Gaughwin, Melinda

Jansen, Trent

Keulemans, Guy

Parkes, Brian

English

Open Access Journals at Aalborg University

 Extended Abstract 6th PLATE 2025 Conference Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 July 2025 - 1 -     Transformative repair beyond materiality: care, bereavement and loss Guy Keulemans(a), Melinda Gaughwin(a) Trent Jansen(b), Brian Parkes (c) a) University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia b) University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia c) JamFactory Craft and Design Centre, Adelaide, Australia  Keywords: repair; design, care; bereavement; death; transformative repair.    Introduction  Intuitively, the practice of repair is an act of care, a service that restores function to products supporting human activities concerned with comfort, pleasure, wellbeing or health. Repair can also be understood as an act of care for the environment, by helping to slow down accumulation of product in landfill, and by reducing energy and pollution intensive production of replacement goods. Literature on repair references care in relation to cities (Hall & Smith, 2014), the climate crisis (Carr, 2022; McLaren, 2018) and community repair cafes (Meißner, 2021). Repair is proposed as an inherently ethical and careful way of designing within “complex and traumatized ecological systems” (Crosby & Stein, 2020). Repair also extends an ethics of care across multiple domains and disciplines (Reeves-Evison & Rainey, 2018), beyond artefact typologies, suggesting repair concerns a wider range of people than those typically labelled repairers (Denis & Pontille, 2017). Design as a discipline has been critiqued for its failure to care (Rodgers et al., 2019). However, repair also suffers from marginalisation within design industry, perceived as an in-expert practice outside the discipline (Herweck in Zambeletti, 2024) potentially harming integrity of form (Sadler et al., 2024), while non-designers paradoxically struggle with its expert requirements (Berge, Magnier & Mugge, 2023).  We contend that not only is repair within the discipline of design, there is also scope for expanding repair via transformative forms that firstly transcend the convention of repairing old objects to ‘as new’ functionality, and secondly potentialize broader transformations in discipline, industry, culture or economy. To explore these possibilities, we introduce repair to designers and craftspeople in ways that leverage their professional skills for its innovation, to extend the capacity of design and craft, as material practices, beyond the repair of objects and towards the care of human relations.   Repair as a material practice is a form of craft that conserves and restores functional components within broken objects. In working with what already exists, in contrast to paradigms of design focussed on creating artefacts anew from raw materials, repair craft is literally ‘careful’ in the practical sense; broken objects can be fragile and must be treated with care to repair without causing further damage. Repair draws away from obsession with the creation of new things in hyper-consumerist cultures (Jackson, 2014), and so repair is ‘carework’ having social possibilities that challenge mainstream consumption culture (Reno & Isenhour, 2019). However, there is a tension to repair as an act of care noted by Drotbohm (2022):  “On the one hand, the care concept features a protective and conservative dimension that is congruent with the past. On the other hand, the concept incorporates a transformational dimension through its notions of development, progress, and improvement.”  Acknowledging the breadth and diversity of global repair practices, within the context of 21st Century affluent, Global North societies, the transformational dimension of repair is diminished by the marginalisation of repair in general. The advantages of repair to consumers are unclear when replacement products are less expensive and more easily accessed; circular economies need functioning   6th PLATE Conference Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 July 2025 Keulemans et al.   Transformative repair beyond materiality: care, bereavement and loss  - 2 -  markets to work (Stahel, 2013), as addressed in our prior research on market-testing transformative repair (Keulemans et al, 2024). In this study, however, through participatory, practice-based research, we challenge this state of affairs by investigating how transformative repair processes can improve significance, aesthetics and values of care, in addition to restoring function. Evaluating a selection of case studies from the project Transformative Repair x JamFactory (TRxJF) conducted in 2023-24, we document and assess material transformations of objects connected to circumstances of loss and bereavement. These examples evidence the capacity for professional designers to creatively repair objects in ways that care for emotions, community wellbeing and other intangible values.  Theory and knowledge gap In a material sense, all forms of repair are somewhat transformative. Largely missing from the literature on repair are examinations of creative styles of repair that explicitly intend to be visually, functionally or conceptually transformative. Our interest is how transformation may be intentionally designed to express care. We have, in prior research, instrumentalised Deleuzian-Guattarian concepts of affect to explore how transformative repair shifts affective ‘assemblages’, being the micropolitical arrangement of thoughts and perceptions within and between individuals (Keulemans, 2018). The transformative, yet traditional, Japanese ceramic repair practice of kintsugi was shown to resonate with care and catastrophe amelioration across wider macropolitical social and cultural registers (Keulemans, 2016). Affect is an appropriate framework for understanding the care within repair, because while there are other theories suitable for understanding the emotional impact of design, such as upcycling (Wegener, 2016) or emotionally durability design (Chapman, 2005), affect has a broader interrogative power to understand the “psychotechnologies” used by designers, including those of narrative-based marketing and experience economy (Marenko, 2010: 146).  