Design as Learning: Re-edit

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The opening of Fiction Practice: Young Curator’s Lab at the Porto Design Biennale. Photo courtesy Porto Design Biennale.

During this year’s inaugural Porto Design Biennale, curator Mariana Pestana invited Jan Boelen and myself to lead a workshop as part of Fiction Practice: Young Curator’s Lab. The three-day workshop ended in an exhibition at the Casa Museu Quinta de Santiago, in the vicinity of Porto. The workshop took as a starting point the Design As Learning: A School of Schools Reader publication, produced on the occasion of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools.

Through a series of group readings, discussions and site visits, we looked at design education from a wide variety of angles, from its power structures to the spaces where it takes place, and considered how various alternative pedagogical models have been implemented throughout time. These readings, visits and reflections were then re-thought, re-hashed and re-edited to form new reflections and alternative pathways for design, education and design education. 

As the workshop came to an end, participants selected specific issues found in Design as Learning to comment on, enriched by the insights of our time together. This materialized in a “re-edit”, which was expertly translated into a poster format by Zurich-based design office Offshore Studio. At the end of the workshop, our space of encounter was transformed into a space of display, and each poster hung above our roundtable, in dialogue with one another. This was a snapshot of what had happened, a summary of the scope of our discussions, a series of conversation pieces. But because we did not want the discussion to end with the workshop, or to be accessible only to those who had taken part, we invited Dutch designer Teis de Greve to contribute to our installation with an iteration of his A Ditto, Online Device project, specifically customized to respond to the essays of Design as Learning. 

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Introducing the project by Teis de Greve –A Ditto, Online Device. Photo courtesy Porto Design Biennale.

FB_IMG_1572562534068View of the Design as Learning: Re-edit room at Fiction Practice: Young Curator’s Lab. Photo courtesy Porto Design Biennale.

FB_IMG_1572562529004View of the Design as Learning: Re-edit room at Fiction Practice: Young Curator’s Lab. Photo courtesy Porto Design Biennale.

Design education and its futures at Hurra Hurra Festival

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An aspect of Hurra Hurra Festival. Photo by Benno Brucksch and Martin Patze.

It was a pleasure to spend a day in Halle to take part in the Hurra Hurra Festival, a student-organized, multilayered festival on design education that took place at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design. I discussed the work developed for the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, and took part in a discussion about the environments of the school versus the real world. It was impressive to see the multiple tracks of engagement in the festival, from lectures to workshops, and performances to a night sauna– Thanks for having me!

Foreign Legion at the Porto Design Biennale

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Talking about the work of Foreign Legion at the Porto Design Biennale. Photo by Porto Design Biennale.

Last 27 September, Foreign Legion (a curatorial initiative I founded with Matylda Krzykowski) was invited to give a talk in the context of the inaugural Porto Design Biennale in Portugal. We presented the last year of work, starting with the A Woman’s Work symposium in January, and the two iterations of the exhibition Add to the Cake: Transforming the rules of female practitioners, which is on view at Kunstegewerbemuseum Dresden Schloss Pillnitz until 3 November.

The talk was an opportunity to showcase the issues we’ve been researching and working on, and anticipate some of the directions in which we’ll be focusing in the next months. The Porto Design Biennale audience was attentive and engaged, and we had an opportunity to continue the conversation throughout the evening and into the night. Thanks for having us!

Atlas of Furniture Design

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The Atlas of Furniture Design, published by the Vitra Design Museum. Photo by Kobi Benzeri Studio.

This November marks the release of the Vitra Design Museum’s Atlas of Furniture Design, a comprehensive overview of the last two centuries of furniture design. I was happy to contribute to this volume with an extensive essay co-authored with Avinash Rajagopal, focusing on the last forty decades of the design discipline and its developments during that period. Looking forward to holding this important tome in my hands later this year!

The Unmaking of Autoprogettazione

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Enzo Mari sitting in the Sedia 1. Photo by Juoko Lehtola/Artek.

