Second Order Design Fictions in End times

This conversation on Second-order design fiction is part of an ongoing collective research project by Fry and Perera on Technology, Cosmotechnics, Design and Resistance. In their conversation Fry and Perera explore the concept of second-order design fiction (SoDF) as an emergent means of addressing how design is understood and practiced in the context of the contemporary ecological crisis. They propose how SoDF can be considered a potential alternative to the ‘crisis of representation’ that contributes significantly to the complications related to finding ways out of unsustainable practices. SoDF is not a how-to instruction, but neither is it an activity without a function. SoDF sets up a meta-narrative, a prefigurative political message, that can assist in writing the brief for a complex problem that does not bring forth a reductionist solution. As such, it delinks the better-known concept of ‘design fiction’ — a methodological tool often used in the imagination of futures — from its preoccupation with objects, technology, and technocratic global north projected views of the future and innovation, to focus on the intersectionality of the crisis of the present. More broadly, SoDF as a tool is also a means to empower those critical thinkers who, regardless of arriving at design from other disciplines, have the transformative agency required to deal with the complexity of our times, the end times.