However, as most widely practiced forms of repair are conventional, there is not many established transformative practices of repair upon which to examine personal, social or cultural impacts. It is our hypothesis that focussed study on transformative repair decisions made by professional designers will illuminate how improvements to social wellbeing can be intentionally delivered through repair practice. We do this in our methods by combining ethnography (interview of owners and designers to understand decision making) using narrative analysis (Reissman, 2001)   with a qualitative aesthetic analysis of the repair outcomes informed by concepts of affect (Keulemans, 2015; 2016; 2018) however this work is ongoing and its full review beyond the scope of this article.  Methods Working with industry partner JamFactory, an Adelaide-based craft and design organization, we released two Expressions of Interest (EOIs) seeking participants: people with objects in disrepair (Owners) and creative practitioners willing to repair them (Repairers). Submissions were reviewed and specific objects matched to specific repairers in consultation with both Owners and Repairers.  As researchers, we mediated a negotiated cost of repair for Owners, additional to a fixed subsidy provided to Repairers. Participants were interviewed, and work in progress plus outcomes were documented in photography, exhibition and documentary video. The research process is diagrammed in Figure 1. A selection of three significant works from the eleven total works are illustrated. This sample size is small but sufficient for the project’s qualitative focus on aesthetic and narrative analysis. Artefacts related to grief and loss were not sought nor expected from the EOI process, but their inclusion was not surprising either due to similarly linked objects emerging in our prior projects (Keulemans et at., 2017).      6th PLATE Conference Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 July 2025 Keulemans et al.   Transformative repair beyond materiality: care, bereavement and loss  - 3 -  Figure 1. TRxJF Process Diagram ©TRxJF    Extended Abstract 6th PLATE 2025 Conference Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 July 2025 - 4 -  Outcomes The three selected objects and their repair are summarised:  A. Figures 2 & 3. A knitting table inherited by its owner upon the death of her mother.  The colourful restoration of the table by Repairers Bolaji Teniola and Melvin Josy, using marquetry, staining and veneer bending, shifted the owner’s appreciation for the table, helping to resolve complex feelings she had for her mother since inheriting the object.   Figure 2. Knitting Table, before repair ©TRxJF  Figure 3. Knitting Table, after repair by Bolaji Teniola and Melvin Josy ©TRxJF   Extended Abstract 6th PLATE 2025 Conference Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 July 2025 - 5 -  B. Figures 4 & 5. Broken necklaces created by jeweller Alice Potter, an Adelaide designer who had recently died. The necklaces’ owners sought approval from Alice’s family before offering them to the project. The chosen Repairer, textile artist Kay Lawrence, found a collaborator to repair the necklaces conventionally, feeling it was inappropriate to transform them directly. Instead, she recreated their visual qualities into two new textile works, as a translation of Alice’s particular skill in use of colour, inspired by Alice’s experience of having synaesthesia (sensory crossover of numbers, colours and letters). The sensitivity and emotional impact of this repair was pre-figured in its earliest stages, as addressed by owner John:   “it wasn't long after Alice had died and it felt too raw or too soon, or maybe it didn't feel like my place to introduce those objects back into the world when people were still grieving. [but] maybe it is the right time for precisely those reasons. So … … [if] everyone feels like this might be a therapeutic or a healing thing, then we should try.”   Figure 4. Alice Potter Necklaces, before repair ©TRxJF Figure 5. Alice Potter Necklaces & new bandoliers after repair by Kay Lawrence ©TRxJF    6th PLATE Conference Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 July 2025 Keulemans et al.   Transformative repair beyond materiality: care, bereavement and loss  - 6 -  C. Figures 6 & 7. Half a broken chair offered by notable Malay-Australian designer Khai Liew. Khai originally designed the chair in 2003; this particular chair belonged to a client. Tragically, Khai died from illness during the research project. Khai’s passing inspired Repairer Andrew Carvolth to reflect on the influence and legacy of Khai’s career. Inspired by agricultural grafting, in which young plants are bound onto old rootstock, Andrew joined a woven seat onto the chair back and rear legs, creating a metaphor for the transmission of craft knowledge from old to new generations.  Documentary videos for these examples and others from the project can be found on the transformativerepair.net website and Transformative Repair YouTube channel. <    Figure 6. Khai Liew chair, before repair ©TRxJF  Figure 7. K. Khai Liew chair, after repair by Andrew Carvolth ©TRxJF   6th PLATE Conference Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 July 2025 Keulemans et al.   Transformative repair beyond materiality: care, bereavement and loss  - 7 -  Conclusion We believe these works evidence that designers and craftspeople possess skills with potential to enhance the social value of repair, beyond the practical benefits of repair and the usual social benefits of design and craft. The application of design and craft skills via transformative repair within complex contexts, such as grief and loss, provides scope for repairers to revitalize artefacts for capacity to heal or ameliorate complex feelings borne from relationships with objects. This is likely an under-utilized and under-researched expertise in craft and design industry.  