EP 07 | Indigenous Infrastructures of Worldmaking, with Lesego Bantsheng and Awande Buthelezi

Almost universally, conversations around imminent environmental, political and social urgencies tend to focus on urban agglomerations rather than on rural communities. Lesego Bantsheng and Awande Bulthezi present the concept of cosmotechnical intelligence, bridging indigenous, traditional and contemporary understandings of materiality and value. 

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This presentation is part of the audio series Planetary Design - Reclaiming Futures, based on the conference that took place at ICI Berlin in October 2024, bringing together critical voices and debate on the role of design in making, unmaking and remaking worlds. This audio series gathers these provocative polemics and presentations for posterity, allowing for deep dives and due reflection. Starting from the intersection of design, infrastructure, and the planetary environment, these conversations — between architects, cultural scientists, geographers, philosophers, scholars of emerging technologies and artists — act as a generative platform for a discussion around design’s role in producing our past, present, and potential for differently designed futures.

The conference was organized by Governing Through Design project team (Claudia Mareis, Kenny Cupers, Orit Halpern, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Özgün Eylül İşcen, Nadia Christidi, Sudipto Basu, Anke Gründel, Tania Messell), in cooperation with the ICI Berlin. The conference marks the culmination of Governing Through Design, a collaborative research project supported by a Sinergia Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

This audio series is produced by KoozArch and was made possible through a Sinergia Research Grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.