The manifesto below is presented as a series of meditations, expressed through the visceral, embodied metaphors I use to articulate my theoretical and practical experiences of being an embodied designer in a state of becoming. Like the encounters developed in this research, they are not intended to constrain bodies but to act as provocations through which new, surprising, playful, and perhaps conflictual forms of embodied practice might emerge. They capture what I have discovered about what it means to design with, through, and alongside other bodies, and invite others to explore how the qualities of encounters might shape their own design practice and the encounters that emerge from it.
To design with encounters is to design with a moving body — creating meaning through gestures, rhythms, and movement in practice.
To design with encounters is to design with an orientated body — informed by what matters, by the people and things turned towards, and attentive to what is turned away from.
To design with encounters is to design with a textured body — layered by the here and now and by what has been, uncovering what lies in the background through reflective practice.
To design with encounters is to design with an amplified body — continually modified through unequal power relations with people, objects, discourses, and technologies.
To design with encounters is to design with an intercorporeal body — where the self is continually becoming through shifting body images co-created with others.
To design with encounters is to design with a drifting body — allowing somatic experience to guide practice without predetermined outcomes, leading to further encounters.
To design with encounters is to design with an unpredictable body — where intentions do not always transfer cleanly, and conflict and play reshape what emerges.
To design with encounters is to design with an imaginary-imaginative body — acknowledging the instability of one’s own morphology and seeking opportunities to reshape and reconfigure it.
To design with encounters is to design between bodies — in spaces where boundaries are both maintained and transcended.
