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Building on his foundational work on ''defuturing,'' a deconstructive method that exposes historically the unsustainability of a great deal of design practice and its products, Tony Fry now offers a powerful response. There is no shortage of analysis of the current state of the world. Climate change impacts are increasing, environmental destruction will follow, populations and settlements will be displaced, food security will become critical, geopolitical instability and escalating dangers of conflict will grow. Such an entangled complexity threatens life itself more seriously than at any time since the Ice Age. Against the real threats to life on Earth, what are the world''s political leaders doing? The answers sit between nothing and very little. So, what is to be done? There is no immediate or simple answer. But what Contrapractice acknowledges is that nothing changes unless practices change. The intent is for the process to take on a life of its own by the many people who care about securing a viable future. It does not provide template solutions, but the ability to act. Every reader is viewed as a communicator of its message and a change agent of their own practice. Fry''s dialogue in the book with Dulmini Perera is a prompt for the book to be an object of discussion.
List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Opening Dialogue,
Tony Fry and Dulmini PereraIntroduction: Defuturing, Practice, Contrapractice,
Tony Fry1. Defuturing Now
, Tony Fry2. On Practice
, Tony Fry3. Contrapractice in the End Times
, Tony Fry4. Reflections and Projections
, Tony FryClosing Conversation,
Tony Fry and Dulmini PereraAppendices,
Tony FryAppendix 1. On an elaboration on Bourdieu's understanding of habitus
Appendix 2. Michel de Certeau and
Practices of Everyday LifeAppendix 3. Peter Sloterdijk's Theory of Practice
Appendix 4. Technology revealed and cybernetics stripped bare
Appendix 5. Degrowth/Regrowth
Glossary
References
Index
About the author
Tony Fry is Principal of The Studio at the Edge of the World, Tasmania, Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania, Australia and Visiting Professor at Universidad de Ibagué, Colombia. He is an award-winning designer, cultural theorist, educator and author. He has held academic positions in Australia and internationally and is the author of sixteen books, including
Design Futuring (Bloomsbury, 2009);
Design as Politics (Bloomsbury, 2011),
Becoming Human By Design (Bloomsbury, 2012),
Remaking Cities (Bloomsbury, 2017),
Defuturing (Bloomsbury, 2020) and
Writing Design Fiction (Bloomsbury, 2021).
Dulmini Perera is Lecturer and Researcher at Bauhaus University, Weimar, Germany. She works at the intersection of critical theory, design theory and systems/cybernetics research, and is the recipient of the Heinz von Foerster award (2021). She has written and edited a number of publications including the co-edited book
The Space of Technicity (forthcoming, 2023) and the co-edited
Footprint journal volume
Engaging Cosmotechnical Difference in Architecture and Urbanism (forthcoming, 2024). She is a member of award-winning design and research teams in Sri Lanka and internationally.
