Natalia BAUDOIN

Craftsmanship is a vernacular practice that carries the cultural heritage of its territory. Vernacular know-how are practices with great economic potential that should no longer be considered marginal, inappropriate or decontextualized, both socially and economically.

 

My practice-based design research, entitled: "Convergent Design, Symbiotic Bricologies", focuses on Jayu Kiwakirakisa or K'acha Kachi, the salt craftsmanship of Bolivia and its ecosystem. Their studies and historical analysis reveal the cosmovision inherent in this artisanal practice of the largest Salt Lake in the world, which I take into account, as well as the economic aspect of the community of producers. A financial investigation allows me to understand the impact of craftsmanship in an economy with multiple activities and the seasonality that punctuates them. My research question is: how to develop Jayu Kiwakirakisa in order to create value, with a concern for autonomy while respecting its cultural roots?

 

A designer-researcher's bricological work allows them to create a heterogeneous toolbox that converges the knowledge of researchers in economics, anthropo-archaeology, materials engineering and process engineering to gain a better understanding of the complexities of this ecosystem. Advances in interdisciplinary knowledge about salt and its craftsmanship transform this environment material into a material for creation, opening up innovative processes adapted to the natural environment of the Salar and the specificities of its craft community.

 

To the questions of how and why to develop salt craftsmanship within this ecosystem, the hypothesis that the collaboration between a designer-researcher and craftsmen, allows the creation of new materials/processes/objects through a complex mesh of social data, beliefs (including religious), aesthetic, technical, economic and scientific requirements is validated. This has to be made under conditions of equal exchange and with the aim of coherence and adjustment, the usual quest for design.

 

The fruit of this exchange gives substance to numerous situated experiments and opens up a gentle appropriation of these new processes concerned with the visions and beliefs of Bolivian salt craftspeople.