24
OCT
2022

BECOMING

Recent work called Entanglaculture originates from a tool we created in a project called Biota Beings. This tool or system is a manifesto of sorts. However, we feel a manifesto sits uncomfortably with the core beliefs of the works.

We take inspiration from Donna Haraway. In her book Staying with the Trouble, she presents the concept of ‘becoming with’ as a way to consider futures of multi-species relationships. We build on this concept to create what we call a ‘Becoming’.

For us, a manifesto is human-centric. It may give a fixed set of guidelines you follow, like a recipe. It reminds us of an industrial process and modernist in its perspective. It places humans on a superior level. Even when we look at the word manifesto, ‘man’ is upfront and dominant.

Instead, Entanglacutlure considers us as being in constant change within interconnections beyond the human world.

For Biota Beings and Entanglacutlure, we believe it’s time for a different title. And through a title change, we aim for different results, inspired by anthropologist Marilyn Strathern and her intent “to create conditions for new thoughts”. Instead, we choose to call the system a Becoming.

For us, this word has an emphasis on ‘being’. A Becoming as a title acknowledges a movement that is in progress, in flux and flow, with knowledge and discoveries along the way. The title also attempts to escape a human-centric perspective and, taking Haraway’s lead, to consider relationships with non-human beings. At the heart of the Becoming process is to ‘be’. It encompasses to ‘be’ in the moment and ‘be’ in response to the current situation and time. The Becoming doesn’t infer there is a final destination. At the end of the process, we might even find that we are required to become something else. We can see the lack of rigidity as more fit for a planet in perpetual change and the requirement to sense and react to these changes.

The Becoming starts with ten areas. Each point reflects a change-making concept or research. We outline these below: