Repair in a broken world
– design, construct, discard?

This seminar series unpacks the question of repair. A seemingly straightforward challenge of fixing what is broken, repair presupposes recognition of disrepair, material knowledge, and a condition of worldly repairability – that what is broken can be fixed and what is fixed can be broken. Yet these conditions are not self-evident. In the age of planned obsolescence, when objects are made to be thrown out and not kept, when knowledge is proprietary and not public, when consumers hail the new and not the old, the act of repair is more complex. Repair pertains to local sites as much as it does to global networks of supply.

In this interactive seminar series repair will be rendered visible by exploring what repair is, who does it, and for whom they do it. Featuring a series of panel conversations linked to different aspects of dis/repair, as well as a one-day symposium, this seminar will investigate what repair repairs.

Seminar Dates:

1. April 20 10-12, Repair after Disasters: Bushfires
2. May 18 6-8pm, Repair as Care, Changing Environments (hybrid)
3. June 8 *full-day off campus, Soil, Worms, and Gardens: Repair from the Ground Up (limited numbers, please RSVP)
4. August 24 10-12, Repairing Energy Infrastructures: Decarbonising
5. September 21 10-12, Planning Reparative Futures
6. October 26 10-12, tbc