repairs [brand-new] houses when they are essentially [finished] but need final adjustments to meet the homebuilder’s standard and homeowner’s

Break Pot Beneft St. #1, 2018. Performance by Amy Lee Sanford. Photo Erik Gould, RISD Museum.

expectations. The common repairs Gordon completes are meant to be invisible; the home is meant to seem as if it was created without any errors. My [project] involves casting a series of model homes that resemble a typical suburban dwelling from one mold. Each cast will be made with haste the way a suburban house often is, then repaired by individuals like Gordon. I intend to make visible the repair by using a different material, though, and show that the work put into the repair has value instead of being invisible. ... Repairs should be viewed as a source of character rather than a defect. Taylor’s project was a riff on the kintsugi process that Yuriko Saito had introduced earlier in the semester, as well as a critique of contemporary home-building practices. Sarah, a Textiles student, also focused on a house, though she looked at the way one’s

home and the objects therein deeply reflect the character of the owner. Originally she had thought of repair as a kind of “fix”: Throughout the interviews with Carolyn, repair began to take the form of something more complex than the act of fixing [though]. ... In a broader sense, repair is a lifestyle and spiritual act of salvation. Saving something that is broken ... by seeing its potential through alterations. Within each repaired object there is a fragment of time, a story or a memory. Every time an object is fixed or altered, it shows a moment and stage in the object’s and the repairer’s life. When first meeting Carolyn, to set up a day for the interview, she briefly told a story about her aunt’s quilt. [This was] when the significance of repair became clear to her. She realized then that everything has a purpose and could be made into something. … Throughout her life she has collected objects 211

to make into something new through alterations, like a door being made into a fire mantel. Now over time she has accumulated a collection in her household, where every object holds a purpose and a story. Sarah decided to create a video tour of Carolyn’s house, conceived in the form of a much-repaired quilt, with Carolyn’s comments about repair as the soundtrack: I wanted to show the transition of time, the cycle or recycle of repair, and how the layers of repair create richness and depth. Going back to the story of [Carolyn’s aunt’s] quilt, I wanted to make a quilt of the special repaired and saved objects Carolyn has collected. Within a quilt, each square has a story, or a memory, that ... encapsulates a moment in time. In the same respects of a quilt, I layered short repeating videos on top of each other. Each video of an object has a story and significance in Carolyn’s life. Through the film the quilt is layered and builds up. But once it reaches its fullest capacity, it begins to break down again alluding to the cycle of repair, ... the constant flow of breaking and mending. I ended on the moment which impacted me the most about Carolyn, which is that over time through her collecting and repairing, everything has a story and a deep connection to her.5 The last example of student work circles back to individual experience, and an effort to represent in an object what is very difficult to express in words. Jackie, a graduate student in Textiles, had recently lost her father after a long illness. She interviewed a grief counsellor about the process of working through a major loss that changes the griever forever: I wasn’t entirely sure what would come out of the series of interviews I conducted with Anne. Grief has been on my mind for the past two and a half years and I hoped these interviews would help me explore ways to make work that could generate openness 212

around the experiences of the bereaved. ... The personal nature of grief is what, I think, makes it so difficult for most people to engage with. We fear saying the wrong thing in response to a person’s specific experience. Oftentimes, instead of sitting with the bereaved and sharing in their grief, we look to them for comfort, asking to be assured that their experience was one of love, tenderness, or peace. In response to her interviews, Jackie knitted a long sweater dress, designed to hug the wearer snugly and provide some physical comfort. Embedded in the knit itself and encircling the midsection of the dress were phrases from her own story: “We took turns staying up,”“I stayed up all night,” and, simply, “PAIN.” My story is not exceptional, but it is deeply a part of who I am. The garment, born out of reliving my own experiences during these interviews, illustrates what the interview reveals—that grief is deeply our own and oftentimes very isolating, but only through forcing interactions and conversations around it can we hope to reach a place of strength and communal support. This project recalled the entirely wordless “Break Pot” performance: Amy Lee Sanford’s actions, gestures, and objects managed to communicate something inexpressible in eloquent and powerful terms. Expressive Objects While the class unfolded in many layers, with constant revelations along the way, the task of finding stories in interviews and re-presenting them as material objects was the most compelling aspect of “(Hi)stories of Repair” for RISD students. Reflecting on the Repair and Design Futures exhibition, it strikes me that theirs was the opposite task of the curator, who starts with an object and seeks to reveal its (hi)story. These students were fashioning objects that could powerfully communicate the complex (hi)stories they had discovered.6 The process involved adher-

above

Mass-produced prefab homes with kintsugi repairs, 2018. Taylor McCabe. Photo Yuhe Yao. below

Knit dress (detail), 2018. Jacqueline Scott. Photo Yuhe Yao.

ence to the truths that were revealed to them in the interviews and the imaginative re-presentation of those truths that drew upon their own skills as makers and their own histories. Through this process, they learned that what is created through an oral history interview is the result of two sensibilities engaging with each other. The final product is often as much about the maker’s stories as it is about those of the interlocutor. This class suggested new ways for me to think about oral histories which, when done successfully, reveal a richness of history and personality to both the interviewers and their interlocutors. But they must also engage with a third “party,” an audience experiencing these stories for the first time. Often this richness is not communicated well enough through written words alone. It is a truism that most oral histories end up in archives, unread. Words on a page are not enough to engage everyone. Asking makers to translate their interviews into expressive objects brings these stories alive for viewers in a way that only the best writing about oral history manages to do. This realization helped me rethink the relationship between stories and material objects. As committed as I am to the words themselves—to individual turns of phrase and unique modes of expression— I now realize that words in some combination with objects or gestures or actions may be a more powerful way to communicate complex realities. My students showed me the expressiveness of materiality and opened up the possibilities of communicating oral histories in ways that I could not have imagined myself. For this I am very grateful.7

images of her “Full Circle” performance, please go to http://amyleesanford.com/ [accessed August 24, 2021]. 5 You can see Sarah’s quilt and hear Carolyn’s voice here: https://vimeo.com/591709874. 6 Steven Lubar makes this point powerfully in the coda to his book Inside the Lost Museum: Curating, Past and Present (Harvard University Press, 2017), p. 331.

This paper was written in consultation with my mother, deborah french (1930–2021), and is dedicated to her memory and her stories.

7 Many thanks to all the students in “(Hi)Stories of Repair” in Fall 2018, and to all their interlocutors; especially to Taylor, Sarah, and Jackie for allowing me to use their work as examples. And thanks to our remarkable guests: Bob Vennerbeck, Leppi McCarthey, Yuriko Saito, Jordan Seabury, and Amy Lee Sanford.

NOTES: 1 Elizabeth V. Spelman, Repair: The Impulse to Restore in a Fragile World. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002. 2 This way of life produced Vbob among other things; he was known by many students in FAV as “Saint Fix-It.” 3 For more information, see: https://www.nonviolenceinstitute.org/about-us [accessed August 24, 2021]. 4 For more information about Amy Lee Sanford, and for

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REPAIR IS TO CONSIDER

Notions of Repair as a Pedagogical Dialogue Being an architect, in 2021 at least, most people assume, quite naturally perhaps, that we aspire to build big new buildings in a city environment. It is generally believed that architects are solely trained to do just that. Luckily, as someone who teaches the conception of spaces to first-year architecture students, I can take the example of the pedagogical exercise to describe what it is that we as architects actually do. Often, though, that is not tangible enough. Describing a renovation project brings about a different response, as a dialogue can develop that explores thoughts that traverse most of us, no matter who we are or what métier we practice. Related to this, one might ask: Why teach? Aren’t the projects enough? Teaching, in the architectural domain, allows one to keep on learning, to encourage an attitude, to stay grounded, to re-visit a thought, to re-learn, re-invent, re-connect. The exercise of renovating or repairing allows for the same actions to take place. Both teaching and renovating are practices that are, in that sense, very much related. These practices are far from what many assume we are trained to do. The acts of teaching and renovating ask us, quite simply, to consider. A definition of “consideration,” from the Oxford English Dictionary, reads as follows: 1: continuous and careful thought 2: a matter weighed or taken into account when formulating an opinion or plan 3: thoughtful and sympathetic regard 4: an opinion obtained by reflection 5: esteem, regard

0pposite and all illustrations Mark Davis.

Given this, then, repairing is analogous to considering. Repair pushes us to consider our actions. It pushes us to ask questions about our reality, one that is rooted in a place and a time. It pushes us to consider others: those who were there before us, those who are there now, and those who will come after. It encourages us to take into consideration their input, their logic, their ideas—or lack thereof. As an architect, you have to listen. As a teacher, you have to listen. As a person, you have to listen. If one is not taught in school how to listen, then it is hoped that one will learn later. It may be that this learning will be obtained slowly, perhaps through a series of challenging human experiences. Why aren’t notions of repair taught in architecture school? Or, for that matter, in earlier educational settings? The answer may be that there is already so much to learn, that it should be intuitive to listen: to others, the materials, the context, the structure, no matter what the relationship we may or may not have with these existing elements. Yet listening is a skill and repairing incorporates a set of notions and tools that do not only require listening. It seems obvious that such an idea be taught in architecture school, a place where the tools for building are transmitted. Repairing is building. Furthermore, it is rebuilding by laying out a strategy to enhance a project, after careful observation and reflection. One might assume that repairing should be left to those who know how the spaces we inhabit were constructed. Artisans, like doctors in the Western world, come to “fix” what is damaged, broken, or endangered. But 215

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Clarisse Labro

if a student is equipped with this concept, then she will push herself towards a perpetual dialogue with her project, in its relationship to other parts of the whole. Educators need to be very aware of the attitude we are encouraging within our métier. If repair is to be recast as a basic design tool, then the approach that students will have towards their projects and peers might be one of healthy selflessness. As students of architecture, we are taught how to observe what we see with our eyes. From those observations, we draw readings. We learn to read objects, spaces, behaviors, and contexts. But there are more layers to the inanimate environment we live in. To “read

between the lines” is to observe also what is not there, or what was once there. Much like a ghost, a building has witnessed a series of lives, interventions, events—hidden reasons for being what it is. It becomes critical repairing when we put all of our senses into motion before we act. The following annotated drawings propose to simply and directly translate observations of an old structure destined for repair, into notions for consideration. These drawings have been made from observation, on site. They are a foundation for understanding the repairing at hand, but also a tool for teaching some essential notions for becoming an architect.

The balcony: an exterior space solely designed for the comfort of the humans and to provide ornament. In this case, the one observed and drawn is most certainly not original. The age of the wood and the bland design of it suggests that it is not original. It has been re-placed there, simply tacked onto the structure as if drawing a physical line to show the "limit" between the habitable and the wild. It may be a reminder that we are all replaceable. Even if that is true, we do our best to be useful and contribute mindfully. This is a humbling lesson everyone needs to hear once in a while, in order to be able to reconnect with what is essential.

The cheese cellar: this could be named the vault of the household. It holds the cheese that will age for a few months before being sold and taxed. This room, like everyone in the building, has the minimum height needed to serve its purpose. Here no one needs to stand, the room just needs shelves to store the family’s property. It needs no light and is at a controlled humidity. It sits directly on the earth and benefts from the family living above.

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The Fenil: Where the hay is stocked. The hay may dry so that it can then be fed to the farm animals. It also acts as an insulation for the rooms below. The Etable: Where the cows, pigs, and goats cohabit in the winter. Their body heat creates a warm room that insulates the adjacent room where the humans live.

Interior/support wall: built out of stone, it acts as a load-bearing wall. It takes the load from the center of the wooden roof structure. It creates an odor barrier as well as a sound insulation between farm animals and humans.

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The living space: Where the family lives for three or four of the winter months. The cheese cellar: Where the cheeses made are stocked to age. In the most humid part of the building, directly touching the dirt, encircled by stone foundations and a ceiling of wood that acts as the foor of the human quarters.

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This interior corner is the south-east corner of the farm, the etable “animal shed” part of the structure. Here we can observe a few construction details that tell us about the order in which the elements were placed, as well how they relate to each other and what they may activate.

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Unknown wood element: Could be here to compensate for a weakness in the existing beam. It could also be here to support a shelf. In either case, it offers assistance. It often comes as a repair, or an add-on for something missing. It is our duty as peers, as teachers, to reinforce, uphold, and accept one’s differences, and their qualities. Ventilation-air hole: Intended to release the carbon dioxide of the farm animals from the space. The gas emitted by the creatures dampens the wood that decomposes over time. Turn to other art forms in order to understand your own. Look at other people’s works to get a new perspective on the project at hand. Learn from others, constantly, without hierarchy.

Sill beam: Allow leaders to lead while showing them that leading does not mean imposing nor bossing around. Rather, leading in a team is to stay strong, keep direction, and let people lean on you as much as possible. 4

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Conclusion: The French Alpine farm’s space organization, like most vernacular architecture, is very pragmatic. Every room provides something needed to the one adjacent or below. Each space has a specific, given, primary function—a role. It also has an underlying architectural function. Much like a group of students or architects working together, each individual has a responsibility to the collective project. Yet each person may also find an unprogrammed role, according to their own intellectual strength, manual skills and/ or human quality. The architectural dynamic of the sequence of spaces, like the group dynamic, only works well if it goes full circle: if it uses what came before, what is there, in order to construct what is projected next. This particular type of building was conceived to be self-sufficient, just like a collaborative project needs to be. The farm used in this chapter was built in 1786. The site may have been chosen after finding the presence of a big stone on the hill, as well as its proximity to the nearby “hameau” where a school and oven were in operation. All elements were brought by men on horseback. With the structure being in the “pre-Alps” and on a steep hill, we suspect the stones, and the bigger stone in particular, was already there. This stone also is the starting point for a certain geometry for the house: the vertical alignment with the wooden structure above, which separates the smaller room in the living quarters. In plan, horizontally, it marks the entrance of one of the three cheese cellars: the cheese being what the whole family and farm rely on; the produce that makes the system go round—which sustains the family, literally and economically. We can draw a parallel between the built farm and the group dynamic around a student’s project. Much like the founding idea from which a student’s project radiates, students (architects) need a common red line to always go back to—a leading idea that becomes a need, the desire to serve. This idea has been translated into a drawing, a written statement. A person, or several

people in the group, can often embody that link—they don’t lose track of that idea, despite explorations that are made during the creative process. They become the “glue” for the whole unit to stay together. Both the idea and the individuals that embody it are a steady keel that others can rely on. It is not a given role, but rather an intrinsic one; a part that one plays naturally, without having learned any lines. Rather, the part has been learned by following instinct. In the third drawing, we are observing a vertical structural element leaning heavily to one side. The post has held up to the forces of weather and time. Straightening it up implies straightening the whole wooden structure of the house. It implies understanding whether the material can take it, to what extent it is flexible. We need to consider whether what it is sitting on can hold such a move. Overall, it may have taken 200 years for this diagonal to have been “drawn”, for the post to have leaned towards one side. Tracing a perpendicular line in a few minutes, making it “straight” again, could be too violent and damaging. It could also very well take the manipulation. With the right tools, the proper bracings, a careful approach, and technical skills, it can be repaired. We need to constantly ask ourselves questions. How much can we repair? How should we proceed for this repair? What do we need to foresee in order to repair? What is the limit when it comes to repair and disfigurement? Similar questions are to be asked when having dialogues with students. How honest can a teacher be without potentially being too blunt? How can constructive criticism be given to a student using the most effective language? Flaws in projects, otherwise problematic attitudes towards projects, can become positive jumpstarts. These issues can actually help to kick off a new attitude towards a peer or a process of working. Again, in this context, repair and consideration are interchangeable. It is not just a physical exercise, but one of reading between the lines.

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RELATIONSHIPS OF MUTUAL INVITATION

Toward Repairing the Social Fabric:

Music Performance and Pedagogy at Work Sebastian Ruth

0pposite Photo courtesy Community MusicWorks

“Traces” ends with a refrain sung by young people and their teachers: “How do we repair?” This is a timely question with many kinds of responses, which I’ll discuss in the following paragraphs. This event marked one effort in our organization’s ongoing mission to create a cohesive urban community through music education and performance that transforms the lives of children, families, and musicians. Put differently, this is a mission guided by an impulse to repair, an impulse to have musicians leave the world better than they found it and to use their time and talents to make positive contributions in the world.