“The Unmaking of Autoprogettazione”, a paper Avinash Rajagopal and I wrote together for the Design History Society 2017 conference, gained a new life as part of the excellent The Culture of Nature in the History of Design, edited by Kjetil Fallan. The book demonstrates that the deep entanglements of design and nature have a deeper and broader history than contemporary discourse on sustainable design and ecological design might imply, this book presents case studies ranging from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century and from Singapore to Mexico. Furthermore, it ventures into domains as diverse as design theory, research, pedagogy, politics, activism, organizations, exhibitions, and fiction and trade literature to explore how design is constantly making and unmaking the environment and, conversely, how the environment is both making and unmaking design.

In the last decade, amidst social and economical complexity that echoes the context of its original making, Autoprogettazione has resurfaced as a touchstone project that adds to the contemporary discourse. From Artek’s 2010 re-edition of Sedia 1 to Cucula, a Berlin-based non-profit, producing Autoprogettazione for and with refugees in 2015, the many ways in which the project has been quoted, echoed, repurposed or copied have shifted, altered and reinforced its original meaning. Our paper traces the making and unmaking of meanings in Autoprogettazione, analyzing the context that lead to the project’s inception and exploring its comeback in the last decade, whether as a platform for art and design exhibitions, a vehicle for do-goodism in times of humanitarian crisis, or as a propaganda tool for companies and their marketing agencies. Scrutinizing these instances, and exposing the shifts and appropriations the project has been subjected to, reveal how the original aim to critique the design industry has been appropriated and made part of the design industry itself, in varied and at times perfidious ways.

Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitioners

Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitionersOn the steps of Wasserpalais at Schloss Pillnitz, Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden. Photo by Klemens Renner.

Last 5 July, the Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden held the official opening of Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitioners, a project I curated with Matylda Krzykowski under the moniker Foreign Legion. The project started with the A Woman’s Work symposium back in January, and then evolved into a two-part exhibition, with a Preview opening back in 26 April.

With Add to the Cake, we wanted to take the conversation started at the symposium further: We commissioned various practitioners such as Ann Kern, Ji-hee Lee, Gabriel Maher and Garret Nelson to think about What happens when you Add to the Cake? — to think about the future. For the exhibition that opened 5 July 2019, spaces were transformed to give way to a series of installations on visions for the future of female practice. Simultaneously, various Visual Fictions by contributors such as Anne Dessing & Michel van Irsel, Gallery Stephanie Kelly, Kamau Patton and OOIEE, act as an expression of desire for something lacking here and now. The exhibition becomes the transformation it heralds, enacting futures that are inclusive, generous, all-encompassing and joyous.

Add to the Cake advocates that we can – and need to – add to the existing “cake”: infinite layers for an expanded canon. Adding to museum collections and to historical accounts, adding to collective memory and to possible futures. Most importantly, we must realise that “adding” enriches the existing context with multiple, varied voices and perspectives.

After the jump, an outline of all the work and new commissions that were developed as part of Add to the Cake, as well as some installation views.

Continue reading Add to the Cake: Transforming the roles of female practitioners

Digital Bauhaus 2019: Learning Design

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A walking lecture during Digital Bauhaus 2019. Photo Thomas Müller.

I was happy to be one of the speakers of this year’s Digital Bauhaus Summit in Weimar, Germany.  The conference gathers creatives, researchers and anyone interested in new cultural formations, exploring “the political dimensions of design: from collaboration to social design, from Luxury Communism to modernism, from ‘High & Low’ to this year’s topic ‘Learning Design’.”

Speaking about the learning experiences of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, I shared some insights on the process and outcomes of the biennial, and was thrilled to continue the conversation on education, design, and design education. Thank you for having me!

Balkrishna Doshi: Speaking urgently to our times

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Balkrishna Doshi, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, 1977, 1992 © Iwan Baan 2018

The excellent Balkrishna Doshi: Architecture for the People exhibition currently on display at the Vitra Design Museum offers a welcome and different take on what usually constitutes an architecture exhibition in our day and age. It is, in more than one sense, a breath of fresh air, and I was happy to review it for the June 2019 issue of Icon magazine – an excerpt can be found below. Thank you to Priya Khanchandani for the invitation!

