Isabel Alonso
Towards alternative relationships between humans and matter: exploring design within a social-ecological system
Summary
The Mar Menor, a coastal lagoon in the southeast of Spain, is considered one of the most important ecological singularities in the Mediterranean area and a place with high cultural value. It has also been a convergence point of various economic and industrial activities, such as agriculture, mining and urban development, which have severely impacted the natural ecosystem. The critical situation of the Mar Menor illustrates the unbalanced interactions between human beings and the natural environment that occur across the world. We have instrumentalised nature and exploited its resources as unlimited, with the consequent damage to multiple ecosystems.
My research is framed within a posthumanist philosophy that questions the nature-culture dualism and decentres the human being. It uses the notion of social metabolisms to conceptualise the human-nature relationships and flows of matter in the Mar Menor. And it employs design practice, focusing on the transformation of matter, as a novel discipline in the local area.
In this study, I explore the potential of design to challenge cultural understandings of matter, study the in-between states of matter in the Mar Menor and envision alternative flows. The objective is to shed light on the capacity of design to propose new forms of human-nature interactions that embrace nonhuman agencies, languages and temporalities.
Additional info
Diagramming and drawing have been a creative window and the tools to organise ideas during the first year of my PhD. For this RCA Research Biennale, I have put together some of those sketches, drawings and diagrams and brought coherence to them as a whole. They show and connect concepts related to posthumanism, social metabolisms, matter, design and the local context. These illustrations are a work in progress that evolves together with the research.
Researcher bio
Isabel Alonso is a Spanish designer and current PhD Candidate at the Royal College of Art. Previously, she graduated from the same university with the MA Design Products, funded by La Caixa scholarship. She studied Industrial Design Engineering and earned a Master's Degree in Graphic Arts, both at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain. Among her merits, Isabel received the Spanish National Award for Academic Excellence and was awarded in the International Design Awards. She has carried out her professional activity in Spain, the UK and Sweden, country where she collaborated with Monica Förster. Isabel has exhibited her work in multiple venues, including the Max Radford Gallery. Her approach to design is research-driven, collaborative and experimental. Design becomes a medium through which she delves into topics concerning culture and ecology. Some other aspects that characterise Isabel's work are her commitment to material honesty and meticulous attention to composition.