•••• Community MusicWorks is premised on the idea that musicians can make work in the world as performers and educators rooted in the life of a community and woven into the fabric of a community’s daily rituals. When we started in 1997, we were looking to translate the model of artists in residence from colleges and conservatories to a neighborhood context, where musicians live, teach, perform and become part of community life. Taking a cue from Bill Strickland and the Manchester Craftsmen’s guild in Pittsburgh, the notion that artists are living and working and practicing their artform in a neighborhood setting means that there is a relationship of mutual invitation: an invitation from the artists to young people to enter into their practice, and an invitation from community 221

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On a recent Saturday on an empty lot in the West End of Providence, young people, families, neighborhood business owners, and concert-goers gathered for a musical event that grew out of a two-year research and oral history project about the history of the land where Community MusicWorks (CMW) plans to build its future building. In a festival-like atmosphere, a Native American drumming group performed and offered an opening blessing, a Dominican spoken word artist performed a poem about his experience growing up in the neighborhood and witnessing gentrification and change, an elder from the Hmong Church, dressed in traditional costume, sang a mournful song about a bride’s sorrow leaving home to join a new family. And musicians from the MusicWorks Collective, the resident ensemble of Community MusicWorks, performed “Traces,” a four-movement piece by Shaw Pong Liu that drew inspiration from these artists and two dozen interviewees who shared their stories and memories of the land. This event, this piece of music, and its accompanying oral history project are part of an intention for art to play a role in understanding, processing, and recognizing the complex history of an urban neighborhood—from the violent past of indigenous peoples’ removal from this land, to the waves of immigration, change, displacement, and searching for home that all have coexisted in the urban neighborhoods of Providence.

members to the artists to make their work in the setting of the neighborhood. At the core of the organization is an ensemble of string players in residence who perform a series of concerts throughout the season in settings ranging from museums and concert halls to recreation center gymnasiums, neighborhood bars, and taquerias. Each of the members teaches young people in violin, viola, or cello and the program aims to introduce young people to the richness of the traditions of string music playing, emphasizing fluency in many musical styles so that they may grow to express themselves in a variety of genres. By engaging in this mission, our hope and intention is that the organization is able to animate a connection between artists and community life such that concert music feels connected and relevant to the everyday ups and downs in people’s lives. We aim to have young people grow up to see music making as a normalized experience and not a rarified one. The background context is that Western classical music has a history of exclusivity and exclusionary practices, from its origins in the halls of eighteenth century aristocracy to a dogged attachment to the canon of white European male composers at the exclusion of female, and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) voices, to the historical insistence in the United States that classical music stands apart from other complex musical practices by Black and other non-white communities.1 At the same time, we have found that the experience of long-term study of an instrument together with a mentor over many years, and a community of loving and supportive peers, can be a nourishing and strengthening activity for young people. A cohort of peers who imagine their futures together and who make meaning of their current identities together is sometimes the strongest predictor of future well-being and success getting to and through college.2 At cmw we have aimed to create a pedagogy of musical study based in practices of emancipatory pedagogy, and support students 222

to have agency over their learning. And we have tried to nurture a supportive and non-competitive atmosphere for learning and expression. The question we have lived with is whether we can practice classical music while acknowledging and then shedding some of the aura and problematic practices of its traditions. Put another way, could we practice and teach this artform in ways that have meaning for the young people and musicians even as we abandon some of the traditional practices that accompany it? This means holding the tension between recognizing that classical music is a tradition with a problematic history and simultaneously an emotionally accessible and broadly meaningful practice to many.

•••• John Dewey wrestled with a similar set of questions in the 1930s as he set out to write about the significance of art. He understood there to be a deep, human, and potent role for the arts in our everyday lives. He understood that the impulse for art comes from something fundamentally human in our quest to find order and make meaning in our lives, but that practicing the arts had become entrapped in a baggage of exclusivity, nationalist and imperialist motivations in the building of museums and opera houses and in the association with wealth and class. The art impulse isn’t about dressing up in fancy clothes, attending gala events, and entering into august buildings. He said the impulse for art stems from the satisfaction we get when suddenly the chaos of our minds and our lives is temporarily stilled in moments of focus, where the past recedes and worries about the future don’t bear down on us and we come into a space of feeling a connection to the meaning of things. Dewey criticizes the impulse to put art on a pedestal as if it’s a remote object deserving awe and reverence. Understanding the meaning of art requires us to “restore continuity between the refined and intensified forms of experience that are works of art and the everyday events, doings, and

Community MusicWorks young musicians. Photo courtesy Community MusicWorks.

sufferings that are universally recognized to constitute experience.”3 Dewey talks about restoring not only a connection to everyday events, but in fact a connection to self, to the meaning of our lives, to the deepest impulses we have to attend to beauty, and have that connection shed light on our every day.

•••• In a conversation about repairing the social fabric, Paolo Freire’s analysis offers a critically important perspective. He talks about the dynamics of oppression and how we are conditioned in society to see the oppressive forces as constant and unchangeable. To break free requires a mutual project of discovering the reality of the conditions of our world and then working with intention to change the way we operate. Freire points out that the dominant group cannot liberate the oppressed through acts of charity alone. He talks about a risk of false generosity when the oppressor class identifies solutions that don’t fundamentally change the structures that keep people down. “Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift.”4 Similarly, he says oppressed peoples cannot liberate themselves alone, and that deep attention needs to be paid to the risks of the oppressed gaining power and then simply replicating the patterns of oppression that they once experienced.

How then do we combat these patterns and work toward repair of the social fabric in the interest of justice? Freire points out that the path to mutual liberation begins when we recognize the dynamics of the world we live in, and together commit to understanding and shifting the oppressive dynamics of how we operate. In the case of cmw, it means that as we unpack the layers of our practice, we can’t assume that our efforts toward making music experiences accessible in our community don’t come with baggage. Indeed part of the work of our project is to become conscious of that baggage, acknowledge it, and create new practices together. We are never outside the systems we are critiquing, and therefore our work needs to be constantly attuned to how those oppressive systems inform, influence, and get reflected in daily decisions. That said, when we look at our work as artists and with young people as being imbued by the values of curiosity, learning, love, and humility, we have an opportunity to explore pathways forward.

•••• What does this mean on a day-to-day level? What is a daily mindset of liberation? Maxine Greene discusses true freedom starting from identifying the obstacle in our path and recognizing that obstacle not as immovable but rather as an opportunity to find a way around or over or through. In that way, she says, freedom is the identifying moment, the recognition that we can find a solution 5. It is the courage to see the obstacle in front of us as temporary, even when we don’t yet know the path around. A practice of freedom is a practice of courageously seeing ourselves—as individuals, as teachers and students, as an organization—approaching problems with curiosity. As an organization, for instance, 223

what do we do with a complex question of acknowledging the exclusionary practices in classical music while entrusting that same artform with the charge to bring young people into fuller experiences of themselves in their communities? One approach would be to back away and say there is no way to practice justice through an artform fraught with such a problematic history. Alternatively, we can approach this question with curiosity, knowing through our firsthand experiences that music-making in this genre can yield joy, camaraderie, and life-long friendships. And at the same time, Freire reminds us that we need to constantly be seeking the whole truth of an experience if we are to stay tuned to its liberatory potential and goals. At cmw, we have alumni who have moved on from the social justice discourse of our teen program to deeper inquiries in college and beyond about the meaning of their experience here. It is their critical reflections on the experience that gives us a richer and fuller perspective about what is and is not happening in our efforts toward artistry, community, and liberatory practice. In particular, a group of alums recently reflected back to us that while their experience of community, supportive peers and mentors, and shared endeavor around music-making was profound for them, they wished cmw had fostered opportunities to critically examine the place of classical music in our community and the reasons it traditionally exists as an exclusive cultural practice. For them, a barrier to full experience as they look back on it was the program’s efforts to re-purpose or repair the practice of classical music without bringing young people into a deeper dialogue about what is broken in the first place. Despite a two-decade-long endeavor in changing the cultural practices around classical music, young people need to be continually exposed to the discourse of why we exist and what we are trying to change. Without that co-intentional effort, the program risks offering those false acts of generosity about which Freire warns. And in a pedagogical practice focused on liberation, the key is not 224

simply what is offered to the students, but how they are encouraged to develop a mindset of seeing obstacles and finding ways of moving beyond them.

•••• Stepping back yet further, what is the relative capacity of cultural endeavors to make significant change? The enduring legacies of slavery, structural racism, redlining, and so much more is evident in the unequal distribution of public resources in our neighborhoods, the inequities in schools for our young people, chronic health issues, access to fresh and affordable food, and ultimately life expectancies. Against this backdrop, when the problems are so fundamental and the immediate symptoms of those problems need urgent attention, what is the significance of music and music learning? The activist, author, and cultural leader Grace Lee Boggs spent seven decades involved in every major struggle for social justice of the later twentieth century and early twenty-first. She and her husband Jimmy Boggs formed the theoretical frameworks that guided many protests and political actions in Detroit, from labor organizing, to the 1960s racial justice rebellions, moments in the Black Power movement, women’s rights protests and more. Through fierce dialogue, speaking, and writing, Grace Lee Boggs accrued in her lifetime more experience in the efforts of repairing injustices than most. At the end of her life, Boggs turned her attention to what she referred to as “sustainable activism” for the twenty-first century, and wrote that true revolutionary results may come more from people investing deeply in themselves and their local communities than in sweeping political change. “It becomes clearer every day that organizing or joining massive protests and demanding new policies fail to sufficiently address the crisis we face. They may demonstrate that we are on the right side politically, but they are not transformative enough. They do not change the cultural images or the symbols that play such a pivotal role in molding us into who we are.” 6

In the last two decades of her life (from age 80 to 100!), Boggs devoted energy to the Detroit Summer programming, which created community gardens, developed meaningful learning and work opportunities for young people in city neighborhoods, and encouraged young people to mentor younger children. She believed that it is work at this hyper-local level that makes the deepest impact. And beyond that, Boggs talks about growing our souls as the most profound work we can undertake, noting that artists have a particular capability and opportunity to make cultural work that gives people images of what a better future could be. “We need artists to create new images that will liberate us from our preoccupation with constantly expanding production and consumption and open up space in our hearts and minds to imagine.”7 In this context, the activity of musicians working side by side with children in a shared endeavor of learning and making meaning takes on a different kind of importance.

•••• Looking globally at the question of repair, we must recognize that it is a complicated process without guarantees. We may set our intentions to establish good work in the world and follow a mission to support people’s lives and be on the path of liberation. But any true process of repair needs to remain constantly and vigilantly aware of the changing dynamics in a community. Freire points out that reality is always changing, and a course of action that is right at one moment will need to be re-evaluated later. I think of an organization’s mission as like a boat heading toward a point on the horizon. It may be driving for an hour and still be pointing exactly at the same destination, but without looking behind at its wake the driver can’t know whether the boat has drifted off course. The currents may be pushing the boat to the side and far out of its lane, but looking only at the target the driver may be unaware of this.

Staying attuned, staying aware of the currents and conditions may give us the necessarily wide lens to know the effectiveness of what we’re doing. Dewey suggests that artists may be particularly well suited to seeing the currents of the day and imagining other possibilities for the future. “Only imaginative vision elicits the possibilities that are interwoven within the texture of the actual. The first stirrings of dissatisfaction and the first intimations of a better future are always found in works of art.” 8 It is incumbent on us to remain conscious of what we are looking to repair, how the current conditions differ from those when we set out, how we may need to adjust course. And perhaps it is the self-awareness of an artist’s mindset—staying attuned to all that is happening in the world around us— that will ensure the humility and perspective to keep pursuing change. Returning to the scene of the outdoor concert, maybe it is a constant commitment to weave together history, co-create work with young people and listen to the currents of the day that fuel an ongoing and always unfinished journey of repair.

NOTES: 1 Loren Kajikawa, “The Possessive Investment in Classical

Music: Confronting Legacies of White Supremacy in U.S. Schools and Departments of Music,” in Seeing Race Again: Countering Colorblindness across the Disciplines, ed. Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019). 2 Mandi Savitz-Romer and Suzanne Bouffard, Ready, Willing,

and Able: A Developmental Approach to College Access and Success (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Education Press, 2012). 3 John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Milton, Batch,

1934), 2. 4 Paolo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continu-

um, 1970), 29. 5 Maxine Greene, “Freedom, Education, and Public Spaces,”

in Dialectic of Freedom (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988). 6 Grace Lee Boggs and Scott Kurashige, The Next American Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), 36. 7 Boggs and Kurashige, Revolution, 37. 8 Dewey, Art as Experience, 360.

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228 Epilogue: Stronger Futures—a Call to Action Markus Berger and Kate Irvin 234 Lexicon of Repair Markus Berger, Kate Irvin, and Ariel Wills 242 Acknowledgements 244 List of Contributors 252 List of Figures 256 Select Bibliography 264 Index

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Epilogue:

Stronger Futures—a Call to Action! Markus Berger and Kate Irvin

“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change.” — octavia e. butler, Parable of the Sower

In her 1993 novel Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler presents an apocalyptic vision of the United States in the year 2024: a society shattered by climate change, demagoguery, late capitalist consumerism, dwindling resources, social inequity, and gun violence. These are amongst a host of other human-made ills that are referenced. It is a dystopia that feels uncomfortably prescient and shockingly close to the instances of societal and environmental brokenness across the globe that are highlighted in this volume. In the world that is envisioned by Butler, a society in shambles can be saved by allowing oneself to be malleable and flexible, by actively constructing one’s own life and community with care and commitment to mutual support: all that you Change Changes you. What Butler often refers to in her writing as “positive obsession,” which prioritizes betterment in defiance of fear and doubt, leads to sustenance and survival. Through the lens of Repair, the chapters in this book encourage such “positive 0pposite Installation, Markus Berger and Emre Yalcin, 2019, Photo by Paolo Cardini.

obsession” as they address some of the most complex and pivotal challenges of our time, relating to environmental and social reparations. Repair is presented here as a diverse practice and as a word with multiple meanings connected to the word’s Latin root, reparare, meaning “to pay attention to,” as well as “to make ready.” Repair is therefore a tool for apologizing, clarifying, stitching up wounds, and for ensuring a reasonable amount of continuity in our lives—continuity of meaning, social relations, and material consciousness—while also catalyzing change. Authors from various disciplinary fields have reflected on the potential for enhancing our societies in ways that will allow for new learning and expanded creativity, imagination, and discovery. In doing so, they have opened pathways not only to building, but also to sustaining activism, developing stronger communities, expanding the life of products and buildings, and enabling the development of social and aesthetic mindsets and values that sidestep capitalist structures and strictures. In the spirit of a call for action, this book argues for radically different ways of thinking and acting. It proposes changes to current 229

ways of being and doing, in ways that are not traditionally part of our academic curricula, practice, or everyday experiences. We must challenge and expand our work as designers, artists, students, teachers, museum staff, and arts practitioners to re-think the values that we have inherited and follow blindly, and that continue to guide us. Processes of repair aid in this pursuit by prompting ideological and material inspiration in the forces of change that are evident in all that is existing, old, discarded, and devalued by today’s capitalist society. Repair is a creative disruption. It is an act and concept that provides insight in far less intrusive ways than traditional modes of making, building, purchasing, processing, and discarding. It allows us not only to tackle problems creatively, critically, directly, and minimally, but also to embrace diversity and inclusivity in every respect. The varied perspectives included here

coalesce into an urgent declaration of shared intentions. It is a declaration that manifests in multiple calls for action built on the concept and practice of repair as the foundation for designing better futures by embracing change while tending to what is here and now. Each of the authors in this book calls for engaging with the world and its future(s) with creativity and imagination. In their own ways, they prompt us to actively respond to our immediate circumstances and look ahead, arguing for collective, unrestricted, unstructured, and specific action in response to brokenness at all levels of our societies and our designed worlds. Repair in this context embraces and insists on change, serving as a critical tool for navigating our broken world in the spirit of an open-source project, as a generative twenty-first century response to the multitude of issues we face today.

A Collective Call to Action Repair is a mindset and a design concept for innovative reuse and the remaking of everyday objects, spaces, buildings, as well as society at large. It fosters the creation of new futures. Each of the chapters here issues a call for empowerment via reparative action directed at every human that engages with the world and seeks to creatively and critically imagine alternative futures. Our voices, together with many others, demand and call for a multiplicity of actions to change the status quo, to rebel against the impulse to continually acquire and advocate for that which is new. This is a call to open our eyes to injustice, to demand equality, and to deconstruct systems of power. Our ideas seek to inspire and encourage us to:

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Re-Think our Communal Values Re-Envision our Frameworks Create New Habits ReMake

Re-Think our Communal Values REJ ECT CA PI TA L I ST D E FI NIT IO NS O F BE AUTY Repair allows us to develop social, aesthetic, and value-based notions of beauty.

M A K E RO O M FO R MU LT I PL IC ITY Repair acknowledges multiple authors, pasts, and futures.

CR E AT E WI T H A CO L L ECT IV E MIN DSET Repair encourages us to design collaboratively and within a diverse group.

QU EST I O N EX I ST I NG F R A MEWOR KS Repair challenges convention by asking more thoughtful questions.

E MB R AC E T H E I MPE R F ECT Repair stands in opposition to perfectionism.

RE I MAGI NE A RC H I T ECTU R E AN D DESIGN Repair inspires us to let go of the perceived wisdom of the singular designer/architect and create products that can be endlessly adjusted.

Re-Envision our Frameworks BY PASS T H E T EXT BO O K Repair instigates alternative ways of learning and drives material-based research and innovation.

I MAGI NE D I F F E R E NT LY Repair motivates imagination, discovery, and creativity.

