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The Vision is regenerative living systems design, integrating local ecologies and global technologies through collaborations and entrepreneurship. My lifetime dream project of building sustainable living communities, remedying current urban challenges based on permaculture design ethics, along with the effort of like-minded people, drives my creations on a daily basis.
Hierarchical capitalist frameworks and compartmentalization has lead to ignorance and an inability to experience collective evolution, thus negating our plurality, just like semantic challenges in valuing ecosystem services. Yet, it is often these less tangible ecosystem services that shape societies, culture and welfare, and often drive environmental change. I persevere to effectuate their analysis through my installations and works. The way I comprehend these nuances are more like rhizomatic and mycelial structures, like that of a forest or the blueprints of our internet or even the cosmos.
Trying to articulate these complex networks and fluid non-crystallised stories can be hard with every guild or unique individual. Shorter attention spans, and requests for oversimplification and compartmentalisation for instant effect or gratification is a trivialising process. It’s like trying to simplify a complex ecosystem food web by severing the ether connecting various functions into a linear summary. Since valuation processes in many modern societies are often achieved through monetary measurement, less tangible elements are frequently left out of the traditional valuation framework. Similarly art, science, philosophy, education, economics and governance should cross pollinate for the sake of its own health.
At his home in Goa, artist and product designer Waylon D’Souza has been thinking over issues of the Anthropocene. He has learnt to look beyond the sunny vistas and sandy beaches to the more pressing issues plaguing the state currently—coal mining and the rising toxicity of sea waters.
Today, D’Souza draws on his fascination with biomimicry for his designs. This essentially means mimicking systems in nature in his designs—how do corals purify water or how do kidneys function? “I always ask myself why I am creating something," he says.
People tell him to focus solely on art, but D’Souza is more interested in creating a sustainable community, “where some are farming and greening urban spaces, or tackling waste management and water resources. And simultaneously, in collaboration with city planners, educationists, lawyers, entrepreneurs and policymakers, there is a possibility of mines becoming botanical gardens and agro-forests,"
Through a diagrammatic compression of the various factors at play, the artist hopes to convey a more comprehensive picture that can inform our conservation praxis. The need for a transnational, integrated conservation effort articulated from a fisheye perspective, is expressed through a melange of different national flags corresponding to countries that share the Ganga watershed. At the heart of the work lies the goddess Ganga astride her vanishing vahana. This together with the cities and communities flanking her are indicators of ecological practices/ formulations that have become quite divorced from their significance, as well as the exigency of involving local communities in conservation and policy making.
“I consciously wanted to exhibit research-driven projects that were conceived in an interdisciplinary way,” he explains. Singh found Waylon D’Souza, a multimedia artist, whose work revolves largely around water and evolution. Waylon’s research involved going back to the breaking up of the supercontinent of Pangea, ambitiously sweeping through all of ecological history. Bringing it into context, the artist studies the Ganges in particular — and the phenomenon of the river being considered a goddess in Indian-Hindu society. Waylon’s inquiry rests on the intersection between ecology and religion, understanding how human activities affect the environment.
With the constant need for development, and an increasing stress on the Ganges, “it’s almost like you’re amputating the goddess which you worship,” Waylon says, explaining the phenomenon of environmental repercussions.
In The Cascade of Futures Past: Journey Through the Eocene to Speculations on the Post-silicon Age, 2019, Waylon James D’Souza assembles an apocalyptic mandala of the Ganges’s Himalayan watershed. Printed on eco-friendly hemp, an image of the city of Varanasi spills into a dried, dammed-up riverbed, encircled by a ring of Gangetic dolphins represented in various stages of their evolution.
With the constant need for development, and an increasing stress on the Ganges, “it’s almost like you’re amputating the goddess which you worship,” Waylon says, explaining the phenomenon of environmental repercussions.
A common notion prevalent in society is that a single person cannot make a difference and bring about societal change. Talking about this notion Waylon says: “The notion is true as well as false, there are many individuals who have done something commendable and have paved a path for people to follow. Technology is here to stay and we are solely relying on it. With climate change and global warming we should become restorers of life instead of a parasites infestation on this planet. An individual can bring about change as long as he is supported by technology as well as society, legal authorities, industries and other aspects connected to it.”
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is the process of designing a product with a short useful life, rendering it obsolete soon. The reason behind this strategy is to increase sales of the same product through repeat purchases. So, he suggests that the consumers should be aware about such products.
Designer Waylon is an artist and an industrial designer from Goa. He has bridged his concerns for pressing issues like climate change, pollution, garbage and biodiversity loss with his experience in industrial design, permaculture and aquaponics and other fields that bring about understanding, awareness and analysis on a holistic level to create art, system
Role Models
I work with inspiration and support of from a spectrum of people and places to create my vision of sustainable futures, while firmly grounding in our local past and learning from other species and ecosystems.