Let relations emerge.
Connect is about recognizing that every sensory impression is a thread in a wider web of people, places, and more-than-human life. What feels personal is never separate; it is linked to rhythms and flows that tie the "household" together. Here, design shifts from a desire for control to a practice of relation. We do not attempt to map or solve this web, but to attune to it, acknowledging that some connections are hidden or beyond our reach. This shared field prepares the ground for the Offer.
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**Donna Haraway – Staying with the Trouble ****Reminds us that all knowledge is partial and relational. In Connect, this means we don’t aim for one complete map, but accept that every story or impression is situated. Together, these partial views weave into a living constellation.
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Bruno Latour – Reassembling the Social Shows how humans and non-humans form networks of relations that create knowledge and action. Connect builds on this by making those ties visible and felt, showing how every impression links into broader webs of life.
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Arturo Escobar - Designs for the Pluriverse Argues for design that acknowledges many worlds and ways of knowing, instead of one universal system. In Connect, this means recognizing that each participant brings a different worldview, and weaving these plural perspectives into shared patterns without erasing their differences.
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Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass Blends Indigenous wisdom and scientific knowledge, showing that care and reciprocity are central to ecological relations. Connect draws from this by inviting participants to see their impressions not only as observations, but as part of relationships of giving and receiving with the more-than-human.
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Karen Barad - Meeting the Universe Halfway Develops agential realism, where reality is made through relations rather than pre-existing entities. In Connect, this highlights that what we map are not fixed things, but ongoing interactions where humans and more-than-humans co-create meaning and action.
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Eduardo Kohn - How Forests Think Shows that forests and non-humans also create signs and meanings; they “think” in their own ways. Connect builds on this by treating impressions of the more-than-human not as background, but as communicative acts that participate in the relational field.
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