Browsing by Author "Solomons, Ashley"

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    Re-making to re-member: Exploring a living archiving methodology with sensory-based participatory design
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2022-12) Solomons, Ashley; Perold-Bull, Karolien; Oelofsen, Marietjie; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Visual Arts.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The ideological system of coloniality may have woven an underlying influence of oppression into the seams of contemporary South African society. This influence of oppression has often manifested through overwhelming confrontations in everyday South African life – including violent social ideologies, a reductive visual culture, and the silencing of diverse knowledge systems. Processes of designing, archiving, and re-searching in South Africa reflect an influence of coloniality in dislocated methodologies, reductive representations of local life, and a lack of epistemic freedom. Our local practices of designing, archiving, and re-searching may be dismembered from our local ways of life and therefore may be in need of re-membering. The local digital archive, Through the Eyes of Survivors of Apartheid: Life Despite Pain and Suffering, embodies a three-fold designing, archiving, and re-search space in need of re-membering beyond reductive and inaccessible traditions. This practice-led research process therefore explored sensory-based participatory design as a potential open-ended, expansive, and accessible methodology within the context of Through the Eyes of Survivors of Apartheid: Life Despite Pain and Suffering archive. The research process flowed from three initial inquiries that centered the practices of researching, archiving, and designing. Firstly, participating actors and I explored how open-ended forms of re-searching might unearth more accessible practices of doing re-search within the context of Stellenbosch University. Secondly, we explored how open-ended forms of archiving together might invite more accessible local archiving traditions. Lastly, we explored how open-ended processes of re-making together might unearth local design methodologies and visual languages. The re-search perhaps prompts space for the continuation of existing South African life narratives in archives, acknowledges the legitimacy of local knowledges, and invites an accessible space for sharing local knowledge – both now and in future. The re-search provides an example of critically reflexive decoloniality in action. It demonstrates how sensory-based design can be employed as a means to explore a more open-ended and accessible methodology for policy makers and practitioners within the contemporary South African archiving, designing, and re-search spheres.