Ecologizing, Decolonizing: An Artefactual Perspective

Abstract

In this paper I present a design project developed in Córdoba, Argentina, entitled ‘Spices-Species’. Through this case study, I discuss the possibility of designing using two decolonial strategies — "objectivity (or truth) in parenthesis" and " being where one does and thinks"— that can lead to delinking, on a micropolitical scale, from colonial social patterns as well as reconnecting humans with natural processes and beings to which they are detached by means of devices. The paper suggests that these decolonial strategies, combined with the performance of designed artefacts may help to acknowledge not only human diversity, but also the multiple and diverse nonhuman beings that conform and participate in different localities.