Leaky and Tactful Design – Feminist and Posthuman Ways of Sensing the Menstruating Body
On November 27, 16:00-17:00 CET Nadia Campo Woytuk invites us to explore and discuss the central ideas of her thesis.
“As I begin to write up my PhD thesis, in this talk I want to share and discuss the design work that has led me to start formulating a feminist posthuman design praxis for designing technologies for and with menstruating bodies and beyond. My thesis builds on a critique of mainstream self-tracking and sensing technologies and highlights how these technologies often perpetuate menstrual stigmas by distancing users from their bodies and giving primacy to quantitative and vision-dominant representations. Through a series of design cases that involve sensing through intimate interactions and bodily fluids, as well as speculative engagements with the more-than-human ecologies of the menstruating body, I explore how leakiness and tactfulness—both as material conditions and as metaphors—can be a resource for design. I argue how these contribute to ‘feminist sensing’, a kind of sensing that foregrounds feminist values and uplifts embodied, sensory, tactile, and material knowledge, diversity in bodily experiences, shared sensemaking, DIY (Do-It-Yourself) approaches to making, ownership and control over data, and sheds light on more-than-human relations.”