E NGAGE I N PLU R A L I ST I C T HIN KING Repair decenters locations of knowledge.

D EV E LO P A CO MMU NI TY Repair supports the restoration of craft and promotes autonomous economic and cultural vitality.

D ESI GN CO MMU NA L LY Repair involves community stakeholders to generate designs.

CR E AT E R E L AT I O NSH I PS Repair as a process awakens and strengthens our relationships with objects, systems, communities, and individuals.

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Create New Habits CA P YOU R WAST E Repair offers an alternative to adding to the waste stream and reduces energy demands. C H A NGE BU Y I NG H A B I TS Repair prompts cyclical consumption/appreciation of existing goods. EXT E ND MAT E R I A L L I F E Repair gives materials and objects multiple lives. I NCO R PO R AT E F L EX I B I L ITY Repair acknowledges a spectrum of possibilities and outcomes for damaged goods. CO NSI D E R MI NI MA L I NT E RV E NT IO N Repair encompasses various definitions of completeness and embraces a range of actions that allow for the transition of a broken object to something that is functional. R A I SE YOU R A R MS Repair generates social, political, and environmental activism.

ReMake R EWO R K T H E PAST Repair appropriates, transforms, and provokes critical re-evaluation of past values and uses. R ECOV E R T H E R E P R ESSED AN D O P P R ESSE D Repair aids in pairing together again (re/pairing) fractured identities, histories, and relations. R ECO NFI GU R E , A DJUST, AN D T R ANSFO R M Repair creates alternative typologies, forms, and experiences by reconfiguring and rearranging parts or elements into something new. TA K E OV E R Repair sets new potentials into motion and unsettles ideas of single authorship, originality, and authenticity. FI GH T FO R EQUA L I TY AN D J UST IC E Repair stitches equality and justice into the narrative of our social fabric. C R E AT E NEW FUTU R ES Repair is a mindset and a design concept for innovative reuse and the remaking of everyday objects, spaces, buildings, and society; it paves the way for envisioning alternative futures.

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Lexicon of Repair Markus Berger, Kate Irvin, and Ariel Wills

This Lexicon includes a sampling of reparative philosophies and methods practiced around the world within different cultures, religions, and languages. Some in this inventory of key concepts of repair have been around for centuries, while others are much more recent. While the 12 lexicon entries are only snapshots in the cultural world of reparative thinking and practice, they represent a wide array of rooted practices that we hope will spark interest in further research on the myriad examples of global traditions and modes of repair not included in this vocabulary. ‘Andoolnííłgo—Shándíín Brown Darning—Lisa Z. Morgan Gambiarra—Fred Paulino Jua Kali—Tahir Karmali Jugaad—Hammad Abid Mending—Jessica Urick Mottainai—Mirei Takashima Claremon Murammat—Shahzad Bashir Quilting—Zoë Pulley Reparations—Matthew Shenoda Resolver—Robert Arellano Tikkun Olam—Aliza Tuttle

On ‘Andoolnííłgo By Shándíín Brown (Diné) The Diné Bahane’ (Navajo creation story) tells us that the Holy People (our deities) taught the Navajo people how to weave textiles so that we could provide for ourselves and stay warm. Rooted in strong traditions, Navajos make and use textiles as cloaks, dresses, and blankets. In Navajo culture, we are taught to be resourceful and see the beauty in everything. When a textile is damaged or ripped, we repair it. We repair and mend our textiles over and over to honor the piece, maker, materials, and Holy People. The word, as well as concept, for “repair” in Diné Bizaad (Navajo language) is ‘andoolnííłgo. When I was a young girl, shimá sání (my maternal grandmother) instilled the concept of ‘andoolnííłgo in my being. She taught me how to mend and thus honor the material items we are blessed to have. Moreover, she told me stories about when our people had everything taken away from them during the 1864 Long Walk of the Navajo and years of forced internment at H’weedli (Fort Sumner, New Mexico). During that time our people could not weave and thus did not have their woven cloaks, dresses, and blankets. Many Navajos became gravely ill and froze to death. From these stories I have a deep gratitude for our textiles and the practice of their repair. 234

Shándíín Brown is a jeweler, fashion enthusiast, Native American Art professional, and citizen of the Navajo Nation. Currently she works at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum as the Henry Luce Curatorial Fellow for Native American Art. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts majoring in Anthropology as well as Native American Studies and minoring in Environmental Studies. Previously she has held positions at the Heard Museum, Hood Museum of Art, Penn Museum, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Barnes Foundation, and School for Advanced Research Indian Arts Research Center. On Darning By Lisa Z. Morgan Darning is a stitched response to holes/breaks/wounds that develop in knitted fabrics; perhaps rubbed through by repetitive wear and tear or eaten away by moths. Due to the nuances of material, weave, fibers, etc., the hole requires a darn that fully meshes with the body of the garment. The outcome is prescribed, i.e to fill the hole, mend the hole, and to make wearable/useful once more. The darning of a hole, no matter how small, is wide open to interpretation; it requires tender involvement, and a readiness to sit with a level of discomfort before beginning to respond. One needs to almost “listen to” what the wound/rupture might need—assessing, touching, feeling, intuiting, as well as a close examination of the threads that remain; what is strong, resilient or weak. Darning also becomes a compelling proposal to activate ideas regarding reciprocal responsibility and thought. It engenders connection and also makes visible the endeavor to mend the flaws. The very presence of the stitched response or “mark” communicates the wish to ameliorate, to tend and to care, and on a local scale it affords us an agency for how we might address questions, and shape answers that are responsive—to ourselves, social relations, and our environment. Lisa Z. Morgan’s work crosses disciplinary borders and cavorts across a variety of media, ranging from knickers, to perfume, sewn paintings, mixed media installations, performances, short films, and the written word. Melding critical ways of knowing with the haptic and embodied, she fosters dialogues around the intricacies of sense-making, desire, and the desire impulse. Morgan is the Co-Founder of STRUMPET & PINK and the author of Design Behind Desire. Her work has been reviewed in eight books, featured in international magazines, and included in several private collections as well as RISD Museum, Providence, and Victoria & Albert Museum, London. On Gambiarra By Fred Paulino Gambiarra is the name given in Brazil to the practice of carrying out repairs and inventions using alternative materials, improvisation, and a sense of spontaneous and immediate creativity. A gambiarra is a temporary solution that can turn out to be permanent. Gambiarra is 235

universal and part of the country’s culture, whether in rural or urban areas, and it subtly articulates ideas that are relevant to contemporary life, such as the reuse of materials, DIY, open source, and repair practices. We don’t make gambiarras just because we need to, but also because we like it. Simultaneously gambiarras are both the Brazilian’s salvation and failure. While gambiarras reveal an innate ability to solve practical problems in the most adverse situations (extreme adaptability), they expose the ills of a society historically left to neglect—by the colonizers, by the elites—and that, therefore, often conforms to the vagueness of temporary responses to chronic problems. Brazilians even boast frequently about it, as if this supposed “strategic differential” was an expanded capacity for survival—compensating for the historical delay. The contemporary world solemnly distances us from dealing with objects, tools, and the materiality of existence, impelling us to digital interfaces in place of gambiological practices. However, as long as there is Brazilianness—the ingenuity for making and doing with less—and economic resources are limited or in the hands of only a few, there will be gambiarras. Fred Paulino is a Brazilian artist, designer, researcher, and curator. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Master’s degree in Contemporary Art. He is the catalyst of the referential Gambiologia project, which since 2008 investigates art and technology in dialogue with education and popular culture, especially around the themes of improvisation and reuse through practices of “gambiarra.” He is the editor-in-chief of Facta magazine and curated three editions of “Gambiologos” exhibitions. He has been the coordinator of independent education programs such as “Favela Hacklab.” His work has been presented internationally in seminars and exhibitions such as Ars Electronica, ISEA, Zero1 Biennial, FILE, and Videobrasil. On Jua Kali By Tahir Karmali Literally translated as “fierce sun,” Jua Kali originally referred to day laborers who worked in the fields. After Kenya’s independence, this term slowly changed meaning as cities developed across the country. Everyone in Kenya has their own nuanced definition, but, for the most part, Jua Kali describes the informal sector of Kenya’s economy. It also refers to a region in the city where “Jua Kali workers” create practical design objects, often welded or made from metal, at a lower cost than those found in retail stores. When something is described as “made in a Jua Kali way,” it means that the object was made practically, quickly, and with ease. As a descriptor of quality, Jua Kali could go one of two ways: if the object fails, then it was shoddily made; if the object succeeds, then it is sturdy and reliable. I think of Jua Kali as being closer to impro-

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visation and creativity. I imagine all of us as being Jua Kali: welded together to somehow function at any cost, we are the amalgamation of a series of fragmented histories, full of ambition for “development,” and left with the painful echoes of colonialism. I find it poetic that this term is linked to the sun because it is innately associated with time. It is a reminder of our history and ferocity as we continue to move into the future. Tahir Karmali (b. 1987, Nairobi) is an artist who has been based in Brooklyn since 2014. His work spans photography, installation, papermaking, sculpture, and sound. Thematically his work deals with concepts that surround labor, neocolonialism, and mortality. Karmali’s work was on exhibition at The Shed, New York in August 2019; he had a solo exhibition at STRONGROOM, Newburgh, New York, and was a part of Second Careers: Two Tributaries in African Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, November 2020–March 2021. His work has previously been exhibited at LKB Gallery, Hamburg and Copenhagen; Circle Art Agency, Nairobi; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Kunsthal, Rotterdam; and Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, among others. Karmali was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and a recent residency at The Watermill Center. He was previously an artist-in-residence at Triangle Arts Association, Pioneer Works, Trestle Gallery, the MacDowell Colony, and BRIC. He is an adjunct professor of Design and Sculpture at Brooklyn College. On Jugaad By Hammad Abid I was ten years old when I first encountered jugaad. I would accompany my father to our family’s textile mill in Meerut, India. One day he advised a technician who needed loom equipment that could only be imported from China: use some jugaad and fix it cheaper and faster by repurposing some scrap parts out of older looms. Since then, I’ve come to understand jugaad not as a grand premeditated plan, but as a method for patching things up as need arises. It is a way to remedy and repair challenges as they emerge in everyday life with thrift and limited resources. As part of a culture of reuse and ingenuity, jugaad was present everywhere in our house, particularly in the ethical conservation of textiles. A new party outfit would become my casual wear; over time, I might wear it to the gym, then as pajamas for sleeping. As the clothes fell apart, my mom wouldn’t throw them away; she used them first to dust the house and finally to mop the floor. By necessity, jugaad offers an alternative approach to prevailing cycles of consumerism, demonstrating how people creatively engineer solutions to daily, economic, and environmental challenges by recontextualizing and transforming the items around them. Hammad Abid is a textile designer with extensive experience working and designing in the textile industry. His Textiles degree is augmented by a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce and Finance, which has informed his perspective on sustainable design and approach to independent craft economies. He is motivated to translate the philos237

ophies learned in his fine arts education at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) into a holistic economic model that supports and centers the perspectives of textile artists, artisans, and other creators in the textile industry. On Mending By Jessica Urick For textile conservators, mending fabric has historically meant obscuring markers of age and use—cleaning, stitching, and aligning loose threads. But what do you do when the existence of physical damage is necessary for ideological repair? Sometimes, true mending requires leaving damage intact, letting physical evidence tell a story without erasure, and reassembling the broken pieces of a narrative. Damaged textiles bear physical proof of people and their care, trauma, and love. Who used this? Where were they? What caused this tear or that stain? When the work of mending is physical, conservators stitch, stitch, stitch. When the work of mending is intangible, they climb into a messy, nuanced space between the unavoidable humanness of textiles and the complex bias of an outsider peering into someone else’s story. Mending—of fabric or histories—requires a community working together to lift and support the full weight of each textile. Jessica Urick is a textile conservator at the RISD Museum in Providence, Rhode Island. Her research interests include conservation ethics and new approaches to museum textile display. On Mottainai By Mirei Takashima Claremon The Japanese term, mottainai, is most commonly associated with wastefulness, such as when something of value—such as food, time, an opportunity, or even a person’s talent or potential—is lost, unused, or otherwise not valued or utilized wisely. In English, the closest translation would be the expression, “What a waste!” Alternatively, mottainai is also used when one is given a gift that one doesn’t feel worthy of. In such cases, “You shouldn’t have!” best captures the sentiment in English. The ancient meaning of mottainai is imbued with a more spiritual sentiment. Originally, mottainai referred to the loss or absence of the true nature of what is holy, specifically Shinto deities and Buddha. In this sense, mottainai implies something deeper and more melancholy than the relatively shallow, unpleasant feelings of wastefulness. Stemming from the cultural belief that there is always a proper and correct way for things to be, the emphasis here is on the feeling of regret or pity that arises from the absence of what is morally important and right. In this way, mottainai also encapsulates the belief that we should not take things for granted. Instead, we should feel grateful for our existence and for all of the things that we have— and as a result—be mindful so as not to behave wastefully.

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Originally from Tokyo, Japan, Dr. Mirei Takashima Claremon is a cross-cultural behavioral scientist who strives to create a more sustainable world by combining insights from behavioral science, cross-cultural perspectives, sustainability, and business management. Her work focuses on enhancing mutual understanding by building bridges between academia and the “real” world, East and West, techno-optimists and environmentalists, and businesses and stakeholders. On Murammat By Shahzad Bashir Murammat is a term of Arabic origin utilized extensively also in other languages such as Persian and Urdu. Indicating repair, reconstitution back into whole after breakage or decay, the term can be attached to auxiliary verbs to indicate reconstitutive actions. The term acquires special resonance when deployed for culturally significant objects, such as ceramics, manuscripts, carpets, and textiles made into clothing, bedding and tents, and decorative hangings. Repair is an economic as well as social imperative, the objects repaired needed for quotidian usage and also often meaningful as holders of personal and social memory. The fact of repair can enhance value by signifying age or association with particular persons or past contexts. A much-repaired object transmits the touch of ancestors and predecessors through time. Shahzad Bashir is Aga Khan Professor of Islamic Humanities in the departments of Religious Studies and History at Brown University. He specializes in the history of Iran and Central and South Asia. His published work is concerned with Islamic history and historiography, the study of Sufism and Shi’ism, messianic movements originating in Islamic contexts, and religious representations of corporeality. On Quilting By Zoë Pulley Quilting is a tradition that goes back at least three generations within my family. In 1929, my great grandmother, Ma Fannie, created a quilt for her son, my grandfather Charles Pulley. That quilt was then passed to his sister, my Great Aunt Steen, and eventually passed along to my father, Brett Pulley. I vividly recall my father showing my sister and me the blanket while standing in a room on the third floor of my childhood home. He took it down from a shelf in the closet of his office, carefully removing the textile from its cardboard box and vinyl plastic bag to reveal a multi-colored work that has withstood years of wear, ownership, and care. Reflecting on that moment, I now recognize that quilting is a practice of preservation. The African American quilting tradition has lent itself as a cultural guide to a larger lexicon of memory, kinship, and history within the Black American experience—quilting presenting a means for Black women to construct both a personal and collective narrative. Whether this practice is viewed in its most literal sense, as exemplified through

