Trajectories in Systemic Design
Channel: Systemic Design Association
Date: 2023-12-07

Framing RSD12 in entanglements | Part 2

Transdisciplinary work requires translational action between research and practice. By considering ourselves to be entangled with the work that we do, we create implicit connections to others who are also, but differently, entangled. This space between positions, like the ends of string tied into a knot, is the space we need to move into if we wish to untangle that knot and create stronger, more intentional and more useful connections.

In the same vein, second-order cybernetics sought to include the cyberneticist as a part of the system of interest; we’ve chosen to frame contributions as entanglements rather than as “areas” or “topics” or any number of other more common terms to defamiliarise approaches to knowledge-building and encourage new ways of knowing that acknowledge the interconnectedness between the things we typically think of as distinct: research and practice, researcher and object, designer and client.