Aboriginal cosmotechnics

The unassuming title of the 2021 Australian book Design: Building on Countrypositions Aboriginal making as potentially cosmotechnical, since it restores the inter-dependence of what in the west would be categorised as nature, culture, technology. As the editor of the series to which the book belong...

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Main Author: Simon Sadler
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: TU Delft OPEN Publishing 2025-02-01
Series:Footprint
Online Access:https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/footprint/article/view/7178
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author Simon Sadler
author_facet Simon Sadler
author_sort Simon Sadler
collection DOAJ
description The unassuming title of the 2021 Australian book Design: Building on Countrypositions Aboriginal making as potentially cosmotechnical, since it restores the inter-dependence of what in the west would be categorised as nature, culture, technology. As the editor of the series to which the book belongs reminds us, ‘in the Aboriginal worldview, everything starts and ends with Country. ... Everything is part of a continuum, and endless flow of life and ideas emanating from Country’ which ‘includes the built environment and objects, which reflects both a conceptual and a physical process with ancestral and cultural dimensions’.And yet colonisation of the continent all but erad-icated Country as it had evolved over 65 000 years. So having carefully pieced together the objects, spiri-tuality, camps, shelters, materials and kinship of what Aboriginal design was (and is, in isolated ways), the book posits something more synthetic – an ‘offering’, as its conclusion graciously puts it, in which ‘this new Australian design will improve the wellbeing of people and create places that ultimately mean more to all of us. It will extend Country, not abrogate it, and it should be created with that in mind – because we are all con-nected to Country’.
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institution Kabale University
issn 1875-1504
1875-1490
language English
publishDate 2025-02-01
publisher TU Delft OPEN Publishing
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spelling doaj-art-367bc3d313fe4672b5e32a6a83269e382025-02-11T09:46:29ZengTU Delft OPEN PublishingFootprint1875-15041875-14902025-02-01182Aboriginal cosmotechnicsSimon Sadler0https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5464-0044UC DAVIS The unassuming title of the 2021 Australian book Design: Building on Countrypositions Aboriginal making as potentially cosmotechnical, since it restores the inter-dependence of what in the west would be categorised as nature, culture, technology. As the editor of the series to which the book belongs reminds us, ‘in the Aboriginal worldview, everything starts and ends with Country. ... Everything is part of a continuum, and endless flow of life and ideas emanating from Country’ which ‘includes the built environment and objects, which reflects both a conceptual and a physical process with ancestral and cultural dimensions’.And yet colonisation of the continent all but erad-icated Country as it had evolved over 65 000 years. So having carefully pieced together the objects, spiri-tuality, camps, shelters, materials and kinship of what Aboriginal design was (and is, in isolated ways), the book posits something more synthetic – an ‘offering’, as its conclusion graciously puts it, in which ‘this new Australian design will improve the wellbeing of people and create places that ultimately mean more to all of us. It will extend Country, not abrogate it, and it should be created with that in mind – because we are all con-nected to Country’. https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/footprint/article/view/7178
spellingShingle Simon Sadler
Aboriginal cosmotechnics
Footprint
title Aboriginal cosmotechnics
title_full Aboriginal cosmotechnics
title_fullStr Aboriginal cosmotechnics
title_full_unstemmed Aboriginal cosmotechnics
title_short Aboriginal cosmotechnics
title_sort aboriginal cosmotechnics
url https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/footprint/article/view/7178
work_keys_str_mv AT simonsadler aboriginalcosmotechnics