Malentangled: Function Redacting Tape

The neologism entanglement proposes that all things are connected through super-complex meshworks of mutable interdependencies. This entanglement of interdependencies is often obscured through forgetness, a radically reductive process by which things are taken to be isolated and interdependencies are forgotten.  

In some instances – for example when objects break – people are again reminded of the interdependentness of things. Malentanglement theory proposes that forgetness may also encounter a remindness through humour, and not only through catastrophe (depunctualisation).

The ‘Function Redacting Tape’ project takes redaction as a method for doctoring documents, but it deploys this method in the material context of design. Project Participants are provided with black PVC adhesive tape and invited to consider the functions of designed objects. They are then asked to redact these functions (using the tape) and in doing so to make documented interventions that draw back the metaphorical veil of forgetness for reasons of design enquiry. The project functions as a sort of rudimentary cultural probe that might shed some light on entanglement, humour, and design, whilst simultaneously testing the employment of humour to aid participation in design research.