Acknowledgments Transformative Repair x JamFactory is a UniSA led Australian Research Council Linkage Project funded by the Australian Government in collaboration with UNSW Sydney, JamFactory and the Australian Design Centre.   We acknowledge the First Nations custodians of the lands upon which the project was conducted, including the Kaurna people of Tarntanya / Adelaide and the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung and Bunurong / Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation of Naarm / Melbourne.  References Carr, C. (2023). Repair and care: Locating the work of climate crisis. Dialogues in Human Geography, 13(2), 221-239. https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206221088381 Chapman, J. (2005). Emotionally durable design: Objects, experiences, and empathy. Earthscan. Crosby, A., & Stein, J. A. (2020). Repair. Environmental Humanities, 12(1), 179–185. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-8142275 Denis, J., & Pontille, D. (2017). Beyond breakdown: Exploring regimes of maintenance. continent, (6.1), 13-17. Drotbohm, Heike. ‘Care Beyond Repair’. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Oxford University Press, 2022. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.013.411. Hall, T., & Smith, R. J. (2015). Care and Repair and the Politics of Urban Kindness. Sociology, 49(1), 3-18. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038514546662 Isenhour, Cindy, and Joshua Reno. (2009) ‘On Materiality and Meaning: Ethnographic Engagements with Reuse, Repair & Care’. Worldwide Waste, vol. 2, no. 1, Jan. 2019, p. 1. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.5334/wwwj.27. Keulemans, G. (2015). Affect and the experimental design of domestic products (Doctoral dissertation, UNSW Sydney). https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/18442 Keulemans, G. (2016). The Geo-cultural Conditions of Kintsugi. The Journal of Modern Craft, 9(1), 15–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496772.2016.1183946 Keulemans, G. (2018). The Agency of Transformative Repair. In Unmaking Waste 2018. University of South Australia. https://doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/26997 Keulemans, G., Rubenis, N., & Marks, A. (2017). Object therapy: Critical design and methodologies of human research in transformative repair. In PLATE: Product Lifetimes And The Environment (pp. 186-191). IOS Press. DOI: 10.3233/978-1-61499-820-4-186 Keulemans, G., Jansen, T., Cahill, L. (2024). ‘Luxury and Scarcity: exploring anachronisms in the market for transformative repair’, in Repair & Design: Place, Practice and Community, Nature Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-46862-9_3  Marenko, B. (2010). ‘Contagious affectivity: the management of emotions in late capitalist design.’ 6th Swiss Design Network Conference, Basel, Switzerland.  McLaren, D. P. (2018). In a broken world: Towards an ethics of repair in the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Review, 5(2), 136-154. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019618767211 Meißner, Magdalena. (2021).  ‘Repair Is Care? - Dimensions of Care within Collaborative Practices in Repair Cafes’. Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 299, May 2021, p. 126913. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2021.126913. Reeves-Evison, T., & Rainey, M. J. (2018). Ethico-Aesthetic Repairs: Introduction. Third Text, 32(1), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2018.1448516 Riessman, Catherine K. (2001). “Analysis of Personal Narratives”. In Gubrium, J. F., & In Holstein, J. A. (2002). Handbook of interview research: Context & method. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications. DOI: 10.4135/9781452218403.n26 Rodgers, P., Innella, G., Bremner, C., Coxon, I., Broadley, C., Cadamuro, A., ... & Winton, E. (2019). The Lancaster care charter. Design Issues, 35(1), 73-77. DOI: 10.1162/desi_a_00522   6th PLATE Conference Aalborg, Denmark, 2-4 July 2025 Keulemans et al.   Transformative repair beyond materiality: care, bereavement and loss  - 8 -  Simon Sadler, Tamara Kneese, Nina Briggs, Kavita Ramakrishnan, Aaron Cayer, Ifeoma Ebo, Elke Krasny, Johan Pries, Kyle Spence, Phineas Harper, Gabu Heindl. (2024). “Field Notes on Repair: 4,” Places Journal, November 2024. Accessed 25 Mar 2025. <https://placesjournal.org/article/field-notes-on-repair-4/> Stahel, Walter R. 2013. “Policy for Material Efficiency—Sustainable Taxation as a Departure from the Throwaway Society.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 371 (1986): 20110567. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2011.0567.  Van den Berge, R., Magnier, L., & Mugge, R. (2023). Sparking the repair “can-co” attitude: Enhancing users’ willingness to repair through design support in fault diagnostics. International Journal of Design, 17(3), 25-39. https://doi.org/10.57698/v17i3.02  Wegener, C. (2016). Upcycling. In: Glăveanu, V.P., Tanggaard, L., Wegener, C. (eds) Creativity — A New Vocabulary. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137511805_22 Zambeletti, F. (2024) “Conversations: The Great Repair: towards a new social contract”, Interview with Florian Hertweck, Milica Topalović, Alex Nehmer and Markus Krieger, koozArch, [website]: https://koozarch.com/interviews/the-great-repair-towards-a-new-social-contract?utm_source=chatgpt.com  

Transformative repair beyond materiality: Care, bereavement and loss

https://journals.aau.dk/index.php/plate2025/article/download/10276/8425

Transformative repair beyond materiality: Care, bereavement and loss

Abstract

Similar works

Full text

Available Versions

Open Access Journals at Aalborg University