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my great grandmother’s quilt, or in the more pervasive modes in which slave women utilized this craft as a means to quite literally survive, quilting imparts a nuanced connotation of repair—that repair is a conscious and mutual act of self-preservation. Zoë Pulley is currently a Presidential Fellow pursuing an MFA in Graphic Design at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. Motivated to preserve generational narratives of Black experiences through print, textiles and other media, and to foster more design spaces that elevate black and brown people, Pulley pursues ongoing projects including the jewelry line GRAN SANS (inspired by her grandmother Sandra) and the collaborative opencall project www.blackjoyarchive.com, whose print publications have funded Black liberation organizations. On Reparations By Matthew Shenoda What is reparation but an act gesturing toward repair? An attempt at the restoration of cultural and communal spaces disturbed by the hubris of men. A restorative act that allows for a healing, a patching of things, a signal, a symbol, but never a replacement or a “fix.” Reparation is a culturally and communally led act that recognizes the damage caused by acts of genocide, enslavement, colonialism, trickery, deceit, and domination. A recognition that in order to forward our collective communities we must first attempt to repair the damage done. Reparation is a generative act that if done right can surface the central tenets of our humanity, the ones that desperately need focus. Reparation is not justice, as it is too often material, and justice, in my world, can never be material. But it is a symbol, a symbol of an ethics that can spark an invitation to a relational and restorative path. Reparation is a small step towards a self-determination, and self-determination is a path towards liberation; a path where we abandon the extractive for the collaborative, where in the words of Bob Marley, “we refuse to be, what they wanted us to be/we are what we are/and that’s the way it’s going to be.” Matthew Shenoda is the author and editor of several poetry collections including most recently, Bearden’s Odyssey: Poets Respond to the Art of Romare Bearden and The Way of the Earth. He is currently Vice President and Associate Provost for Social Equity & Inclusion and Professor of Literary Arts and Studies at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where he directs the Center for Social Equity and Inclusion. Shenoda is also a Founding Editor of the African Poetry Book Fund. For more information visit: www.matthewshenoda.com. On Resolver By Robert Arellano Resolver: to solve or sort out, carries very specific nuances in modern Cuba. Need an appointment at the US Interests Section? Yo puedo resolver eso. Fix a ‘57 Chevy with nothing but PVC plumbing? De alguna manera hay que re240

solverlo. In 1992 Fidel Castro declared the “Special Period in Peacetime”—a euphemism for the Revolution’s need to make wartime-sized sacrifices in the face of the new, post-Soviet economy on top of 32 years (and counting) of US embargo. For the better part of the next decade, Cubans would need to confront shortages of food, fuel, and consumer goods with a superhuman talent for invention: a key duplicator powered by an old washing machine motor, metal trays turned into TV antennae, desk fans made from vinyl albums (and propelled by record players)—just a few of their many inventos. This D.I.Y. movement was not only condoned but co-opted by the government. Try googling “Con Nuestros Propios Esfuerzos” (By Our Own Exertions), and you’ll find a 289-page PDF of a book published and widely distributed by the Cuban military to “deal with the Special Period” and “demonstrate the possibilities of our system to all people who wish the best for humanity— Cuba’s political, economic, scientific, technical, and organizational capacity to solve [yes, resolver] the nation’s problems with the active and direct participation of an aware, dignified, united and courageous society.” In the recipe section, you’ll learn how to make grapefruit sausage, papaya steak, beetroot pudding, and tilapia butter. Tenemos que resolver … Robert Arellano is a professor in the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University and the author of seven novels, including Edgar Award-finalist Havana Lunar: a Cuban Noir. He is working on a nonfiction book about los frikis, Cuba’s punk/metal counterculture, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Oregon Arts Commission. On Tikkun Olam By Aliza Tuttle Tikkun Olam is an ancient concept that has changed with the times to remain a coalescing force for the Jewish community. Experiences of Tikkun Olam center on humanity’s actions, choices, and judgement in world-making by acknowledging the mistakes of the “collective we” and seeking to repair them. Tikkun Olam is actions to repair and improve, a sense of responsibility for well-being, and a role in the world for each of us. We see the world as a work in progress, and we are the driving forces of progress. If not me, who? If not now, when? Tikkun Olam is me, here, now. The concept of the world can be literal: the air, water, land. And, Tikkun Olam is the world of our perceptions. Within each of us is a world. Relationships are worlds, my internal self is my world, my community is my world. Tikkun Olam is internal world repair, relationship repair, and community repair. Tikkun Olam is a repairing of all of the worlds at all scales, a driving force to be the one to repair, now, in everything. Aliza Tuttle grew up in a community that treasured activism, volunteerism, and a sense of personal agency to drive change. She is a program evaluator for mental health programs in Oregon and the co-founder of It’s On Us Corvallis, a community-building crowdsourced donation program with a food security side effect.

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Acknowledgements

It has been an honor to bring together the research, insights, and work of our colleagues, friends, and co-thinkers to realize this book. This confluence would not have been possible without the shared values, commitment, and generosity of all those who have been involved in the project. The worldwide and local network of collaborators that we have tapped into will impact our design futures well beyond this volume. From initial concepts to its final form, this book has evolved through many conversations, common interests, and shared visions for better (designed) futures. We extend special thanks to the chapter authors for contributing their insights, expertise, and time to this important project. It has been an honor, pleasure, and privilege to work with such a bright and talented community of scholars. Our own academic and artistic projects have been enriched and expanded by our engagement with more than 30 authors from around the globe, as well as with the incredible artists, designers, scholars, and repairers whose works are highlighted in this volume. In the middle of the writing process, we lost two authors whose chapters were left unfinished with their passing. We dedicate this book to our colleagues Elizabeth Lord and Gabriele Oropallo, who left this world too soon and whose warmth and sagacity are sorely missed. Sincere thanks go to our assistant editor Ariel Wills, whose dedication, humor, and perceptiveness made all the difference during our busiest days; to Allie Biswas for her excellent and nimble work as a copyeditor; and to Ernesto Aparicio, our outstanding graphic designer who transformed text and images into a holistic visual experience. At Routledge, we found enthusiastic support for this project in Grace Harrison, Rosie Anderson, and Matthew Shobbrook, whose mentorship 242

and counsel have been extraordinarily generous; and Gareth Vaughan has been instrumental in bringing the publication process to completion with all of the i’s dotted and t’s crossed. We would also like to acknowledge the many individuals whose guidance and support throughout our research and editorship have influenced our growth as designers, scholars, educators, curators, and artists. This includes all of the world’s repairers who have inspired us through their work, activism, and scholarship: to name just a few, we thank Elizabeth Spelman, Joanna van der Zanden, Arturo Escobar, Octavia Butler, and the thirteenth-century Persian poet Rumi. Individuals in our institution who stimulated early conversations about repair include Brian Goldberg and Patricia Phillips. We’d also like to thank RISD’s Office of Research and Strategic Partnerships, in particular Dr. Sarah Bainter Cunningham, for a generous grant that helped us shape, organize, and design this book. The generations of our parents and grandparents deserve honor and thanks for embedding in us frugal thinking, care for material objects, and the ability to repair every aspect of life. In the present, we give our very highest gratitude and appreciation to our partners for not only their ongoing support of our artistic, professional, academic, and scholarly pursuits but also for their insightful critiques that have challenged us to continually revise, edit, and rethink. Finally, we dedicate this book to our children, indeed all children on this planet, who look critically at our own practices and challenge us every day to push farther and harder for more sustainable habits and outcomes, making us aware of our privileges and demanding Sustainable Design Futures for all.

To all: SCAVENGERS FIXERS HACKERS IMPERFECTIONISTS MENDERS CARERS and REPAIRERS

List of Contributors

Esther Akintoye is an Interior Architecture (INTAR) Master of Design Candidate at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and received her BA in Communications from Temple University. Prior to attending RISD, she gained extensive experience in the photography and set design industries. Through her graduate studies she aims to merge the narrative-building capacity of photography in its two-dimensional form with the three-dimensional narrative capacity of spatial interiors. She is interested in exploring how humans and society relate to each other within an interior space and, as a result of this, how interiors can pose as a space for interactive performance between design, humans, and society. Utku Balaban is an urban sociologist and visiting Associate Professor of Sociology at Amherst College. He served as a faculty member at the Department of Labor Economics and Industrial Relations at Ankara University. A Conveyor Belt of Flesh, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 2010, presents the findings of his dissertation fieldwork on the garment industry in Istanbul, Turkey. Social Inclusion Policies in Turkey, Ankara University Press, 2015, surveys current social policy in Turkey. A grantee of the European Commission’s Marie Curie Career Reintegration Grant, Balaban pursued fieldwork on the industrialization of Turkish cities. As a research fellow of the Forum Transregionale Studien and Humboldt University’s IGK Work and Human Life Cycle in Global History (Berlin, Germany), Dr. Balaban is working on his new book on the relationship between Islamism and late industrial development in Turkey. 244

Bec Barnett is an interdisciplinary designer, project manager, lead researcher and Director of Relative Creative. In this role, she spearheads the design and implementation of a wide range of projects. She has extensive experience at working across all levels of government as well as with a wide range of businesses and organizations and on projects of varying size and complexity. Bec has experience working in numerous cultural contexts and communities, in Australia and around the world. She holds a B.Design and M. Design Honours (first class).

Gary Blythe is a scholar and business leader who focuses on International trade and economics. Drawing upon a career in the commodities sector and experience working for non-governmental organizations devoted to diplomacy, his doctorate in business administration at the Paris School of Business examines the ESG economics of sustainable development. He has a MA in Diplomacy and Conflict Resolution from Lancaster University, UK, and BA in Peace Studies from Bradford University, UK. Evelyn Eastmond is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher. She is currently a Senior Design Researcher at Microsoft and a Research Fellow for the Center for Arts, Design and Social Research. Previously, she has held positions at the Rhode Island School of Design, YCombinator Research, Inc., and the MIT Media Lab. M Eifer is an artist and Senior Design Researcher at Microsoft. They’ve exhibited work at Ars Electronica, SomArts, TED, Exploratorium, SFMoMA, YBCA, XOXO, Wien-

sowski & Harbord in Berlin, Laurie M. Tisch Gallery and Armory Show in New York, Seattle International Film Festival, Smithsonian Institution, and the Kennedy Center.

Lindsay French is a Professor and Department Head of the History, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences department at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she teaches anthropology. Her research interests focus on post-Pol Pot Cambodia and the process of social and cultural reconstruction in the aftermath of genocide. Her current project looks at Cambodian families divided by war, displacement and migration, and the efforts to maintain family ties attenuated by time, space, politics, and very different economic opportunities. More generally, she is interested in migration, both voluntary and forced, Buddhism, everyday life in different parts of the world, the political economy of international interventions, and the challenges of representation, whether ethnographic, photographic, theatrical, or curatorial. Paula Gaetano-Adi is an artist and Associate Professor of Experimental & Foundation Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Her practice draws from studies of technoscience, decoloniality, and artificial life, and her media and robotic work has been exhibited and showcased extensively in museums, conferences, and art festivals throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas. She earned an MFA in Art & Technology from The Ohio State University, was a Visiting Scholar at REMAP / UCLA, Visiting Professor at UNTREF Electronic Arts in Buenos Aires, and Artist-in-Residence at EMPAC Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is the recipient of the First Prize VIDA 9.0, Argentina’s National Endowment for the Arts, and Fundación Telefónica’s Art & Artificial Life Award for Ibero-American artists. Recent publications include Mestizo Robotics at Leonardo Journal MIT Press, and the co-authored special issue Mestizo Technology: Art, Design, and Technoscience in Latin America, the Media_N Journal.

Avishek Ganguly is an Associate Professor in the Literary Arts and Studies department at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He received his MA, MPhil, and PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, New York. He also has a BA (Honors) in English from Presidency College, Calcutta and an MA in English and Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research and teaching interests are focused on the various intersections between contemporary drama, literature and performance, questions of translation and multilingualism, the formation of collectivities, and everyday life and urban space.

Adela Goldbard is an interdisciplinary artist and educator from Mexico City. With her research-creation, she investigates how radical community performances can subvert the imposition of official narratives and how performances of violence and destruction can become aesthetic tools of resistance against power. She is especially interested in how collectively building, staging, and destroying has the potential to generate critical thinking and social transformation. Goldbard is Assistant Professor at the Division of Experimental and Foundation Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design. She holds an MFA as a Full Merit Fellow in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in Hispanic Language and Literature from the National University of Mexico. She is a member of the National System of Artistic Creators of Mexico, was granted the Joyce Award in 2019, and is the 2017 SAIC Awardee of the Edes Foundation Prize. Goldbard lives and works between the US and Mexico. Brian Goldberg is an architect, writer, and cook based in Providence, Rhode Island. Lu Heintz is an artist, educator, and feminist collaborator based in Providence, Rhode Island. Through multiple points of entry— textiles, metalsmithing, video, sound, installation, performance, paper works, and writing—her transdisciplinary practice examines 245

personal experience on sociocultural scales. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in museums and galleries including: The Metal Museum, the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Sarah Doyle Gallery, R.K. Projects, and Strano Film Fest. She is a member of the textiles-based studio collective WARP.

Olga Ioannou is an Assistant Professor at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) and Architect Engineer. She studied at “Sapienza,” Rome, and AUTH where she received her MSc NTUA and PhD NTUA. Her research is related to architectural education, online learning, and circular economy. She has participated in international conferences, while her work has been published in both conference proceedings and scientific journals. She also has an extensive design and built architectural portfolio. Prior to her appointment at the TU Delft, Ioannou was a lecturer at National Technical University Athens. She is a co-founder of Ioannou | Karvelas Architectural Studio and a co-founder of The Full Circle Collaborative. Anna Rose Keefe is the Costume and Textiles Conservation Assistant at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Her work focuses on the ongoing care of the permanent collection, improving conditions, and increasing access to objects in storage. She is on the board of the Costume Society of America, part of the American Institute for Conservation’s Wikipedia Editing group, and has published on the history of remaking and the second-hand garment industry in Rhode Island. She holds an MS in Textiles with a concentration in Conservation from the University of Rhode Island, a BA in Material Culture from Mount Holyoke College, and has held positions at the Preservation Society of Newport County, Historic Deerfield, and the Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum. Jakko Kemper is a lecturer in New Media and Digital Culture at the University of Amsterdam. He has completed his Ph.D at 246

the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. His work is focused on technology and aesthetics and has previously been published in Information, Communication & Society, the European Journal of Cultural Studies and Revue Intermédialités.

Christina Kim is a clothing designer and artist, working from her design studio dosa in Los Angeles. Her focus on zero waste has created a system for creative reuse, drawing on traditional handwork techniques, patchwork, and large-scale collaborations with communities around the world. In 2018 she received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, Fashion Design. “Design thoughtfully, produce responsibly, reuse materials whenever possible. Honor the human effort that goes into the making at every stage.” David Kim leads the development of interdisciplinary courses, research initiatives, and strategies for emerging technologies as Director of Co-Works Research Lab at RISD. As a queer, first-generation, Korean-American artist, scientist, and educator, Kim is invested in cultivating biological, digital, and social systems as vehicles for catharsis, intersectional discourse, and social justice community building. A member of Biome Arts, his work and collaborations have been featured in Wired, Smithsonian, the Boston Globe, the New York Times, Art in America, and the Venice Biennale. Parallel to his practice, he has curated interdisciplinary and social justice-aligned exhibitions at RISD, Brown University, Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance, and MU Gallery in Eindhoven. Joy Ko is an artist and educator. Her teaching, research, and writing explore the use of computation and digital technologies to augment and extend the creative process. Trained as a mathematician, she has found her way towards the intersection of mathematics, computation, art, and design. She teaches at RISD and has captured some pedagogical insights in her book Geometric Computation: Foundations for Design (with K. Steinfeld, published by Routledge, 2018).

Clarisse Labro is an Architect and a Lecturer Through engaging with local communities, at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She also teaches at Parsons Paris, Strate école de design. Clarisse is a co-founder of Labro & Davis architectural practice and a co-founder of The Full Circle Collaborative.

Medcalf seeks to find the threads of people, places, and things. With keen interests in futuring, history, and community, Medcalf explores new ways to realize and engineer futures that provide social solutions for the built environment.

Ijlal Muzaffar is an Associate Professor of Modern Architectural History at the Rhode heritage and moved to New York City in 1987. Island School of Design (RISD). Before RISD, Upon graduating from the Fashion Institute he taught at Indiana University, Bloomingof Technology (FIT) in 1991, she launched her ton, where he was Visiting Faculty at the namesake label and was embraced by promDepartment of Art History and the Center inent retailers worldwide such as Bergdorf for the Study of Global Change. He has also Goodman, Isetan, and Fred Siegal. For the taught at the Program in History, Theory, and past 18 years, Jussara has focused on making Criticism of Architecture and Art at Masthe best fitting custom-made clothes with sachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the gentlest impact on the environment. She where he also received his PhD in 2007. has developed a business model where luxury Muzaffar holds a Master of Architecture fashion is redefined with truly sustainable degree from Princeton, and a BA in Mathepractices working in tandem with beauty. matics and Physics from the University of Hand-tailoring, local, zero-waste producPunjab in Lahore, Pakistan. He is working on tion, biodegradable materials, natural dyes, mending services, and a collection of vintage a book based on his dissertation that looks at how modern architects and planners played clothes follow a circular system where all the waste is transformed into one-of-a-kind a critical role in shaping the discourse on Third World development and its associated items. structures of power and intervention in the Steven Lubar is Professor in American postwar era. Studies, History, and History of Art and Architecture at Brown University. He was Sebastian Ruth is a violist and educator Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center committed to exploring connections between for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, the arts and social change. He is the founder Director of the Haffenreffer Museum of and Artistic Director of Community MuAnthropology, and the Chair of the Division sicWorks, a nationally recognized organizaof the History of Technology at the Smithtion that connects professional musicians sonian’s National Museum of American with urban youth and families in Providence, History. He is the co-author of Inside the Lost Rhode Island Community MusicWorks is Museum: Curating, Past and Present; Legacies: “creating rewarding musical experiences for Collecting America’s History at the Smithsooften-forgotten populations and forging a nian; Info Culture: the Smithsonian Book of In- new, multifaceted role beyond the concert formation Age Inventions; History from Things hall for the twenty-first-century musician,” and Engines of Change: The American Industri- as described by the MacArthur Foundation. al Revolution, and many articles on museums Ruth is a Visiting Lecturer in Community and the history of technology. Engagement at the Yale School of Music. Jussara Lee is a native Brazilian of Korean

Nakeia Medcalf is an Investigative Designer, Ellen Rutten is Professor of Literature and maker, educator, generator, and gatherer. She studies and uses design as global currency to understand the beauty within the boundary.

