Recent eco-juridical moves (e.g., rights of nature, more-than-human councils) extend standing to non-human beings yet leave largely unexamined the formation of the representer.

I posit that before representation comes understanding and training representational subjectivity (even in a collective perspective).

Research Problem

Research Question

Research Objectives

All living can be thought of as meeting (Buber) and when we are dealing with representation of MOTH subjectivity, an attitude of meeting the living as an intersubjective experience need necessarily be adopted.

This is obviously a poetic as well as a political, or poethical approach. In Native Hawaiian world-making, an element of the world—wind, rock, ancestor, or place—is experienced as alive insofar as it participates in, and is carried by, the ongoing creation of stories.

From this epistemological perspective, moʻolelo (story) is not just narrative but a living weave of relations.

Reductionist mechanistic views are obsolete, we require ways of engaging with the world that present possibilities for co existance. For this, it is important to explore the whole range of intersubjective experiences, starting from the Ethics of care, which is about the relationship of respect and commitment for what is radically foreign to us. A relationship experienced firsthand, in the cognitive encounter "open and receptive" (p. 63) that makes experience the starting point for the development of new vocabularies. Nature, in fact, is not a given, but in the encounter, the subject experiences "a generative thinking that invents new paths for interpreting experience"

→ Main Question:

How can we understand (1) and train (2) representational subjectivity in such a way that more-than-huaman counterparts are intentionally and imaginally included (3) in personal and collective narration?

ⓇⓆ➀

In what ways can we re-enchant human rationality and relationality so that the threshold between the human and (super)natural forces is unlearned?

ⓇⓆ➁

What are the ways in which experiences can be designed, curated (and measured) to act as a catalyst for the unlearning of threshold and re-enchantment of human rationality and relationality?

ⓇⓆ➂

What kind of potentialities of engagement arise, after human re-enchantment, from queering the relationship with MOTH?

ⓇⓄ➀

To select and analyze practices coming from Mediterranean ancestral "continuum" communities, figuring out ways to learn how their effects and affects can be measured

ⓇⓄ➁

To redesign and formulate approaches (ecopedagogy) training the perspectives of a designer.

ⓇⓄ➂

To generate functional outcomes (like new ideas for conservation, shifts in attitude or motives for stewardship) at the personal and collective level of engagement with MOTH.

Methodology

Output

Ⓜ➀

"critical training in empathetic relational imagination"

1. training through gestures, dances, music coming from mediterranean ancestral "continuum" community (open to other convenings from more than design radical pedagogies and epistemologies)

2. doing means following the teachings of an established mentor from the community, happening mostly in residential workshops with transfer of embodied knowledge

3. I'll keep a multimedia diary extended with direct contributions from the mentors and other participants

4. I'll study with psychologists and neuroscientists (who work on group awareness and regulation) and start developing a measuring system to be tested on myself and the other participants

Ⓜ➁

"against extinction of experience"

1. workshops in design institution inspired from practices studied (sub1)

2. engaging in testing and measuring

3. running an international platform/case study where through critical training designers start a research process of engagement with local MOTH instances

Ⓜ➂

"venturing beyond the bifurcation of nature"

1. collaborate with related experiences of MOTH representation

2. select one Mediterranean MOTH instance to be engaged with (based on familiarity and relevance)

3. organise a situated study (residential platform) where participants from "civic society" develop their critical relationship with our specific MOTH counterpart through our syllabus

Ⓞ➀

1. knowledge platform and community: new "interaction/connections" with a reviewed goal (MOTH participation)

2. awareness about the practices and dynamics at play, and some insights on how to possibly measure

3. curated repertoire to be further tested

Ⓞ➁

1. a curated syllabus with a framework to measure its efficacy

2. international experience of critical engagement and knowledge production

Ⓞ➂

1. opening up possibilities for "self-social-eco-realisation" (creation of new relationship)

2. experiment with RoN and MOTH representation in the Mediterranean