Are we repairing soils and each other here? Exploring design cosmotechnics in the waste age

Abstract

Design research increasingly turns to non-Western perspectives on repair to counteract the Waste Age and our climate crisis. We draw on the cosmotechnic vision by Yuk Hui (許煜) to explore agriculturists in Hong Kong who repair soil ecologies by recovering resources. They share many cosmotechnic commitments that subordinate human bodies, tools, and arrangements to balance their relations between Earth and the cosmos. Our goal was to identify devices, practices, and characteristics that enact (in imperfect form) repair-led design from the place-based interworkings of technologies and environmental conditions. We encountered practitioners experimenting with organic waste, integration, climate farming, and community building. Turning these concerns into a socio-material-cosmological proposition of repair, we ask: What if we cultivated landscapes and each other? This research aims to advance design that no longer requires constant repair.