Chair of the Department of Russian & Slavic Studies at the University of Amsterdam and, in the academic year 2019–2020, Research 247

Fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam. Her research interests include Russian and global contemporary literature, art, design, and media. She is the author of Unattainable Bride Russia (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and Sincerity after Communism (Yale University Press, 2017), among other publications. Rutten leads the research project Sublime Imperfections (University of Amsterdam, 2015–2020) and is editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed journal Russian Literature.

Yuriko Saito is a Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Professor Emeritus who taught and writes on ecological responsibility in art and design, Japanese aesthetics, everyday aesthetics, and philosophy of nature. Her Everyday Aesthetics was published by Oxford University Press and Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-Making by Oxford University Press, 2017. Her works in aesthetics also appear in numerous academic journals and anthologies. She serves as editor of Contemporary Aesthetics, editorial consultant for The British Journal of Aesthetics, and a former editorial advisory board member for Environmental Ethics. Tristan Schultz has interdisciplinary expertise in designing communication, strategies, services, experiences, and events that intersect strategic foresight and futures thinking, Indigenous Knowledge, decolonial thinking, and sustainable transitions. He brings all of this to his role as Director and Lead Creative at Relative Creative. Both his Gamilaroi Aboriginal and Australian-European heritage inform his design. Tristan has a Bachelor of Design majoring in product design, a Masters of Design Futures with Honours and a PhD in Design. He has also been a lecturer in the design department at QCA and is an Honorary Adjunct Fellow at the University of Technology Sydney and RMIT, Melbourne.

Lorén Spears, Narragansett Niantic and Executive Director of Tomaquag Museum, holds a Master’s in Education and received a Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa, 248

from the University of Rhode Island. She is an author and artist who shares her cultural knowledge with the public through museum programs. She has written curricula, poetry, and narratives published in a variety of publications such as Dawnland Voices, An Anthology of Indigenous Writing of New England; Through Our Eyes: An Indigenous View of Mashapaug Pond; The Pursuit of Happiness: An Indigenous View; and From Slaves to Soldiers: The 1st Rhode Island Regiment in the American Revolution. Recently, she co-edited a new edition of A Key into the Language of America by Roger Williams.

Sally Stone is the Programme Leader for the MA Architecture + Adaptive Reuse course and Director of the Continuity in Architecture Atelier in the Manchester School of Architecture. These are programmes for the design of new buildings and public spaces within the historic city, and interventions within existing structures. Her work is concerned with urban regeneration, interiors, building reuse, the relationship between interior architecture and installation art, and architectural and design pedagogy. Stone has a vast array of publications, including: Inside Information: the Defining Concepts of the Interior (2022), Emerging Practices in Architectural Pedagogy (2021), UnDoing Buildings: Adaptive Reuse and Cultural Memory (2019), Re-readings 2: Interior Architecture and the Design Principles of Remodelling Existing Buildings (2018), From Organisation to Decoration: A Routledge Reader of Interiors (2013), and the series: Interior Architecture: An Approach (2007-2016). Stone lectures on installation art, connections between art and architecture, and building reuse within the Humanities programme. She is a Visiting Professor at the School of Architecture, IUAV Venice. Lynnette Widder is the Principal and Co-founder of aardvarchitecture, a practice specializing in residential work with an emphasis on high-quality innovative construction. The practice’s designs have been featured in various publications including the New York Times, Time Out New York, and the

HGTV series, Small Space Big Style. Prior to starting aardvarchitecture, Widder was the English-language editor of Daidalos Architecture Quarterly, a Berlin-based publication covering contemporary architecture. Widder is a lecturer at Columbia University. She has held teaching posts at Rhode Island School of Design, ETH Zurich, University of British Columbia, Cornell University, Cranbrook Academy of Art, City College of New York, and Columbia University.

Ariel Wills is an artist, writer, researcher, and educator who received her MA in Nature-Culture-Sustainability Studies from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Her artistic practice is instigated by a quest to engage tacit knowledge through the lens of the arts and cultural heritage and to cultivate communities of care by sharing and honoring lived experiences of the everyday through visual narrative. Wills situates her research in debates of material culture, feminist criticism, cultural studies, post-colonial criticism, interdisciplinary humanities, and political ecology, exploring how practices of making sustain cultural heritage. Through observation and engagement with overlooked traditions, she creates artifacts of remembrance which combine fiction and autobiography in a tangible form. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Humanities with concentrations in Spanish, Dance, and Studio Arts from the University of Oregon, has published with v.1 and The Manual, and has worked and studied internationally in Mexico, Israel, and Spain.

backgrounds in architecture and material culture, he has previously worked at the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, the Jewish Museum, and the National Museum of American Jewish History. His writing has appeared in Entropy Magazine, v.1, and the College Hill Independent.

Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar is a writer and historian of modern South Asia, with an interest in twentieth-century histories of decolonization, displacement, war, non-violence, the visual archive, and contemporary art. Her book, The Long Partition and the Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories, Columbia University Press, 2007, combined oral histories with archival research to examine the significance of refugees in nation-state formation in the devastating aftermath of 1947. Her second book, The Ruin Archive: Art and War at the Ends of Empire, takes on archaeology, art history, photography, film, and war on the northwest frontier of British India, on the borderlands with Afghanistan. This work has led to investigations of Gandharan art in European collections, particularly in the Ethnologie Museum of Berlin and the Prussian Royal Phonographic Commission’s extraordinary sound archive of prisoners of war, including those from the Indo-Afghan borderlands, both now part of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin. She is also part of the Decolonial Collective on Migration of Objects and People.

Jeremy Lee Wolin is a first-year PhD student in History and Theory of Architecture at Princeton University. A graduate of Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), he participated in courses aligned with the RISD Museum exhibition Repair and Design Futures, in both the Department of American Studies at Brown and the Department of Interior Architecture at RISD. Wolin worked as a curator’s assistant in the Museum’s Department of Costume and Textiles. Drawing on his undergraduate 249

Editor information

Markus Berger is Professor of Interior Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). He is a registered architect (SBA) in the Netherlands and founder and director of The Repair Atelier: an art/design workshop that investigates and activates ideas of reuse. The Repair Atelier is imagined as a collaborative space to rethink and reuse discarded and broken objects, transform them, and in the process also “repair” the communities that form around them. Berger co-founded and co-edits Int|AR, the Journal on Interventions and Adaptive Reuse, which encompasses issues of preservation, conservation, alteration, and interventions. His work, research, writing, and teaching are a critique on modern architecture and focus on forms of change and repair, such as art, architecture, and design modifications and interventions in the built environment. His latest co-edited book is titled Intervention and Adaptive Reuse: A Decade of Responsible Practice, Birkhauser, 2021. Markus is co-founder of the Full Circle Collaborative, an interdisciplinary group that embraces circular economy to connect the socio-economical and physical links, and to appease conflict.

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Kate Irvin is Curator and Head of the Department of Costume and Textiles at the RISD Museum, an integral part of the Rhode Island School of Design. There she oversees a collection of 30,000 fashion and textile items that range in date from 1500 BCE to the present and represent traditions and innovations across the globe. Her most recent exhibition was Repair and Design Futures (October 5, 2018–June 30, 2019), a year-long multidisciplinary exhibition and programming initiative that investigated mending as material intervention, metaphor, and as a call to action. The exhibition showcased objects of repair from around the globe enhanced by talks, workshops, and academic projects that highlighted innovative contemporary art and design work illuminated and electrified by repair-oriented practices. Other recent exhibitions and projects at the Museum include: Inherent Vice (2022); From the Loom of a Goddess: Reverberations of Guatemalan Maya Weaving (2018); Designing Traditions: Student Explorations in the Asian Textile Collections (2017); All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion (2016); and Artist/Rebel/Dandy: Men of Fashion (2013).

251

List of Figures

Figure 6.1, One iteration of Repair Society, ca. 2009. Joanna

van der Zanden. Photo courtesy Joanna van der Zanden. Figure 6.2, Chaos + Repair = Universe, 2014. Kader Attia.

Foreword Figure 0, Photo by Kate Irvin. Figure 1, DESASTRE street art, Mérida, Mexico. Introduction Figure 0.1, Markus Berger, 2019. Figure 0.2, Poncho Poema (detail), 2018. Carla Fernández, designer; Rosa Hernández Lucas, textile dyer and embroiderer; Mujeres Conservando Raíces (Hueyapan, Puebla, Mexico), dye workshop. Museum purchase, by exchange 2018.41. RISD Museum. Figure 0.3, Visible Repair of Mies Van Der Rohe Mr10 Chair, 2018. Sfoorti Sachdev and Markus Berger, The Repair Atelier. Figure 0.4, Deconstruct Reconstruct, 2018. Markus Berger. Figure 0.5, Kantha quilt (detail), 1800s. Bengal, India. Mary B. Jackson Fund 2016.57.4. RISD Museum. Figure 0.6, The Repair Atelier, 16 Church Street, Providence, Rhode Island. Figure 0.7, Patchwork juban (under-kimono), mid-1800s. Japanese. Gift of Cynthia Shaver. RISD Museum. Chapter 1: Five Theses on Repair in Most of the World Figure 1.1, Photo by Markus Berger, 2020. Figure 1.2, Repair stalls, (photo courtesy the author). Chapter 2: Who Decides? Power, Brokenness, and Healing Figure 2.1, Still Here (detail), 2018. Gaia. Street mural in

Providence featuring Lynsea Montanari, an educator at the Tomaquag Museum, holding an image of Princess Red Wing. Figure 2.2, Longhouse, Tomaquag Museum, 2017. Photo courtesy Tomaquag Museum. Chapter 3: Repairing the Cracked Concrete Figure 3.1, Blackdom, New Mexico, 33°09’49”N 104°30’32”W. Nakeia Medcalf. Figure 3.2, Barbara Jordan II, Providence, RI, 41.81297387728153, -71.42063147318024. Nakeia Medcalf. Figure 3.3, Road to Freedom, US Hwy 285. Nakeia Medcalf. Chapter 4: Broken Urban: Repair as Post-apocalyptic Design Figure 4.1, Photo by Markus Berger, 2020. Figure 4.2, King Midas with His Daughter, illustration in A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (Hawthorne 1893). Walter Crane. Figure 4.3, Inlaid table from Tumulus MM, Gordion. Reconstructed for display in the Museum of Anatolian Civilzations, Ankara. Photo courtesy Elizabeth Simpson. Chapter 5: Why Save This? Figure 5.1, Detail of patched hospital gown, 2020. Photo courtesy the author. Figure 5.2, Hospital gown with iron-on patches, 2020. Photo courtesy the author. Chapter 6: Repair and Imperfection through the Lens of the Spectral 252

Installation view in “Sacrifce and Harmony,” MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua. Photo: Axel Schneider. Figure 6.3, Chaos + Repair = Universe, 2014. Kader Attia. Installation view in “Sacrifce and Harmony,” MMK Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt/Main, 2016. Courtesy the artist and Galleria Continua. Photo: Axel Schneider. Chapter 7: For the rain, for the wind Figure 7.1, Photo courtesy the author. Figure 7.2, David Wojnarowicz (Silence = Death), 1989. Photo © Andreas Sterzing. Courtesy the artist and P.P.O.W. Gallery. Figure 7.3, Strange Fruit (detail), 1992–1997. Zoe Leonard. © Zoe Leonard. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne and Hauser & Wirth. Figure 7.4, Unmade Bed, 1845. Adolf Menzel. © Kupferstich kabinett. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin SZ-Nr. SZ Menzel N 319. Figure 7.5, “Untitled” 1991. Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Installed at Highway 90 and Bartlett, Houston, TX. 1 of 30 outdoor billboard locations throughout Texas from 6 May–31 August. 2010, as part of the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Billboard Project. Artspace, San Antonio, TX. January–December 2010. Cur. Matthew Drutt. Photo: Tom DuBrock. © Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Courtesy of The Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. Figure 7.6, Yamataka Jindai-zakura, an approximately 2,000-year-old cherry tree in Japan, 2012. Ron Henderon. Photo courtesy Ron Henderson, Japan–US Friendship Commission Creative Artist Fellow. Figure 7.7, Tree, 1997. Zoe Leonard. Installation view of “Zoe Leonard: Survey,” November 11, 2018–March 25, 2019 at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA. Photo: Brian Forrest. © Zoe Leonard. Courtesy the artist, Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne and Hauser & Wirth.

Chapter 8: Aesthetics of Visible Repair: The Challenge of Kintsugi Figure 8.1, Ceiling Kintsugi, Repair Atelier, Photo by Markus Berger, 2019. Figure 8.2, Bowl with kintsugi repair (detail), 936-1392. Korean. Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke 17.104. RISD Museum. Figure 8.3, Sandusky Platter, ca. 1838 (detail of stapled repair on back). English. Gift of Edward B. Aldrich in memory of Lora E. Aldrich 35.259. RISD Museum. Figure 8.4, Cumbrian Blue(s)—Spode Works Closed, Italian Blue, 03/10/09/09l, 2013. Paul Scott. Georgianna Sayles Aldrich Fund 2015.46. RISD Museum. Chapter 9: Repair and Design Futures: An Exhibition and Call to Action Figure 9.1, Woman’s Shift or Underdress, 1875–1920. Libera Lubrano Lavadera. Gift of Falcone Previti Family 2014.57.5. RISD Museum. Figure 9.2, Noragi (work coat), late 1800s–mid-1900s. Japanese, Shonai (present-day Yamagata) prefecture. Elizabeth T. and Dorothy N. Casey Fund 2012.21.1. RISD Museum. Figure 9.3, Repaired shawl, 1820/1840. Kashmir (for export). Gift of Miss Lucy T. Aldrich 55.327. RISD Museum.

Figure 9.4, Palm-Wine Gourd Container, 20th century. Bamileke artist, Cameroon. Gift of William B. Simmons, Courtesy of Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, Brown University 2000-22-27. Figure 9.5, Installation view of Repair and Design Futures, RISD Museum, October 5, 2018–June 30, 2019. Photo Erik Gould.

Chapter 10: Darning Over Renewal Figure 10.1, Albers Sampler, 2020. Jeremy Wolin. Figure 10.2, Dick Lee II, 2018. Jeremy Wolin. Figure 10.3, Dick Lee I, 2018. Jeremy Wolin. Figure 10.4, Oak Street Sketch, 2018. Jeremy Wolin. Chapter 11: Thinking Rubble: Ruin and Repair at War’s End Figure 11.1, Destruction in Berlin after Anglo-American Bomb Attacks, 1945. At the corner of Friedrichstrasse and Dorotheestrasse. ADN-ZB/Archiv, Bundesarchiv Deutschland. Figure 11.2, Sketches of ruins (above surrounded by trees and below within a reconstructed urban context), published in Bauen und Wohnen magazine, 1947. Walther Schmidt. Figure 11.3, Cover and image from Max Taut, Berlin im Aufbau (“Berlin Rebuilding”), 1946. Chapter 12: Open Dialogues and Material Memory Figure 12.1, Thimbles, 2021. Ariel Wills. Figure 12.2, Sewing Machine Tools, 2021. Ariel Wills. Chapter 13: What Is the Work of Love Today? Repair, Care, and Carrying Figure 13.1, With Holdings, 2018. Performance by Erika Morillo and Lu Heintz. Photo John Butkus. Figure 13.2, At what point it breaks: Sink, 2017. Performance by Mairead Grace Delaney. Photo Tif Robinette. Figure 13.3, La Ropa Sucia se Lava en Casa, 2012. Performance by Tzitzi Barrantes. Photo courtesy Zonadeartenacción. http://tzitzi.metzonimia.com. Figure 13.4, Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman? 2011. Performance by Wura-Natasha Ogunji. Photo WuraNatasha Ogunji. Chapter 14: Kurhirani no ambakiti (Burning the Devil): Since That’s the Only Way They Listen to Us Figure 14.1, Embroideries from the Archivo Bordado de la Resistencia (Embroidered Resistance Archive), 2020. Photos Marco Antonio López Valenzuela. Figure 14.2, Documentation of the burning of El Rinoceronte (the rhinoceros), Arantepacua, December 4, 2020. Photos Marco Antonio López Valenzuela & José Luis Arroyo Robles. Figure 14.3, Documentation of the burning of El Rinoceronte (the rhinoceros), Arantepacua, December 4, 2020. Photos Marco Antonio López Valenzuela & José Luis Arroyo Robles. Chapter 15: Borderlanders: A Political Concept for Repair Figure 15.1, Photo courtesy the author. Figure 15.2, Anna Egger (1922–2018) and Anthonia Egger (1916–1980) born in Wörgl, Austria. Figure 15.3, Safya Furniturewala (1890–1966) and Vazira Tawawala (1905–1960), born in Bombay, India. Figure 15.4, Collage, Vazira Zamindar, 2021.

Chapter 16: Repair on the Move Figure 16.1, n/a (illustration by the author). Figure 16.2, n/a (illustration by the author).

Figure 16.3, n/a (illustration by the author). Figure 16.4, n/a (illustration by the author). Figure 16.5, n/a (illustration by the author). Figure 16.6, n/a (illustration by the author). Figure 16.7, n/a (illustration by the author).

