Carrying as culture

Abstract

Carrying as Culture explores publishing as a process, as a site where disciplines can meet, as a method for researching that promotes dialogues between thinking and making. This thesis emerges from the curiosity to reimagine the encyclopedia, a historically charged concept associated with rationality, and often defined by masculine logics of universality. Instead, I approach the encyclopedia as a living format, made of gathered fragments that hold temporary knowledges. It becomes not a container of certainties, but a publication for multiplicity. At the heart of this reimagination lies the concept of carrying, both as a metaphor and an act. What do we carry, physically and symbolically? How might carrying become a way to look at feminist history of design? These questions guide a curatorial research practice that unfolds through the gestures of collecting, classifying and editing. The research is developed through conversations with friends, workshops with participants exploring the different interpretations of carrying and making containers that became part of a shared publication.