PhD project This research carries the discourse on ontological design by examining how embodied food practices shape and are shaped by the environments they inhabit. It poses questions on the unmaking in the making of cultural practices, and challenges traditional linear design thinking by opening new perspectives in the relationships between humans, more-than-humans and their surroundings.
This PhD project explores how food practices are shaped by the entanglements between humans and more-than-humans, challenging conventional narratives of progress and development. The project, "Airmailing Culture," examines the migration of South Asian yogurt cultures and their impact on human practices and ecologies. Through participatory design and research methodology, the project investigates how human and non-human interactions, emotions, and environments influence food practices, contributing to discussions on ontological design and looking at designing with more-than-humans.
The research investigates how food practices are shaped by the entanglements between humans and more-than-humans, questioning the extent to which our environments become embodied in us. By navigating these tensions and dynamics, I challenge conventional narratives of progress and development, and look towards ideas of designing with multispecies for a world in the after.
The research delves into the complexities of cultural food practices, examining the interplay between human and non-human actors in shaping these practices. My current project, "Airmailing Culture”, explores the migration of South Asian yogurt cultures and their influence on human practices and ecologies. The project emphasizes the importance of understanding how human desires for comfort and familiarity can transcend geographical borders through food practices. The project draws on the historical practice of mailing yogurt-smeared letters to South Asian labor migrants in early 20th-century England. These migrants, facing difficult living conditions and longing for familiar tastes would receive letters coated with dried yogurt cultures sent from home. The migrants could reconstitute fresh yogurt using these old strains. These seemingly small acts of care, which introduced new microbacteria into foreign environments, invite discussions on the ways culture is both unmade and remade in different contexts.
Airmailing Culture uses the participatory research through design methodology, engaging with the idea of making as a form of thinking. Through the making of yogurt, the project explores the nuances of human and more-than-human interactions, and investigates how acts of care and labor are embedded in food practices. This research highlights how food practices are shaped by environmental and emotional forces, illustrating how the human desire for comfort and familiarity can drive food cultures to transcend geographical borders.
Ultimately, the project contributes to ontological design discourse, asking to what extent our practices shape the environments we inhabit, and how these environments, in turn, shape us. As design theorist Anne-Marie Willis (2006) observes, “We design our world, while our world acts back on us and designs us.