Chapter 17: My Grandmother’s Mended Socks: Layered Design Thinking and Durability Figure 17.1, Grandmother’s mended beoseon. Photo courtesy the author. Figure 17.2, Women ironing by beating with sticks (dadeumi), 1910s. Korea. Figure 17.3, Liquid2solid, 2021. Christina Kim. Installation view, Mingei Museum, San Diego. Figure 17.4, Pojagi, twentieth century. Figure 17.5, Tiny Bubbles (detail), 2020; Kaya (“mosquito net”) (detail), 2020; Liquid2solid (detail), 2021. Christina Kim. Chapter 18: Is Business Beyond Repair? Figure 18.1, View of Barbara Owen’s studio. Photo courtesy the

artist. Figure 18.2, Dark to Light, 2020. Barbara Owen. Photo courtesy

the artist. Chapter 19: Repairing Imaginations: Rethinking the Ethics of Growth and Degrowth Figure 19.1, Photo courtesy the author. Figure 19.2, Design Proposal, UAE pavilion Venice Architecture Biennal, 2018. Ijlal Muzzaffar and Markus Berger, with Eun Lee. Chapter 20: Is Repair Repairing Architecture? Figure 20.1, Photo courtesy the author. Figure 20.2, Real, Hidden and Imaginary Landscapes. Katerina P. Mousaka. Photo courtesy the artist. Chapter 21: Trans-Repair: Emancipatory Techno-Poetics Figure 21.1, Robocalyptic Manifesto, 2020. Paula Gaetano-Adi. Figure 21.2, Kipi, the Quechua-Spanish bilingual robot with school students from rural Huancavelica, Peru. May-September 2020. Developed by Walter Velásquez. © Professor Walter Velásquez. Photo Walter Velásquez Godoy. Figure 21.3, High schooler inventor David Lawrence Kamau with his robotic dog ANDROID CANIS FAMILIARIS, in Nakuru, Northwest of Nairobi, Kenya. January 2021. © David Lawrence Kamau. Photo David Lawrence Kamau. Figure 21.4, Robotic arm controlled by brain signals developed by Kenyan inventors David Gathu and Moses Kiuna. Kikuyu, north of Nairobi, Kenya. January 2021. © Gathu and Kiuna. Photo: EPA/Daniel Irungu. Figure 21.5, Esteban Quispe at 17, holds a replica of the Wall-E robot made with electronic waste, in Patacamaya, south of La Paz, Bolivia. December 2015. © Esteban Quispe. Photo: REUTERS/David Mercado. Figure 21.6, William Kamkwamba’s original windmill able to produce electric energy to power up 4 light bulbs and 2 radios in Wimbe, 32 km east of Kasungu, Malawi. June 2007. © William Kamkwamba. Photo Wikimedia Commons/Tom Rielly. Chapter 22: Community Repair South Africa: An Interview with Kevin Kimwelle Figure 22.1, Celebrations by the community in the opening of the multipurpose hall. Photo Joubert Loots. Image courtesy

253

Figure 28.5, Mark

Kevin Kimwelle. Figure 22.2, The multipurpose hall from 80% recycled materi-

als. Photo Indalo World. Image courtesy Kevin Kimwelle. Figure 22.3, Crèche owner standing in front of wine bottle wall. Photo Joubert Loots. Image courtesy Kevin Kimwelle. Figures 22.4–22.7, Waste Picker “Kusta” Moko: collecting with his pushcart; sorting his collected waste; at his home; with Kevin Kimwelle and the pilot waste bike. Photos Indalo World. Images courtesy Kevin Kimwelle. Figure 22.8, Gogo (granny) Selinah and Granddaughter Michelle in their new home. Photo Isuzu Motors South Africa. Image courtesy Kevin Kimwelle. Chapter 23: Fixing as Learning Figure 23.1, Photo

courtesy the author.

Figure 23.2, Connecting the wires. Photo courtesy the author. Figure 23.3, Artemide Giocasta lamp. Photo courtesy the

author. Chapter 24: Make-Do-and-Mend: The Repair and Reuse of Existing Buildings Figure 24.1, Interior of “patched” wall of church in Dornbusch, Germany. Remodelled by Meixner Schlüter Wendt, 2005. Photo Christoph Kraneburg. Figure 24.2, Go through Your Wardrobe–Make-Do-and-Mend, 1939–1945. Donia Nachshen for Board of Trade. Figure 24.3, Make-Do-and-Mend—Says Mrs. Sew and Sew, 1939–1946. Figure 24.4, Interior of the Dry Bar in Manchester, 1989. Ben Kelly. The appropriated curtain display was placed upon the back wall of the space. Photo Dennis Gilbert. Figure 24.5, Blood red piping in the stairwells of the Sporck Palace, Stanislav Fiala, 2019. Photo courtesy the author. Chapter 25: Hand Me Up Figure 25.1, Custom hand-tailored cashmere coat; mended in

2016 using sashiko stitching technique. Jussara Lee. Figure 25.2, Hand Me Up Glove Vest, 2019. Vintage Silk Tafetta Ball Skirt. Courtesy of Pamela Peabody, Jussara Lee. Photo Billy Juno. Figure 25.3, Bundle Dye Workshop with Master Kah Mun Ng, 2019. Chapter 26: Recovering a Sense of Place Figure 26.1, Photo courtesy the author. Figure 26.2, Interacting with work and each other, the bespoke VR crit space designed on the social VR platform AltspaceVR. Chapter 27: (Hi)Stories of Repair Figure 27.1, Darning Egg. Photo Peter O’Neill. Figure 27.2, Corset-lacing mend. Barbara Smith Vennerbeck. Photo: Bob Vennerbeck. Figure 27.3, Break Pot Beneft St. #1, 2018. Performance by Amy Lee Sanford. Photo Erik Gould, RISD Museum. Figures 27.4–27.5, Mass-produced prefab homes with kintsugi repairs, 2018. Taylor McCabe. Photo Yuhe Yao; Knit dress (detail), 2018. Jacqueline Scott. Chapter 28: Notions of Repair as a Pedagogical Dialogue Figure 28.1, Mark Davis. Figure 28.2, Mark Davis. Figure 28.3, Mark Davis. Figure 28.4, Mark Davis. 254

Davis.

Chapter 29: Toward Repairing the Social Fabric: Music Performance and Pedagogy at Work Figure 29.1, Photo courtesy of Community MusicWorks. Figure 29.2, Community MusicWorks young musicians. Photo courtesy Community MusicWorks. Epilogue Figure 0, Installation, Markus Berger and Emre Yalcin, 2019

(photo by Paolo Cardini).

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• Ukeles, Mierle Laderman. “Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! Proposal for an exhibition ‘CARE’.” 1969. • Van der Zanden, Joanna. “Repair Manifesto.” June 27, 2013. https://hiatusbookblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/joanna-van-der-zanden-eng/. • Vardouli, Theodora. “User Design: Constructions of the ‘user’ in the history of design research,” DRS2016 Papers, eds. P. Lloyd and E. Bohemia. 2016. https://doi. org/10.21606/drs.2016.262. • Wallinger, Sasha Rabin. “Mottainai: The Fabric of Life, Lessons in Frugality from Traditional Japan,” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture Vol. 10, No. 3. November 2012: 336–345. • Weber, Max, Peter R. Baehr, and Gordon C. Wells. The Protestant Ethic and the “Spirit” of Capitalism and Other Writings. New York: Penguin, 2002. • Welter, Volker M. Biopolis: Patrick Geddes and the City of Life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002. • Whiteley, Nigel S. “Pop, Consumerism, and the Design Shift,” Design Issues Vol. 2, No. 2 (1985): 31–45. DOI: 10.2307/1511416. • Wilson, Katerine. "Mending hearts: how a ‘repair economy’ creates a kinder, more caring community." June 13, 2019. https://theconversation.com/mending-hearts-how-a-repair-economy-creates-a- kinder-more-caring-community-113547. • Wirth, Louis. “Urbanism as a Way of Life,” The American Journal of Sociology Vol. 44, No. 1 (1938): 1. • Wynter, Sylvia. “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation—an Argument,” CR: The New Centennial Review Vol. 3, No. 3 (2003): 257–337. • Wynter, Sylvia. “Human Being as Noun? Or Being Human as Praxis? Towards the Autopoetic Turn/Overturn: A Manifesto.” Unpublished essay. 2007. • Wynter, Sylvia and Katherine McKittrick. “Unparalleled Catastrophe for Our Species? Or, to Give Humanness a Different Future: Conversations”, in Sylvia Wynter: On Being Human as Praxis, ed. Katherine McKittrick. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015, 9–89.

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INDEX Page numbers in italic type denote fgures and chapter illustrations. Names commencing “Mc” are fled as if spelt “Mac”.

• Abid, Hammad 237–238 • Abu Dhabi, Louvre 148, 149 • accountability 98 • acculturation 20, 21, 23, 24, 106, 118 • adaptive repair knowledge transfer gaps 121, 122–129 • adaptive repair preppers (repair knowledge transfer group) 122, 124–125 • adaptive reuse: building reuse/adaptation 8, 171, 186, 187, 190–195, 190, 193; and discriminate repair 63; Hand me Up proposition 196, 197, 198, 199–201; make-do-and-mend scheme (during World War II) 188, 189, 191 • African Americans: classical music 222; generational narratives 239, 240; reconciliation in Tar Baby (Morrison) 98; repair after translation 16; repairing the cracked concrete 27–29; slum clearance 77; Strange Fruit (Billie Holiday) 53; Tuskegee Experiment 23 • Ahmed, Sara 100

considered repairing 216, 216, 217, 218, 219; Oslo Architecture Triennale (2019) 145–146, 147; prefab homes (“(Hi) Stories of Repair” at RISD) 210–211; urban renewal (Wolin’s darning sketches) 77–81, 78, 79, 80; Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), UAE pavilion 144, 145, 147, 147, 148; West German post-war reconstruction 82, 83–87, 84, 88; see also building materials • Archivo Bordado de la Resistencia 104, 107–108 • Arellano, Robert 240–241 • Arendt, Hannah 118 • art: conservation and preservation 39, 50; featuring visible repair 5, 60; and healing (Leonard, Zoe) 50, 51–53, 51, 55; performance art 99, 106, 107, 108, 209–210, 210, 221; role of 222–223, 225; social engagement 24, 70; themed around repair 5–6 (see also Repair and Design Futures exhibition (RISD, 2018–2019)); unmade beds 52, 53, 53; vandalism 49–50

• Albers, Anni 76, 81

• art and design educational institutes 8, 15, 172, 230; see also Rhode Island School of Design

• Allotment Act see Dawes Act (US, 1887)

• Artemide Giocasta lamp 182–184, 183, 185

• Althusser, Louis 148

• artifciality, theoretical-political landscape of xii

• Altman, Irwin 153

• Arziyan 15

• AltspaceVR 203–205, 204

• Attia, Kader 5, 45, 46

• aluminum façade industry 157

• At what point it breaks: Sink (Delaney) 99

• Anatolian Civilizations Museum 35–36, 35

• Australia 121–129

• ‘Andoolnííłgo 234

• Bailey, Charlotte (visible repair-featured vases) 60

• Anker, Peder 153

• Bakhtin, Mikhail 108

• Ankersentrum (”surviving the ruinous ruin”) 16

• Barbara Jordan II housing development 28

• Anthropocene age 153

• Barrantes, Tzitzi (La Ropa Sucia se Lava en Casa) 99

• anti-capitalism 15, 97, 102, 121, 162, 229

• Bartning, Otto 86–87

• apartheid and partition 16, 114–115, 118–119

• Bashir, Shahzad 239

• apologizing 98, 229

• Basilica di San Lorenzo (Florence) 192

• Appadurai, Arjun 94–95

• Basilica di Santa Croce (Florence) 192–193

• Appelbaum, Barbara 181

• Baudrillard, Jean 37, 152

• Apter, Emily 16

• Bauen und Wohnen magazine 84–85, 84

• Arantepacua see P’urhépecha community

• Bauman, Zygmunt 115

• architects: Bartning, Otto 86–87; ecological sustainability 153, 154, 157; Kimwelle, Kevin (interview with) 171–179; lone Modernist genius 152; post-war West Germany 84–87, 84; repair as pedagogical dialogue 215–219, 216, 217, 218

• Benjamin, Walter 33, 37, 161

• architecture: adaptive reuse 8, 171, 186, 187, 190–195, 190, 193; brokenness 151–154, 157; call to action 232; critical/ 264

• bereavement 51–52, 212, 213 • Berger, Markus: Ceiling Kintsugi 58; Deconstruct- Reconstruct 5; Installation 228; UAE pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) 144, 145, 147, 147, 148; visible repair of Mies Van Der Rohe Mr10 Chair 4

• Berlin 52, 82, 86–87, 88, 191

• Calvert Research and Management 140

• Berlin im Aufbau (Taut), cover illustration 88

• Cambodia 209, 210

• biological interdependence xii

• canis familiaris 164

• Black Americans see African-Americans

• Boggs, Grace Lee 224–225

• capitalism: beauty 232; cities 32; designing pluriversally xiii; economic growth 151; environmental issues 1, 95; feminism and politics of care 97, 102; imagination’s role in theories of capitalism 148; individualism 99–100; and the quick fx 2; reaffrmed by repair initiatives 100–101; and religion 137– 138; and repair as fashion trend 63; repair’s anti-capitalism x, 1, 15, 121, 162, 229; technocratic apparatus of 55, 172

• Bolivia, trans-repair projects 161, 166

• carbon dioxide emissions 138, 141, 188, 197

• Borchardt, Rudolf 50

• care-work 97, 100, 101, 102

• Borderlanders 117–118, 119

• Carlisle Boarding School 20

• Borg, Kevin 181

• Cavell, Stanley 94

• boro 63, 71

• CE see circular economy (CE)

• Bowman, David 127

• Ceiling Kintsugi 58

• Brazil, gambiarras 235–236

• Center for the Study and Practice of Non-Violence (Providence, US) 209

• Blackdom, New Mexico, 33°09’49”N 104°30’32” W. (Medcalf) 26–27 • Black Duck Foods 127 • BlackRock 140–141

• “Break Pot: Beneft St.” (Sanford) 210, 210, 211 • bricolage 122, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128 • brokenness: Aboriginal bricoleur thinking 126–127; African American settlements 27–29; architecture 151–154, 157; art and design 5–6; Artemide Giocasta lamp 182, 184; broken urban 31–32, 36–37, 77; broken world thinking 13, 73–74, 162; conquest and colonization 19–20, 21, 23, 24; embodied by museums 67; irreparable generational wrongs 16; multiple perspectives 10, 230; repair as the creative destruction of 67, 70, 74, 121, 181, 230; Repair and Design Futures exhibition (RISD, 2018–2019) 6; requiring second-order change 2; social systems (US) 20–25, 102, 122; world systems ix, 1, 5, 49, 229; see also environmental issues; imperfection; visible repairs • Brown, Shándíín 234–235 • Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology 70, 73–74, 73 • Brunelleschi, Filippo 192 • Buchanan, Pete 151, 154 • building materials: circular economy 155–157, 177; ecological cost 146, 147–148, 154, 171; recycling projects (South Africa) 171, 173, 173, 174–175, 176, 176, 177–178, 177 • buildings: adaptive reuse 8, 171, 186, 187, 190–195, 190, 193; critical/considered repairing 216, 216, 217, 218, 219; prefab homes (“(Hi)Stories of Repair” at RISD) 210–211; urban renewal (Wolin’s darning sketches) 77–81, 78, 79, 80; West German post-war reconstruction 82, 83–87, 84, 88; see also building materials • burning of El Rinoceronte (the rhinoceros) see Kurhirani noambakiti (burning the devil): since that’s the only way they listen to us • Burrell Museum (Glasgow) 194–195 • business repair (ESG strategies) 137–138, 140–142 • Butler, Octavia E. 229 • call to action 229–233

• ceramics: bodily traces 93; “Break Pot: Beneft St.” (Sanford) 210, 210, 211; invisible repair 60, 209; kintsugi 60–61, 61, 63–64, 209, 211 • Ceres 141 • Césaire, Aimé 161, 164 • Chaos + Repair = Universe (Attia) 5, 45, 46 • charity model 101 • Chipperfeld, David 191 • ch’ixi 161 • Christianity 20, 137–138 • churches 86–87, 186, 192–193 • circular economy (CE) 151, 154–157, 172, 177 • cities: broken urban 31–32, 36–37, 77; building reuse 188, 190, 192–195, 193; Louvre museums (Paris and Abu Dhabi) 148, 149; projected growth 188; urban renewal (Wolin’s darning sketches) 77–81, 78, 79, 80; West German postwar reconstruction 82, 83–87, 84, 88 • Claremon, Mirei Takashima 238–239 • classical music 221, 222, 224 • climate change: business strategies 137, 138, 140, 141–142; and modern growth 151, 188; Parable of the Sower (Butler) 229; pluriversal design xiii; relationality x; and repair skills on the move 121–129 • CMW see Community MusicWorks (CMW) • Cohen, Leonard 72 • colonization see conquest and colonization; decolonization • commodifcation and decommodifcation 19, 32–34, 36, 52 • communal values (call to action) 232 • communities: Borderlanders 117–118, 119; communal values (call to action) 232; construction projects (post-war West Germany) 86–87; construction projects (South Africa) 172–173, 176–179, 176, 177; and music (Community MusicWorks, CMW) 209, 220, 221–222, 223–224, 223,

