Lighting-with, lighting-for

“In worlds made of heterogeneous interdependent forms and processes of life and matter, to care about something, or for somebody, is inevitably to create relation. In this way care holds the peculiar significance of being a “non normative obligation”: it is concomitant to life.[…] This means that care is somehow unavoidable: although not all relations can be defined as caring, none could subsist without care.” María Puig de la Bellacasa

Thinking with, writing with, or in this case lighting-with builds relation and community, a bond or affect that creates possibility. The relation is not merely a juxtaposition of actors, it is the bond between them, which is neither in one nor the other. This concept highlights the necessity to break the boundaries, to work together and to relate but not to divide. The idea of community as a strong tool against inequalities. Due to this fact, thinking with care foster relationship more than isolate figures, and at the same time the relation itself involves care to make it possible.

Thinking and knowing, like lighting, have the power of materialising and totalizing. Therefore, love and care have to be the engine of thinking, and they also need to be aware of dangers of appropriation. As Maria Puig de la Bellacasa writes in Haraway’s words, “the risk of appropriation might be worst for committed thinking, because here naming the “other” cannot be made from a “comforting fiction of critical distance”. As a result of this, thinking with care require acknowledging vulnerability and then, a different response for each different situation. It is in that moment when thinking-for takes place and addresses baring the speaking-for concept.

Therefore, lighting-with and lighting-for hope to deal with the issue in the same way. The need to foster community values can improve the public spaces, due to the fact they will be discuss, experience and design by a collective, which can better involve the range of necessities. The awareness of the problem and the fact to think about it as a common issue and not as an isolated one, it is usually a solution. . Caring is yet a common value, goal and way to move forward to a better society, it is not a private and domestic aspect anymore. However, the way to achieve the goal, it will always be interrupted by many factors who will try to own the light and yet control the public space with it.

 

07_Lucia

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