Living a Making

VINALHAVEN, ME — June 23–29, 2024

“It matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories.”

— Donna J. Haraway, Staying With the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene

How do we make a living? When did living become—work? Or has it always been?

In a time characterized by moral chaos and a careless indifference to a fragile planet, political theorist Wendy Brown suggests that the only way forward is to “confront the predicaments of meaning making today” and to “rise to the challenge of creating a world absent its givenness.” Can we accept this invitation and respond through forms of attention? Through critical fabulation? By staying with the trouble? Can we discover new ways to use the tools we have available? To exchange them and rebuild our making processes in ways that also nurture the process of living? To also be aware of living?

DesignInquiry invites makers and thinkers from all disciplines to start from the finish, lighten your load, and reshape how you live your making. Collectively we’ll build a library of tools, shared from each other's practices—unbuilding habits. We will make do with what we have on an island, foraging, swapping, and engaging with the materials that are abundantly overlooked/underutilized/unacknowledged.