Recollecting with collectives in The Einstein telescope project

Description

This presentation explores a theoretical framework crafted with a group of Participatory Design colleagues, called “recollecting”, for Participatory Design (PD) with collectives in climate transitions. It offers a concept and design approach that engages with the memories of hybrid collectives of humans and more-than-human actors within transitions of their built and natural environment, foregrounding collective memory as a political and relational process, central to shaping regenerative futures. In contrast to dominant strategies for dealing with climate challenges that emphasise technical solutions and material flows, the presentation argues that meaningful transitions require practices of remembering - ritualised, situated, and affective - embedded in local ecologies and histories. We explore this concept in relation to a case study in Belgium, The Einstein Telescope, in which we are responsible for the participatory design process to enable this cosmological project to become a vehicle for sustainable transition of the region. The telescope is an underground measuring facility for gravitational waves, which enables sensing the universe in new ways. The border area of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany has the qualities to accommodate the Einstein Telescope and could both give a boost and pose threats to sustainable development of the region. The participatory design process is a way to disclose how people on the ground and in the interdisciplinary teams experience and relate themselves to these opportunities and threats and to support them in making decisions that benefit sustainable transitions: attention for water, green connections, livability etc. We will discuss three qualities of recollecting in this context: “orienting” attachments and past relations, “actualising” memory to shift power dynamics, and “archiving” as dynamic repositories of collective memory that enable continuity, reflection and action across time and actors.

Period	21 Oct 2025
Held at	Human-Computer Interaction and Design
Degree of Recognition	International