In this methodological walk, the “Internship as a Child” approach proposed by Karen Feder (2021), from the Kolding Design School, is also incorporated. This perspective proposes that the designer abandons his traditional role as an expert to position himself from the viewpoint of childhood: curious, improvised, open, and deeply situated in the body. In this project, this approach was vital to me to recognize the children of the Guapi River not as subjects to protect or intervene, but as bearers of knowledge, of survival tactics, of memories that float, of joy that resists.
Experiencing PLAY. Guapi, Colombia. January 2025
Designing from the child is not “thinking for the child”, but letting oneself be guided by his or her gaze, by his or her play, by his or her way of relating to the territory. Thus, the game proposed here is not a symbolic representation of the territory; it is the territory in play. A space that simulates, but also produces, the ways in which bodies resist, take care of themselves, hide, find themselves, save themselves. The child, in this sense, is not just another character in the game: he is its heart.
Burying longings on the seashore