Soil flows. It is a changing body, flowing through and with everything on this planet. «on souls and soil» investigates landscapes of colonialism, capitalism and displacement in Southeast Asia and sheds light on soil’s entanglements with history, culture, politics and science. Looking at villages in Hong Kong and Cambodia, stories of social and environmental inequality and degradation are told. How might insurrectionary acts and cultivation of shared responsibility dare us to imagine otherwise?
With an attunement to the more-than-human, we gain a greater sense of our interactions with terrestrial dynamics. To let these inform us is to illustrate other possibilities of life and collaborative survival.
Bui's thesis succeeds very well in showing the entangled, complex influences which shape our current understanding of soil. His practical work opens up the different levels of culture, science and design in an accessible and comprehensible way. As part of this journey, which he embarks on from the point of view of his own life story, he addresses questions about the right to use soil and also incorporates scientific analysis of the vitality of soil. For the project's technical development, created in collaboration with The Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, he was invited to the BioDesign Challenge 2021.
Download Thesis:
interactiondesign.zhdk.ch/en/diploma-2021/projects/on-souls-and-soil
Cooperation partner:
Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL)
Link:
interactiondesign.zhdk.ch/site/assets/files/4433/db-osas-single.pdf
«It's a process-based research in the intersections of design, art, activism, anthropology, biology, technology, ..., or in short: it's interaction design» – Duy Bui