265

225; Nonviolence Institute 209; public acts of reconciliation 16; re-envision our frameworks (call to action) 232; repair through art 209; on reparations (lexicon of repair) 240; sustainable activism 224–225, 229; tikkun olam 4, 49, 241; see also indigenous people • Community MusicWorks (CMW) 209, 220, 221–222, 223–224, 223, 225 • conquest and colonization: Brazilian gambiarras 236; decolonizing deconstruction (Kurhirani noambakiti (burning the devil): since that’s the only way they listen to us) 107, 108, 109; and the global material footprint 148–149; legacies of oppression and systemic inequality 19–25, 222, 223; mitigative repair decolonizers 122, 127–128; museums 20–21, 22, 25, 50, 67, 71, 74; and the nation-state 114–115; on reparations 240

• decay see curated decay • Declaration of Independence (US) 19 • decolonization: art and design schools 74; colonial legacies 115; design museums 71; hosting mitigative repair decolonizers (repair knowledge transfer group) 122, 127–128; Kurhirani noambakiti (burning the devil): since that’s the only way they listen to us 107, 108, 109 • decommodifcation 33, 34, 36 • Deconstruct- Reconstruct (Berger) 5 • deforestation 148 • degrowth 145–146, 147, 148 • Delaney, Mairead Grace (At what point it breaks: Sink) 99

• conservation (art and historic artifacts) 39, 67, 238

• Delhi 6 15

• construction industry see building materials

• Department of Interior Architecture (Rhode Island School of Design) 8

• consumerism: and bricolage 126; engagement by the Repair and Design Futures exhibition 71; environmental effects of 95, 146, 152; global economics 1, 151; overconsumption 199, 201, 209; Parable of the Sower (Butler) 229; productionist bias 59, 121, 225; reparation ethics x, 15; self-fulfllment 152, 197; and urbanization 188; World3 scenarios 152–153; see also throw-away society

• Derrida, Jacques 44, 45

• criminal justice system 23–24

• design: building reuse 187, 190–195, 190, 193; commodifcation and idolatry 33; community 232; for durability (or reuse) 134, 156; Environment, Behavior and Design (EBD) 153; epistemological nature ix–x; Kimwelle’s use of recycled waste (South Africa) 172–173, 176–179, 176, 177; Midas (Phrygian king) 35, 36; modernism 151, 152; new conditions for being human x–xi, 127, 128; pluriversal approach to xii–xiii, 74, 161, 162; repair as 16, 43; Repair Atelier 8; rethinking communal values 232; sites of privilege 100; social engagement 1, 3, 6, 8, 24, 70, 230; urban 31, 32, 37; waste and repair initiatives (using design fctions) 122; West German post-war reconstruction 82, 83–87, 84, 88; see also art; Hand Me Up proposition; Repair and Design Futures exhibition (RISD, 2018–2019)

• Crosby, Alexandra 16

• Design for Disassembly (DfD) 156

• Crutzen, Paul 153

• DeSilvey, Caitlin 46, 63

• Cuba, resolver 240–241

• DeSouza, Allan 101

• cultural identity: assimilation 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 106, 118; embroidery 108; German national identity 85, 87; making practices and family history 91, 93; multiculturalism 117; PACCUP (Pacifc Australian Climate, Culture and Unsettlement Program) 124; remake (call to action) 233; women as a class category 97

• developer-maintainer distinction 98

• Corlett, William 148 • Corset-Laced Repaired Bowl 207–208, 208 • Counterculture Movement (New Communalist Movement, US) 153 • Country-agency 128–129 • Covid-19 pandemic 4, 23, 39, 41, 101–102, 137, 203

• Cumbrian Blue dish 64 • curated decay 46, 63 • Curtis, Adam 152 • Czech Republic, adapted buildings 193–194, 193 • dadeumi 131, 131 • Dant, Tim 181

• Dewey, John 62, 222–223, 225 • DfD see Design for Disassembly (DfD) • Dick Lee I (Wolin) 78 • Dick Lee II (Wolin) 79 • Dillon, Brian 83 • Dispatchwork (Vormann, 2007) 60 • Dornbusch Church (Frankfurt, Germany) 186, 192 • Dözbach, Otto 86 • dramatic violence see Kurhirani noambakiti (burning the devil): since that’s the only way they listen to us

• Dark to Light (Owen) 139

• Dry Bar (Manchester) 190, 194

• darning: analogy with adapted buildings 191, 192; dating historical repair 39; invisible repairs 59; lexicon of repair 235; tools for repair 206, 207; used to teach design students 71; visible repair 64; Wolin’s project based on a theme of urban renewal 76, 77–81, 78, 79, 80

• Eatock, Daniel (Visible Vehicle Repairs, 2017) 60

• Dawes Act (US, 1887) 20 266

• debility 16

• EBD see Environment, Behavior and Design (EBD) • economics 1, 141–142, 146–147, 151–152 • education: music education 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225; Native Americans 21–23, 22, 25; Relative Creative projects

on waste 122; repair knowledge transfer 121, 122–125; repair as pedagogical dialogue 215–219, 216, 217, 218; VR crits 203–205, 204 • Egger, Anna 114, 116, 119 • Egger, Anthonia 114, 116, 119 • Embroidered Resistance Archive 104, 107–108 • embroidery 104, 107–108, 200 • environmental issues: construction industry 146, 147–148, 151, 154, 171, 177, 179; and consumerism 152–153; Country-agency 128–129; and engagement with materials 95; environmental repair projects (Providence) 209; fashion industry 197; Hand Me Up proposition 199, 201; UAE pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) 145; see also climate change • Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) strategies 137–138, 140–142

• Gallery S O (”Fix Fix Fix”) 5 • gambiarras 163, 235–236 • Gasson, Barry 194 • Gathu, David (robotic arm) 161, 165 • Geddes, Patrick 191 • Geldermans, Bob 155, 156 • Germany: adapted buildings 186, 191, 192; post-war reconstruction 2, 82, 83–87, 84, 88 • Glasgow, adapted buildings 194 • global material footprint 146–147, 148–149 • Gordios’s tomb (Phrygian king) 34–35 • Gorodnichenko, Yuriy 152 • Graeber, David 33 • Gramsci, Antonio 113

• Environment, Behavior and Design (EBD) 153

• Greene, Maxine 223

• Erdrich, Louise 74

• green growth 146, 147, 149

• Escobar, Arturo 161

• greenhouse gas emissions 138, 141, 188, 197

• ESG strategies see Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG) strategies

• grief 51–52, 119, 204, 212, 213

• ethno-nationalism 115, 117

• Grima, Joseph 154

• etymology 15

• Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology 70, 73–74, 73

• family and memory 91–95, 130–135, 212, 213 • Fanon, Franz 100

• Haghighian, Natascha Sadr (Natascha Süder Happelmann) 16

• Federici, Silvia 101

• Haiti 148, 149

• feminism 97, 101, 224

• hand-me-down clothes 187, 191–192

• Fernández, Carla (Poncho Poema) 3

• Hand Me Up proposition 196, 197, 198, 199–201

• Fiala, Stanislav 193, 194

• Haraway, Donna 161

• Fink, Larry 140

• Harper, Douglas 181

• freworks 108

• Harriss, Harriet 154

• First Nations: Australia 121, 122, 126, 127–129; Native Americans 19–25, 22, 74, 221, 234

• healthcare systems 23

• frst-order repair 2

• Heintz, Lu (With Holdings) 96

• Florence, adapted buildings 192–193

• Hernández Lucas, Rosa (Poncho Poema) 3

• foreigners see strangers

• Hickel, Jason 146–147

• Foucault, Michel 16

• Hoffman, Andrew 138

• freedom 29, 31, 115, 181, 201, 223, 225

• Holiday, Billie (Strange Fruit) 53

• Freire, Paolo 223, 224, 225

• Holocaust 92, 94, 115

• Freitas, Tatiane (My Old New Series) 60

• hospital gowns 39–41, 40

• French colonialism 148, 149

• hosting adaptive repair bricoleurs (repair knowledge transfer group) 122, 126–127

• Friedman, Benjamin 140 • Fry, Tony x • Full Circle (Sanford) 209 • Fuller, Buckminster 153 • Furniturewala, Safya 115, 116, 118–119 • Gaians 127 • galleries and museums: Gallery S O (”Fix Fix Fix”) 5; see also museums

• Grégoire, Henri 49–50

• Hedva, Johanna 102

• hosting cultures of ontological repair (repair knowledge transfer group) 122, 128–129 • hosting mitigative repair decolonizers (repair knowledge transfer group) 122, 127–128 • houses: African Americans 27–29, 28; community project (South Africa) 178, 179; “(Hi)Stories of Repair” course (RISD) 210–211, 213; post-war reconstruction (West Germany) 84, 86, 87; repair as pedagogical dialogue (French

267

Alpine farmhouse) 215–219, 216, 217, 218; UK housing stock 188, 190 • How to “Make-Do-and-Mend” (British Board of Trade flm) 188

• Keefe, Anna Rose, hospital gown repair 38–41, 38, 40 • Keita, Fode 73–74 • Kelly, Ben (Dry Bar, Manchester) 190, 194

• Hsieh, Tehching 55

• Kenya: Jua Kali 161, 236–237; trans-repair projects 161, 164, 165

• identity 91, 92–94, 193, 222; see also cultural identity

• Kim, Christina 130, 131–134, 132–133, 135

• IEN see Indigenous Empowerment Network

• Kimwelle, Kevin (interview with) 171–179

• iFixit website 181

• King Midas with his Daughter (A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys, Hawthorne) 34

• immigration 91, 92, 93–94, 131, 134 • imperfection: aesthetics of 43–47; aging process 59; curated decay 46; rethinking communal values 232; see also visible repairs • India 15, 17, 115, 118, 237 • Indian Removal Act (US, 1830) 20 • Indigenous Empowerment Network 25 • indigenous people: Australia 121, 122, 126, 127–129; classical music 221, 222; Native Americans 19–25, 22, 74, 221, 234–235; P’urhépecha community 104, 105–109, 106, 107; reparative ethics x, 74 • individualism x, 100, 141–142, 151–152

• kintsugi 58, 60–61, 61, 63–64, 209, 211 • Kintsugi Eggshells (Sheehan) 60 • Kintsugi Pieces in Harmony (Nakamura) 63–64 • kintsukuroi 6 • Kipi, bilingual robot 161, 162–163 • Kiuna, Moses (robotic arm) 161, 165 • Klein, Naomi 4, 122 • Koetsu, Hon’ami 61 • Kohn, Eduardo 94

• Ingold, Tim 181

• Korea: Kintsugi Pieces in Harmony (Nakamura) 63–64; practices of sewing and mending 130–135

• INTAR (Department of Interior Architecture, Rhode Island School of Design) 8

• Kurhirani noambakiti (burning the devil): since that’s the only way they listen to us 106, 107–109, 107

• interdependence see relationality

• Lakshmin, Pooja 102

• interior architecture 186, 187, 190–195, 190, 193; see also Department of Interior Architecture (Rhode Island School of Design)

• Land Acknowledgements (US) 25

• intersectional feminism 97 • invisible repairs 39, 41, 59–60, 209, 211 • ironing (Korean dadeumi) 131, 131 • Islam 138, 239 • Istanbul Design Biennial 5 • Italy, adapted buildings 192 • Jackson, Steven J. 13, 59, 73 • Japan: boro 63, 71; kintsugi 60–61, 61, 63–64, 209, 211; mottainai 238; Patchwork juban (under-kimono) 11; postwar growth 2; Repairing Earthquake Project 63; Yamataka Jindai-zakura (Japanese Cherry Blossom Tree) 54

• Latino communities (US) 23 • Latour, Bruno (actor network theory) 138, 154 • Laurentian Library (Florence) 192 • layered thinking 134 • Lee, Dick 77, 78, 79, 81 • Lee, Eun 147 • Lee, Jussara (Hand Me Up) 196, 197, 198, 199–201 • Lefebvre, Henri 31 • Leonard, Annie 196 • Leonard, Zoe 50, 51–53, 51, 55 • Lerman, Nina 181 • Lévi-Strauss, Claude 126

• Jua Kali 161, 236–237

• lexicon of repair ix, 234–241

• Judaism 138; see also tikkun olam

• Lifezones 127–128

• judicial systems 23–24

• Lindemann, Erich 77

• jugaad 15, 163, 237

• Liquid2solid (Kim) 132–133, 135

• Kamau, David Lawrence (robotic dog) 161–162, 164

• listening skills 215

• Kamkwamba, William (windmills) 161, 166

• Longhouse (Tomaquag Museum) 22

• Kamoshita, Tomomi (visible repair-featured art) 60

• Lorde, Audre 101

• Kantha quilt 7

• Louvre museums (Paris and Abu Dhabi) 148, 149

• Karmali, Tahir Carl Mohez 236–237

• Lowenthal, David 59

• Kaufman, Scott Barry 64

• Lubar, Steven (fxing an Artemide Giocasta lamp) 182–184, 183, 185

• Kaya (‘mosquito net’) 135

• Luxemburgh, Rosa 113 268

• McAfee, Andrew 146, 147, 148

transfer group) 122, 123

• McCarthy, Leppi 208–209

• multiculturalism 117

• maintainer-developer distinction 98

• murammat 239

• “Make-Do-and-Mend” scheme (UK, World War II) 188, 189, 191

• Museum für Moderne Kunst 45, 46

• material repair see physical repair

• museums: Anatolian Civilizations Museum 35–36; Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology 70, 73–74, 73; Burrell Museum (Glasgow) 194–195; colonial conquest 20–21, 22, 25, 50, 67, 71, 74; expressions of repair and care 67; Louvre museums (Paris and Abu Dhabi) 148, 149; Mingei Museum (Liquid2solid) 132–133; Museum für Moderne Kunst 45, 46; Neues Museum (Berlin) 191; Proteus Gowanus Museum (”Mend” exhibition, 2008) 5; RISD Museum 77 (see also Repair and Design Futures exhibition (RISD, 2018–2019)); as sites of resistance and critical interrogation 5, 6, 101; Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Unmade Bed) 52

• Meadows, Donella H. 152–153

• music education 220, 221, 222, 223, 224, 225

• Medcalf, Nakeia: Blackdom, New Mexico, 33°09’49”N 104°30’32” W. 26–27; Road to Freedom, US Hwy 285 29

• Muzzaffar, Ijlal, UAE pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) 144, 145, 147, 147, 148

• megacities 31–32

• My Old New Series (Freitas) 60

• Mehra, Rakeysh Omprakash (Delhi 6) 15

• Nakamura, Kunio 63–64

• Malawi, trans-repair projects 161, 166 • Manchester, adapted buildings 190, 194 • marginalized communities see indigenous people; refugees; women • Marley, Bob 240 • Marx, Karl 32, 113, 148 • Maté, Gabor 93, 95 • material passports 156

• Meixner Schlüter Wendt Architekten 186, 192

• nation states 50, 85, 114–115, 117–118, 119

• Melville, Herman 181

• Native Americans 19–25, 22, 74, 221, 234–235

• memory: family and the practices of making and mending 91–95, 130–135, 212, 213; history in damaged textiles 238; politics of 107; in the ruins of post-War West Germany 86, 87; in the Swéerts-Sporck Palace adaptation 194; traces of use 53, 71, 93

• Navajo people 20, 234–235

• Mexico see P’urhépecha community

• new habits (call to action) 233

• Michelangelo 192

• New Haven, urban renewal 77

• Midas (Phrygian king) 34–36, 34

• Nishiko 63

• Mies Van Der Rohe Mr10 Chair (Berger and Sachdev) 4

• nomads 117, 118

• Mignolo, Walter 109

• Nonviolence Institute (Providence, US) 209

• migration: repair and connecting with the past 91, 92, 93–94, 131, 134; repair knowledge transfer 121, 122–125

• Notkirchen 86–87

• Mingei Museum (Liquid2solid) 132–133

• Oak Street Sketch (Wolin) 80, 81

• Modernist architects 31, 84–86, 84, 152, 153

• Obama, Barack (2015 Passover speech) 4

• Modular Design 156 • Moko, “Khusta” Khulukile 176, 177–178, 177

• Ogunji, Wura-Natasha (Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman?) 99

