PRS Australia PhD Examination - Andrés Ortega (School of Design - RMIT University)

Cosmovision as a Relational Practice of Encountering and Making Worlds

This research examines the notion of cosmovision within design. Cosmovision, a framework for cultural interpretation rooted in Mesoamerican and Andean anthropological research, involves understanding the world through both physical and metaphysical lenses. Also known as worldviews, it strongly impacts reality construction and self-perception. Within decolonial and pluriversal design approaches, it is crucial to recognize the foundational myths that form our cosmovision, mostly shaped by dominant north-western ways of being, thinking and doing.

This research intertwines two paths: one exploring the notion of cosmovision in participatory design instances, and the second, finding ways to reorient practice towards pluriversality. Cosmovision is approached as an occasion to design differently, enabling relational engagements with multiple worlds. Methodologically, it is enacted through participatory “acts” as a site for encountering, making and re-making worlds, where participants reflectively wander on their cosmos, then materialised through artifacts and enactments.

The research revealed relational movements that shapes the significance of cosmovision in design. By poetically reimagining pluriversality as a horizon, always in sight, cosmovision becomes a methodological contribution for a practice of encountering and remaking the worlds that make us. A distinct way of knowing and unknowing emerges, called cosmoception, as a disposition for being open and aware.

Cosmovision was my initial gesture towards a way of being, doing, feeling and thinking with the pluriversal horizon always in sight, always becoming.