Paper short abstract:

Feral Wool is an ongoing research-through-design project, situating in South Tyrol, Italy, exploring the abandonment of sheep wool as a disturbing matter and its (over)flowing state with a speculative and multispecies design approach.

Paper long abstract:

Sheep wool in South Tyrol, Italy has been increasingly losing significant value with a decline of sheep numbers with endangered species, sheep grazing practices, and the human-sheep conviviality. Today, 50 tonnes of local wool have become waste annually which result in multiple economic, ecological, and social crises.

Feral Wool, an ongoing research-through-design project as part of PNRR-iNEST, situates in this local reality and explores the concept of (over)flowing wool. By calling wool "feral”, we highlight the abandonment of a precious and highly vital matter. In our inquiry, “feral wool” acts as a metaphoric tool to regenerate the narratives of plural ecologies shifting from anthropocentric, productionist,and extractivist view to more-than-human angles. Addressing wool as an extension of sheep and an interspecies binder, our inquiry aims to reveal sheep perspective to explore untold, hidden, and disturbing narratives. To do that, we engage with diverse actors including shepherds, small-scale farmers, artisans, local producers, scientists, and their relationship with the sheep by asking “what do sheep dream of?”. We acknowledge the difficulty of making animals participate in such processes, there is a need of new tools in which design can be catalyst.

The research includes a speculative and multispecies design approach, embracing interviews with actors of wool web networks, design ethnography, co-creative methods for imagining possible futures and design interventions as forms of inquiry. One of the outcomes will be multispecies mappings and provocative design intervention that trigger a more-than-human dialogue with public and opening critical questions towards new ways of knowings and makings.