COMUNfARE: activating design research for making (economies) in common

Abstract

COMUNfARE (lit. commons-making, or communal making) is an on-going research project in which we experiment with how social, material and intellectual resources can be mobilised in order to foster progressive eco-social change. Change that undoes oppressive, exploitative and destructive power structures that run through the relations between humans as well as humans and more-than-human others. To develop this research, we methodologically draw on practice-based design research, communication design and critical pedagogy. Through these methods we activate situations of (trans) local, intergenerational and collective learning that explore how eco-social relations can be fostered that go beyond the disciplining, precarising and damaging ones that are produced by capitalist markets and neoliberal politics. Physically, the research is located in the post-rural Vallagarina district in the Italian Alps (Fig.1), the area on earth where we have the most ‘naturocultural’ ties and where we can guarantee a long-term engagement independent of volatile project funding. Conceptually and in terms of its politics, the research is in conversation with feminist, Autonomist Marxist and radical post-humanist theories and practices of the commons, community economies, making and care.