Research Drift: Other Ways of Knowing
Research Collaboratory: Participants with special guests invited from UK/NL/CAN and in collaboration with the MA Regenerative Design, CSM, University of the Arts, London. Thanks to Andreas Lang, Alice Lee, Barbara Smith, Britt Berden, Britta Boyer, Catalina Meija Moreno, Christiano Roussado, Delfina Fantini, Eliza Collin, Emily Luce, Fabrizio Cocchiarella, Judith van den Boom, Julian Ellerby, Kieren Jones, Kok Chian Leong, M, AKOK, Maël Henaff, Maurizo Mucciola, Natasha Freedman, Rodney Sayers, Tess Wehmeyer.
In the coming months the Drift contributions will be bundled and published online. Follow UFƟ for updates. The Drift ‘Other Ways of Knowing’ is a research process starting in London, but evolving through other locations, online and international with our contributors. The findings of the project will be distributed and publishing the new processes and vocabularies emerging through the Drift. Stay up to date for upcoming online and onsite continuations of the Drift or connect via email
In September UFƟxMARDxCSM drifted through London during the London Design Festival (17-24 Sept). A long downpour created a most intimate mode of drifting in Storygarden, London. As collaboratory we learned many perspectives, interwoven many relations, met the otherly and each other allowing a process of harmony, chaos, uncertainty all to expand our relational engagement.
The UFƟ Collaboratory is an experimental open int. platform that since 2017 is distributing new perspectives on future ecologies and existing / emerging cosmologies through design research, drifting, fieldwork, workshops and experimental ‘broadcasting’. UFƟ stands for more experimentation and collaboration, more openness in engaging with non-human and unknown phenomena, more alternatives for interweaving knowledge, more attention to place-based and immersive research and more connected networks of knowledges through species and places.
The Drift ‘Other ways of Knowing’ invited a group of 20 practitioners, and 3 open call places to connect different ecosystems, practices and perspective to collectively share and evolve how we might expand our knowing and engagement. Practitioners are invited to contribute by bringing a story, activity or provocation, whether small, gentle or activating, contributing to collective learning and expanding our relational practice. Our special invited guests contributing to the Drift project and research will present a deeper view on their practice and methodologies, expanding the knowledge dimension of practice.
At a time when the future of life on this planet is more uncertain than ever, the urgency of exploring other ways of learning, exchanging and building narratives is pivotal. Our ecosystems, our communities, our practices are not static, but a continuous evolving cord and living network, and so are the narratives that direct how we understand being part of a whole. We are networks within networks, layered with diverse cosmologies and processes called life. From generation-to-generation humans have entangled, exchanged and explored knowing. Being human is a process of continuous , interwoven relational knowing; from the macro- to micro-biome, connected to time, cycles and seasons. Yet, the rich diversity of learning and seeing has become scarce in the universal systems that shape our practices and communities.
The Drift invites a group of practitioners to share and encounter in order to stimulate new translations and propositions that form richness in how we understand the world. To evolve as practice, as community, as human beings it is essential that we interweave different forms of knowledge and perspectives to create strong cord, through the diversity of fibres. Creative practice can become that fibre and vehicle to reimagine how we interweave a new social, ecological and relational imaginary.