Care x Wools
by Seçil Uğur Yavuz and Merve Bektaş
Sheep were among the first animals domesticated by humans, entering a reciprocal relationship in which they provided meat, milk, wool, and transformed landscapes, while humans provided care and protection. Today, however, tonnes of precious local wool are wasted due to globalisation and industrial market standards. This situation also affects local wool production in Südtirol/Alto Adige. Care x Wools explores wool through the lens of care, beginning from the sheep’s point of view and drawing attention to the socio-ecologies connected to this material. Through three short films and public discussions with practitioners from pastoralism, traditional crafts, textile engineering, design, and production, the programme brings together different forms of knowledge and experience. The videos explore ways of staying with coarse wool as a material, a living relationship, and a local practice, and part of a living relationship between humans, sheep, and landscapes, asking what sheep might teach us about care, cyclical rhythms, interdependence, and multispecies coexistence.
Calmly with Waltraud Schwienbacher
Step by step with Daniel Paratscha
Staying with the itchiness with Otto von Aufschnaiter, Barbara Mock, and Christine Ladstaetter
Care x Wools is a public programme developed within the Feral Wool project at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Faculty of Design and Art & Competence Centre for Mountain Innovation Ecosystems). The research took place throughout 2025 in Südtirol/Alto Adige, Italy, in collaboration with local stakeholders.
Citizen Engagement (CC3) – iNEST
About Seçil Uğur Yavuz and Merve Bektaş
Our approach moves between design and artistic research, and situatued forms of knowledge, with an interest in materials, ecologies and the relationships that form around them. We draw on posthumanist and more-than-human theories that question wider socio-ecological networks. This leads us to find new ways of relating within multispecies coexistence and “to tune to aspects and forms of life that dominant material culture makes difficult or impossible to attune to.” We work through insights that unfold from field research by listening, observing, and spending time with places, materials, people, animals, and other living beings connected to them. We are particularly interested in local wool as an overlooked material and in the craft and pastoral practices surrounding it, which are undergoing decline. We explore the agency of wool and its interdependencies with sheep and wider more-than-human participants. Working with sheep and their wool raises a critical question: to what extent can we relate to and think with other living beings in design projects that involve their participation? Through short films, we explore questions of care and multispecies coexistence by considering the sheep’s point of view. These encounters bring together local actors, practices, and landscapes, opening alternative ways of designing, dialoguing, and filming with other forms of life, while allowing new questions and forms of care to emerge.