• Montanari, Lynsea (featured in Still Here) 18

• Olson, Mancur 2

• Morgan, Lisa 64, 235

• One iteration of Repair Society (Van der Zanden) 42

• Morillo, Erika (With Holdings) 96

• Oropallo, Gabriele 5

• Morrison, Toni (Tar Baby) 98, 101

• Oslo Architecture Triennale (2019) 145–146, 147

• Morris, Rosalind C. 74

• Owen, Barbara 136, 139

• mottainai 209, 238

• PACCUP (Pacifc Australian Climate, Culture and Unsettlement Program) 124

• mourning 51–52, 212, 213 • Mousaka, Katerina P. (Real, Hidden and Imaginary Landscapes) 155

• Ncanywa, Selinah 178, 179 • Netherlands, aluminum façade industry 157 • Neues Museum (Berlin) 191

• Noragi (work coat): late 1800s–mid-1900s 68–69, 71

• Pagoda Table 35–36, 35 • Palm-Wine Gourd Container 73, 73

• moving adaptive repair amplifers (repair knowledge transfer group) 122, 124

• Parable of the Sower (Butler) 229

• moving adaptive repair transferrers (repair knowledge

• Park, Robert E. 31

• Paris 15, 148, 149

269

• partition and apartheid 16, 114–115, 118–119

• P’urhépecha community 104, 105–109, 106, 107

• Pascoe, Bruce 127

• pyrotechnics 108

• Paulino, Fred 235–236

• Quijano, Aníbal 108

• Pazzi Chapel (Florence) 192–193

• quilting 239–240

• pedagogy 6, 8; see also education

• Quispe, Esteban (Wall-e Andino) 161, 166

• performance art 99, 106, 107, 108, 209–210, 210, 221

• racism: apartheid and partition 16, 114–115, 118–119; ethical business (ESG strategies) 140; Nonviolence Institute 209; see also African Americans; indigenous people

• personal repair: Arziyan, refrain 15; following bereavement 51–52, 212, 213; Midas (Phrygian king) 36; post-traumatic growth 64; Sanford, Amy Lee, performance art 209–210, 210, 211; self-accountability 98; symbolism of material repair for mending relations 98 • Peru, trans-repair projects 161, 162–163 • physical repair: in affuent societies x, 15, 63, 100; as anti-capitalism x, 1, 121, 162, 229; cracked concrete 28, 29; create new habits (call to action) 233; as decommodifcation 32–33, 34; emotional investment in 71–73, 98, 121; fxing as learning (Artemide Giocasta lamp) 182–184, 183, 185; global practice of 121; “(Hi)Stories of Repair” class (RISD) 207–209, 208, 210, 210, 211, 211, 212; lexicon of repair 234–238, 239–240, 241; reducing waste 121, 124–125, 134, 209, 232, 233; relationship with objects 61, 92, 95, 232, 235; repair services 15, 17, 121; six repair knowledge transfer gaps 122–129; skills 181, 182, 184; trans-repair 161–164, 162–163, 164, 165, 166; see also buildings; textiles; visible repairs

• Rau, Thomas 154, 156 • Raworth, Kate 151 • Real, Hidden and Imaginary Landscapes (Mousaka) 155 • reconciliation 16, 21, 23, 98 • recycling: building materials (Design for Disassembly) 156; building materials (South Africa) 172–173, 173, 174–175, 176–179, 176, 177; Hand Me Up proposition 196, 197, 198, 199–201; Korean tradition (textiles) 134; and repair 5, 63; trans-repair 161–164, 162–163, 164, 165, 166; see also adaptive reuse • Reduce/Reuse/Recycle slogan 188 • refugees 86, 92, 93–94, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119

• Platform21 (Repairing, 2009) 5

• relationality x; capitalist notions of success 100; and colonization 19; designing pluriversally xii–xiii, 74, 161, 162; entanglement 71; and futuring 128, 129; Latour’s actor network theory 138; re-envision our frameworks (call to action) 232; on reparations 240; trans-repair (Global South) 163

• pluriversal approach to design xii–xiii, 74, 161, 162

• Relative Creative 122

• Pojagi 134

• religion 20, 137–138

• Polanyi, Michael 181

• preservation 50, 63, 67, 239

• repair: and the aesthetics of imperfection 43–47; after translation 16; business repair (ESG strategies) 137–138, 140–142; call to action 230–233; conceptual rubrick ix; as considering 215–216; Department of Interior Architecture (INTAR, Rhode Island School of Design) 8; etymology 15; exhibitions themed around 5–6 (see also Repair and Design Futures exhibition (RISD, 2018–2019)); maintenance and improvement 16, 98; onto-epistemic dimension xii, 2; sociocultural practice of 41, 43; and sustainable futures 3, 6, 51, 229–230, 233; tikkun olam 4, 49, 241; see also communities; personal repair; physical repair

• productionist bias 59, 121, 225

• Repair Atelier 4, 8, 9, 58, 250

• Product-Service Systems (PSS) 156–157

• repair cafés 63, 124, 209

• Protestant work ethic 137–138

• repair communities 124–125

• Proteus Gowanus Museum (”Mend” exhibition, 2008) 5

• Repair and Design Futures exhibition (RISD, 2018–2019) ix, 6, 59, 70–74, 75, 207, 212; exhibits: Bowl with kintsugi repair 61; “Break Pot: Beneft St.” (Sanford) 210, 210, 211; Cumbrian Blue dish 64; Kantha Quilt 7; Noragi (work coat), late 1800s–mid-1900s 68–69, 71; Palm-Wine Gourd Container 73, 208; Poncho Poema 3; repaired shawl (1820/1840) 72, 73; Sandusky Platter 72; Woman’s Shift or Underdress (1875–1920) 66, 71

• planned obsolescence x, 1, 15, 59, 162, 207

• policing 23–24 • pollution 146, 197, 199 • Poncho Poema (Fernández and Hernández Lucas) 3 • pottery see ceramics • Prague, adapted buildings 193–194, 193 • Prattes, Riika 101 • Pratt, Richard 20

• Providence (Rhode Island, US): Barbara Jordan II housing development 28; Community MusicWorks (CMW) 209, 220, 221–222, 223–224, 223, 225; environmental repair projects 209; Nonviolence Institute 209; Repair Atelier 4, 8, 9, 58, 250; street mural (Still Here) 18; see also Rhode Island School of Design; RISD Museum • PSS see Product-Service Systems (PSS) • Puar, Jasbir 16 • Pulley, Zoë 239–240

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• Rand, Ayn (The Fountainhead) 152

• Repairing Earthquake Project 63 • Repair Manifesto 5, 43, 59, 209 • Repair Society 5, 42

• repair stalls (India) 17

• Seppo (kintsugi-repaired tea bowl) 61

• reparation 240; see also communities; indigenous people; repair

• Sheehan, Elisa (Kintsugi Eggshells) 60

• replacement 32, 33, 36, 62; see also throw-away society

• Sidewalk Kintsukuroi (Sussman, 2016) 60

• reproductive (care) work 97, 100, 101, 102

• Silence=Death (Wojnarorwicz) 50

• reservation system (US) 20

• Simmel, Georg 31

• resistance: Indigenous rights 20; museums 5, 6, 101; P’urhépecha community 104, 106, 106, 107–109, 107; repair as i, ix, 6

• Simpson, Elizabeth 35, 36

• Rhode Island School of Design: Department of Interior Architecture (INTAR) 8; “(Hi)Stories of Repair” course 207–213, 208, 210, 211, 213; VR crits 203–205, 204; see also RISD Museum • ”right to repair” movement 15, 59, 162 • Rikyu, Sen no 60

• Shenoda, Matthew 240

• Sklair, Leslie 152 • slavery 16, 20, 114, 147, 148–149, 224, 240 • slum clearance 77 • Smart, Barry 152 • Smith, Adam 141–142 • Smith, Bruce D. 153

• Roman Catholicism 138

• social (in)equality 1; art’s engagement with 24, 70; call to action 230, 233; care-work 97, 100, 101, 102; classical music traditions 222, 223, 224; community building projects (South Africa) 176, 178; creative and intellectual elites 101; distribution of care-work 97, 100, 101, 102; ethical business investment (ESG strategies) 138; public reconciliation 16; P’urhépecha community 104, 105–109, 106, 107; repair projects and privileged positions 100; sustainable futures 3, 224–225; see also conquest and colonization

• La Ropa Sucia se Lava en Casa (Barrantes) 99

• social media 31, 101

• Rose, Mark 181

• Sookyung, Yee (Translated Vases, 2002) 60

• Rostow, W. W., economic model 151–152

• South Africa: community building projects 172–173, 176–179, 176, 177; post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission 16

• RISD see Rhode Island School of Design; RISD Museum • RISD Museum 77; see also Repair and Design Futures exhibition (RISD, 2018–2019) • Road to Freedom, US Hwy 285 (Medcalf) 29 • robotics xii, 161–162, 162–163, 164, 165, 166 • Roland, Gerard 152

• Rudolph, Paul 81 • ruin value 83, 85–86 • Rumi 72 • Sachdev, Sfoorti (visible repair of Mies Van Der Rohe Mr10 Chair) 4 • Saito, Yuriko 209, 211 • salvation 138, 211 • Sanders, Mark 16 • Sandusky Platter 62 • Sanford, Amy Lee 209–210, 210 • San Lorenzo, Basilica di (Florence) 192 • Santa Croce, basilica di (Florence) 192–193 • sashiko stitching technique 196 • Schmidt, Walther 84–86, 84 • Schultz, Tristan 74, 122 • Scotland, adapted buildings 194 • Scott, David 16 • Seaberry, Jordan 209 • second-order repair 2 • Second World War see World War II • self-accountability 98 • self-repair see personal repair • Semper, Gottfried 77

• sovereignty 20, 106–107, 114, 115 • spaceship earth 153 • spacing (Derrida’s logic of) 44 • Spade, Dean 101 • spectrality 43–44, 45, 46, 47 • Speer, Albert 86 • Spelman, Elizabeth x, 2, 63, 67, 70, 74, 121, 169, 181, 207 • Spivak, Gayatri 16, 100, 148 • Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (Unmade Bed) 52 • star cult (“Starchitects”) 8, 154, 178 • Stein, Jesse Adams 16 • Still Here (wall mural) 18 • Stoermer, Eugene 153 • Strange Fruit (Billie Holiday) 53 • Strange Fruit (Leonard) 51–53, 51 • strangers 117–119 • Strasser, Susan 126 • street side stores (India) 15, 17 • Streur, John 140 • Strickland, Bill 221 • Sussman, Rachel (Sidewalk Kintsukuroi, 2016) 60 • sustainable activism 224–225, 229–233 271

• Swéerts-Sporck Palace (Prague, Czech Republic) 193–194, 193 • Tagore, Rabindranath 113 • tailoring (clothes) 191, 195, 197 • Tar Baby (Morrison) 98, 101 • Tawawala, Vazira Tawawala 115, 116, 118–119 • technology: green growth 146, 147, 149; Kevin Kimwelle interview 172, 179; technopatriarchal solutions xii; trans-repair 161–164, 162–163, 164, 165, 166; twentieth century industrialism x; VR crits (Rhode Island School of Design) 203–205, 204; World3 projection model 152–153 • techno-poetics 161–164, 162–163, 164, 165, 166 • temporality see spectrality • terricide x • textiles: analogy with adapted buildings 187, 191–195; ‘Añdoolnííłgo (Navajo people) 234; on darning (lexicon of repair) 235; dress for grieving 212, 213; Hand me Up proposition 196, 197, 198, 199–201; hospital gowns 38, 39–41, 40; Korean practices of making and mending 130–135; “Make-Do-and-Mend” scheme (UK, World War II) 188, 189; memory and the practice of making and mending 91–95, 238; quilting 239–240; Repair and Design Futures exhibition (RISD, 2018–2019) 3, 7, 11, 66, 68–69, 70–72, 72; sewing tools 92, 93, 206, 207; visibility of repairs 6, 39–41, 40, 59, 60, 61, 64; Wolin’s project based on a theme of urban renewal 76, 77–81, 78, 79, 80

• uniqueness: broken urban 31; building reuse 191, 195; Hand me Up proposition 196, 197, 198, 199, 200; of repaired objects 33–34, 59, 61, 191; silenced by acculturation 21 • United Arab Emirates (UAE): Louvre museum, Abu Dhabi 148, 149; pavilion, Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) 144, 145, 147, 147, 148 • United Kingdom: adapted buildings 190, 194; housing stock 188, 190; “Make-Do-and-Mend” scheme (UK, World War II) 188, 189 • United States of America: Butler’s apocalyptic vision (Parable of the Sower) 229; Counterculture (New Communalist) Movement) 153; Environment, Behavior and Design (EBD) 153; Native Americans 19–25, 22, 74, 221, 234–235; pandemic-era motherhood 102; Proteus Gowanus Museum (”Mend” exhibition, 2008) 5; waste 3; see also African Americans; Providence (Rhode Island, US) • Unmade Bed (Menzel) 52 • UN Sustainable Development Goals 188 • urban spaces see cities • Urick, Jessica 237 • value: aesthetics and ethics in architecture 154, 157; commodifcation 19, 32–34, 36, 52; discriminate repair 63; narratives of emotional investment in repaired textiles 71; ruin value 83, 85–86 • vandalism 49–50

• Thom, Kai Cheng 98

• Van der Zanden, Joanna 42, 43

• throw-away society x, 1, 3, 6, 15, 59, 162, 207

• vehicle repairs 60

• tikkun olam 4, 49, 241

• Velásquez, Walter, Kipi the bilingual robot 161, 162–163

• Till, Jeremy 151 • Tiny Bubbles 135

• Venice Architecture Biennale (2018), UAE pavilion 144, 145, 147, 147, 148

• Tirol/Tyrol, partition 115, 119

• Vennerbeck, Barbara Smith 208, 208

• Tomaquag Museum 22, 25

• Vennerbeck, Bob (VBob) 207–208, 208

• Translated Vases (Sookyung, 2002) 60

• victimization 24, 109

• translation and reparation 16

• visible repairs: aesthetics of 60–63, 64; art 5, 60; art conservation 39; Corset-Laced Repaired Bowl 207–208, 208; invisible repairs 39, 59–60, 209, 211; kintsugi 60–61, 61, 63–64, 209, 211; Mies Van Der Rohe Mr10 Chair 4; Pagoda Table 35, 36; Schmidt’s emphasis on inherent material value 86; textiles 6, 39–41, 40, 60, 61, 64, 71, 73–74

• trans-repair 161–164, 162–163, 164, 165, 166 • trauma: artistic explorations of 5, 209; bereavement 51–52, 212, 213; as disconnection from the self 93, 95; healing practice by making and mending 52, 64, 94, 95, 209; historical 24, 25, 73, 94, 102; P’urhépecha community (April 5 2017, attack on) 106, 109; repaired objects as an expression of conciliation 98; slum clearance 77

• Visible Vehicle Repairs (Eatock, 2017) 60 • Vormann, Jan (Dispatchwork, 2007) 60

• Tree (Leonard) 54, 55

• wabi tea ceremony 60–61, 63

• tribal nations see Native Americans

• Wall-e Andino 161, 166

• Trouillot, Michel-Rolph 107, 109

• Walmart 138, 140

• Truth and Reconciliation Commission (South Africa) 16

• Tyrol/Tirol, partition 115, 119

• waste: building construction 154, 171; and designer’s 71, 122; disposal of 201; ESG business strategies 137; fashion industry 197; Hand Me Up proposition 199, 201; levels of 3, 121–122; on mottainai 238; reduction by repairing 121, 124–125, 134, 209, 232, 233; throw-away society x, 1, 3, 6, 15, 59, 162, 207; see also recycling

• UAE see United Arab Emirates (UAE)

• Watzlawick, Paul 2

• Turner, Graham 153 • Tuskegee Experiment 23 • Tuttle, Aliza 241

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• Ukeles, Meirle Laderman 98

• Weber, Max 137, 148 • Wechssler, Alfred 86 • Western-centricity ix, 10, 15, 114, 121, 146, 162–163, 221 • West Germany, post-war reconstruction 2, 82, 83–87, 84, 88 • white-collar criminals 23–24 • white fragility 24 • Whiteley, Nigel 152 • Whole Earth Catalog, cover photograph 153 • Will I still carry water when I am a dead woman? (Ogunji) 99 • Wills, Ariel, material family memory 91–95, 92 • Wilson, Katherine 121 • Wirth, Louis 31, 32 • With Holdings (Morillo and Heintz) 96 • Wojnarorwicz, David 48, 50, 51 • Wolin, Jeremy, darning projects 77–81 • women: care-work 97, 100, 101, 102; darning 77; feminism 97, 101, 224; P’urhépecha community resistance 108; on quilting 239–240; reparative ethics x, 74 • World3 computer simulation program 152–153 • World War II: “Make-Do-and-Mend” scheme (UK) 188, 189, 191; West German post-war reconstruction 2, 82, 83–87, 84, 88 • Wynter, Sylvia 113 • Yalcin, Emre (Installation) 228 • Yamataka Jindai-zakura (Japanese Cherry Blossom Tree) 54 • Yoshimasa, Ashikaga 60 • Zeder, Melinda A. 153

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