“Thus conceived, the thing has the character not of an externally bounded entity, set over and against the world, but of a knot whose constituent threads, far from being contained within it, trail beyond, only to become caught with other threads in other knots. Or in a word, things leak, forever discharging through the surfaces that form temporarily around them.” (Ingold 2010)
Designerly research as mode of knowledge production asks for precision in naming and wording. Many of the insights done in this project revolve around the locality, situatedness and complexity of objects and humans, and the networks that they co-form. One of the insights is that things are not as singular and clear as we sometimes make them to be. From the meeting point of Heideggers phenomenology, Latour’s Actor-Network-Theory and Tim Ingold’s more fluid interpretations we can distil an understanding of the nature of things.
The language that fits these insights is one with a certain degree of ambiguity, or at least processuality at its core. The idea is that because objects are inseparable from the rest of the world, because they do not exist in some sort of vacuum, we can hardly speak of ‘objects’ but have to think in line with the ‘ding’/thing or assemblage; that which brings together.
Designerly Research in RE-source works along the lines of these things. Locations are being visited, materials are being traced and tracked, and the practices of the various people involved are being joint by the designers. Developing an understanding of the complexity of a situation happens through and with things, objects, through moving with them in their heterogeneous nature. It is important to emphasize that this thing is not some predetermined clearly demarcated collection but rather a ‘collecting’ force, an assemblage. Moving with the thing, following the lines of force that collect, shows more and more of the meshwork that produces it and the current state of affairs. Our object of research is in movement.
In reframing residual materials this attitude of movement is important. By feeling what is connected and where, moments of friction arise through which innovation, change and redesign is possible. A redesign with a firm footing in the present situation. Feeling is not just a ‘feel in our guts’ type of feeling but and actual, literal, feeling, touching. By mapping the flows of material, through latching on to movements through space and time, follow-pieces or other empathic field research acts, designers develop an understanding of the situation that becomes sharable and workable.
“The point of reviving this old etymology is that we don’t assemble because we agree, look alike, feel good, are socially compatible or wish to fuse together but because we are brought by divisive matters of concern into some neutral, isolated place in order to come to some sort of provisional makeshift (dis)agreement. If the Ding designates both those who assemble because they are concerned as well as what causes their concerns and divisions, it should become the center of our attention: Back to Things!” (Bruno Latour & Peter Weibel 2004 p.13)