MAKING KIN: Preserving, Pleasing and Procreating in the Chthulucene

ARCH 401 / MAKING KIN

An analysis of Staying with the Trouble

by Donna Haraway

(Introduction & Ch.4)

8.22.20

MAE MURPHY

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MAKING KIN: Preserving, Pleasing and Procreating in the Chthulucene

August 22nd, 2020 marks Earth Overshoot day founded by the UK think tank New Economics Foundation.1 Although we only have one planet, we consume 1.7 times its resources. Earth Overshoot day marks the date when humanity has exhausted nature’s budget for the year. From now on (past August 22nd) everything we consume is being taken from the future-- we are operating in overshoot. As daunting as this data seems, there is hope. This year’s Overshoot day is over one month later than 2019, deeming the possibility of change.

The current COVID-19 pandemic played a direct role in the pushback of the date. True sustainability to thrive on earth relies only on design, not disaster.

Through the analysis of material recycling tactics and the SF sex robots one can start to visualize the ever-so-present need to use the resources available to preserve, please and procreate in the chthulecene. Perhaps scale is a term we can use to understand the importance of making with. These mutual relationships need to occur from the micro to the macro level. From the city planning, to the building structure, to the construction detail, to the human that dwells within it. Maybe we can find a partner to collaborate with. Maybe we can create a symbiotic relationship. The solution already exists in front of us.

Kin, from Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble2 is described as a speculative process in which circumstances can be imagined for collaboration between the living and nonliving.

Haraway begins the analysis between human and machine / abiotic and biotic.

In order to sustain the future, new technologies are needed to create a mutual relationship between material usage, resource extraction and infrastructure. A new relationship with kin.

Instead of practicing dangerous toxic extracting/deconstructing processes, why not reuse what already exists currently on the planet? The composting humus process?

Perhaps robots such as the ERO Concrete Recycling Robot3 could resume existing material and ‘make kin’ in a new form of architecture, while also preserving significant cultural and historical sites with a level of inclusivity and awareness. The vacuum-like robotic arm captures toxic dust and debris. The robot essentially eats existing concrete, turns it into a dust which is then available for a new structure. Preserving these existing materials is an extension of historic preservation by recreating with the same essentials before. But in a more sustainable way.

Another somewhat opposing way to analyze the mutual relationship between robots and humans is the use of human sexual pleasure.

For years now, people have had access to pleasure without procreation with the invention

MAE MURPHY

“Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings” (Haraway 2016, 1).

Perhaps our robotic counterparts can work with us in order to counteract the looming Earth Overshoot day to provide resources, synthesize materials, collaborate with and make kin. Architecture has a role in this process.

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Playing with Scale: a collage of the Des Moines Map, construction details, and human skin patterns.

An analysis of Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway

ARCH 401 / MAKING KIN

knowledge and expertise.” (Haraway 2016, 7)

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ERO Concrete Recycling Robot

of birth control and self stimulating devices such as vibrators. It opened up a wide array of control in terms of reproduction. Haraway quotes “make kin, not babies” (Haraway 2016, 5-6) and synthesizes the speculative feminist theory of supporting technology to promote, work with and procreate together.

As much as birth control and self pleasuring devices have progressed recently, sex robots still have a long way to go. Today these robots are programmable for the main purpose of pleasuring the male audience.4 Figures are obedient, shapely, and even a little bit seductively dangerous. They range in size and shape, they talk, they “breathe.” They are representative of a science fiction fantasy designed by a handful of people in the tech world. These robots are widely controversial due to the question of consent and hypersexualization. The female body is idealized into a new abiotic form.

However this new ideology of speculative feminism SF asks: How can we design sex technology that is fair, inclusive, sustainable and diverse? How to use technology to provide companionship, pleasure, relationships without replacing our own human touch? Can/should it address the ever-so-present rise of the human population and climate change?

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“What is decolonial feminist reproductive freedom in a dangerously troubled multispecies world? It cannot be just a humanist affair, no matter how anti-imperialist, antiracist, anticlassist, and prowoman. It also cannot be a “futurist” affair, attending mainly to abstract numbers and big data, but not to the differentiated and layered lives and deaths of actual people. Still, a 9 billion increase of human beings over 150 years, to a level of 11 billion by 2100 if we are lucky, is not just a number; and it cannot be explained away by blaming Capitalism or any other word starting with a capital letter. The need is stark to think together anew across differences of historical position and of kinds of

Women have the power to create life. People are born equipped with the instinct to make. Haraway speculates that the chthulucene is an analysis of the current environment dwelling in or under earth. The process of reworlding / composting / making kin in alternative ways. The return to humus.

Realbotix Sex Robots

Haraway provides a beautiful rendition in terms of symbiosis in the chthulucene. She warns the importance of staying in the present.

Through the analysis of sex robots and material recycling tactics, one can start to visualize the ever-so-present need to use the resources available to preserve, please and procreate in the chthulecene. Unless we can learn to make kin with our abiotic counterparts, we will run out of time. It is our role as designers to create a mutual relationship to compost the existing structures here on mother earth. Architects can make with a new form of technology to mutually create a sustainable future. They do not need to simply continue producing infrastructure and contribute to the ever-sopresent Earth Overshoot day. Humans and their counterparts must work together to counteract the constant capitalistic rush of production and Climate Change.

Des Moines, Iowa is not exempt. The excessive flood zone restructuring-- toxic river contamination-- and resource depletion are all results from the present impacts of a changing environment.

The use of collage graphics are intended to accompany this writing as a form of making with to conceptualize and visualize the overlap of thoughts, images, forms and colors.

An analysis of Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway

ARCH 401 / MAKING KIN

PAGE 4 References

1. “About Earth Overshoot Day - Earth Overshoot Day”. 2020. Earth Overshoot Day. https://www.overshootday.org/ about-earth-overshoot-day/.

2. Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2016. Staying With The Trouble. Durham: Duke University Press.

3. “ERO: Concrete Recycling Robot”. 2020. Industrial Designers Society Of America - IDSA. https://www.idsa.org/ awards/idea/graduate-student-designs/ero-concrete-recycling-robot.

4. Wilton, Pete. 2020. “Beyond Sex Robots: The Real Sex Tech Revolution”. Goldsmiths, University Of London. https:// www.gold.ac.uk/news/sex-tech-reality/.

MAE MURPHY

“Behnaz Farahi”. 2020. Behnaz Farahi. http://behnazfarahi.com/bodyscape/.

“Out Of Crisis, An Opportunity | National Trust For Historic Preservation”. 2020. Savingplaces.Org. https://savingplaces. org/stories/an-opportunity-in-crisis#.X0Gp2JNKjys.

Webb, Sam. 2020. “Inside The Sex Robot Factory Where Randy Pervs Can Handpick Every Feature On Their Dolls”. The Sun. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/4464643/sex-robot-doll-factory-harmony-orgasm-matt-mcmullen/.

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An analysis of Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway

ARCH 401 / MAKING KIN

MAE MURPHY

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An analysis of Staying with the Trouble by Donna Haraway

ARCH 401 / MAKING KIN

MAE MURPHY

8.22.20