Before Repairing: Pausing and Knotting Discomfort

Abstract

In this work, we reflect on a speculative pedagogical exercise in which we recorded, and invited others to record, through and with knots, situations of our daily lives related to forms of containment and entrapment. Accompanying this creative and collaborative work allowed us to materialize situations of vulnerability and unease (as knots), as well as the difficulty of registering these discomforts (through knots). We are interested in presenting this exercise as an embodied design practice. We also want to highlight how the staging of vulnerability and unease―made through material practices― generates contemplative pauses that have the power to make the fragility of life visible, and thus anticipate the need for repair. We argue here that repair, as a practice linked to design, is a making that deserves to be propitiated by contemplation and catharsis, in the face of damage and fragility in capitalist contexts.

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