Correspondências para um design autônomo TZELTAL: práticas num laboratório de design para criadoras de tecidos em Chiapas

Abstract

The role of the designer within a community may vary according to the approach of design as theory and practice, being able to act as mediator in different cases. The following study (Master's Degree research in Design) addresses theories about design forms and their practices, as well as their actors involved within the process in design, to promote correspondence practices from conversation devices and tools as drivers of speeches and autonomous practices in a social experiment, in a semi-autonomous artisanal community in the highlands of Chiapas, named Yochib. Also, it seeks to generate spaces for dialogue, democratization and collaboration between designers and artisans. Trying to understand how the presence of the designer in co-creation processes, can collaborate in the realization of an autonomous design - understood as “a design praxis with communities with the objective of contributing to its realization ”(ESCOBAR, 2016, p. 209) - by Tzeltal artisans of fabric for the generation of income in their families and also to presenting the traditional 'know-how' of the communities in southern Mexico. For this, in theory other forms of design are approached besides the autonomous design, letting know the differences and the approaches that each form of designing with communities has. Thus, this corroborates the reflection on the role of the researcher in the process of co-creation with the artisans in the community, through a design laboratory, in which discourses of the community's textile making and their role as artisans are reflected and triggered, to achieve autonomous design and also, to question participatory design practices as design praxis in the encounter with autonomous and semi-autonomous communities. Finally, this study brings different results for the artisans of Yochib, such as the creation of a huistido, the systematization of measurements for existing pieces, the democratization of knowledge and the creation of a space for intimate conversations beyond the textiles techniques.