Object Therapy: critical design and methodologies of human research in transformative repair

Abstract

This paper outlines the framework, development, methodologies and objectives of 'Object Therapy', a collaborative human research project and participatory exhibition concerning the public perception of broken objects and their transformative repair, which we define as repair that changes an object's appearance, function or perception. The process by which owners of broken objects were interviewed and their possessions collected for distribution to Australian and international, emerging and established artists, designers and other specialists, for response, is described. This methodology is framed as an approach of critical design that connects a community with another, mediated and traced by the researchers, for the purposes of 'constructing publics', a concept developed from John Dewey by Carl DiSalvo and new materialism theorist Jane Bennet. The critical design aspect in this regard corresponds to making public the problems and perception of broken objects - problems of ownership, obsolescence, and lack of options for conventional repair - within a public exhibition presenting alternative, experimental approaches to repair and reuse. The paper argues that the process of commissioning transformative repair processes thereby constructs a public and, via a new materialist approach, reframes human/non-human relations in ways that acknowledge the agency of materiality in social ecologies.