Archipelagos of designing through ko-ontological encounters
Yoko Akama
Abstract: This chapter aims to address what politics is at work that is preventing us from attending to other ways of being and knowing in Design and Research? It weaves personal, reflective and ritual accounts shared by a Japanese woman whose practices embody places, ancestry, cultures and relationships when participating in existing structures, dynamics and rhythms in collaborative work. In Design that has a tendency to promote methods and methodology as knowledge sharing, this chapter instead introduces two metaphorical concepts. The Continent of Dominant Design is a metaphor for modern world-making practices that have ignored, appropriated and universalised Archipelagos of designing, another metaphor, to recognise designing that manifests a variety of world views. Thinking with islands is decolonising because it de-centres and reimagines relations and entanglements, while also emphasising emplacement and plurality of ontologies. The writer foregrounds ontological encounters between author–readers through experimenting with structures of language and writing, and in turn, aims to engage through kokoro in resonant responsiveness and in-betweenness. By this, the chapter practices kokoro of designing, shared as one elaboration from the archipelago of Japan that aims to enhance the qualities of interrelatedness premised upon difference.