Doshi’s architecture shows an urgency to address concerns that are more relevant than ever today, most notably his understanding of social spaces, of the necessity to create moments for encounters and conviviality. His most powerfully idealistic work – created in the early 1970s, a time of social and political transformation – manifests its utopian values in spaces that are inspiring and transformative. Faced with the impossible task of transporting visitors from Vitra’s museum on the German-Swiss border to these freewheeling triumphs of spirit, the exhibition nevertheless makes us dream.

Swiss Design Awards / Design Miami tour

As part of the public program of this year’s Swiss Design Awards, we explored connections between the works of the nominees and winners alongside the themes explored in the Design Miami exhibition curated by Aric Chen, Design Miami’s Curatorial Director. I was happy to moderate the tour, in which visitors could navigate some highlights and intersections between the work of the nominees and the winners of the Swiss Grand Prix for Design.

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The graphic identity of this year’s Swiss Design Awards, developed by Emanuel Crivelli. Photo courtesy Swiss Design Awards.

Swiss Design Awards 2019: Design is Dead! Long live Design!

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The Swiss Design Awards 2019 campaign. Photography by Philippe Jarrigeon, Art Direction by Emmanuel Crivelli.

For the 2019 edition of the Swiss Design Awards, I was pleased to have the opportunity to write about this year’s prevalent themes and the excellent work of the nominees. In three essays that can be read online, I outlined the main areas of intervention in the nominees’ work; focused on practitioners working with diversity and inclusion as essential tenets; and delved onto work that goes beyond the boundaries of the industrial paradigm.

Below an excerpt of one of the essays, which can be read (alongside other excellent pieces) over at the Swiss Design Awards blog.

The 2019 Swiss Design Awards (SDA) display a snapshot of contemporary design concerns and directions, both within Swiss territory and undertaken by Swiss practitioners at a global scale. This year the SDA analyses and disseminates the work of the nominees by focusing on the broader themes that they bring into play, and placing the discussion around their work in a wider context. Various authors will contribute to this platform, analyzing the themes at play in the nominees’ work, while each individual project is presented by answering five practical questions: who, what, where, when and why? These inquiries will continue as well in the SDA exhibition and the public program associated with it.

Together, the work of this year’s SDA nominees showcase a wide variety of paths for contemporary design, away from silos and predetermined boundaries. The many facets of their work help push the boundaries of design, towards a discipline that becomes more inclusive, more conscious, and more self-determined. We look forward to showcasing their projects and visions their propose, as well as sharing the nominees’ stories in this platform over the course of the next few months. Design is Dead. Long Live Design!

Swiss Art Awards 2019: Making, connecting, and kittens

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My proposal for the Swiss Art Awards 2019. Poster design by Matylda Krzykowski.

It was an honor to be nominated for this year’s Swiss Art Awards in the Mediation category, and to have the opportunity to propose a new curatorial format to be tested out at the event itself. The competition is part of Switzerland’s oldest and most renowned art competition – the Schweizer Kunstwettbewerb (Swiss Art Competition). Organized annually by the Swiss Federal Office for Culture since 1899, the exhibition offers insight into current art and architecture making in Switzerland.

My proposal, Making and Connecting, sought to combat contemporary isolationism and our own biases and bubbles, by putting in place an experimental, relational methodology that aims to build network, explore common and uncommon ground, and share and broadcast knowledge within the Swiss Art Awards (SAA) 2020 community. It uses the SAA nominee group to put in place a variety of possibilities for encounter and exchange, allowing the SAA participants (and the general public that visits the exhibition and events programme) to exchange knowledge, learn from each other, and establish new nodes in a network that wants to migrate from a centralized dream – valid for the 20th century – to a decentralized, relational reality, in synch with the 21st century in which we live today.

Moving in: Das Verein

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This month marks the official move-in to the new office I’ll be sharing with a bunch of interesting people in Basel, and we’ve called in Das verein. Over the course of the next months, we hope that it will grow into much more than just a shared office space – becoming a platform for exchanges, sharing knowledge and opening up possibilities. I’ll share what we’ll be up to soon.

Bienal da Maia 2019: Design looks ahead


Performance by Acro Clube da Maia in front of AATB’s “A Particular Score” installation. Photo by Rita França.

When Andreia Garcia invited me to curate the Design program of the 2019 Maia Biennial of Contemporary Art, which she was overseeing as chief curator, I was overjoyed for a number of reasons. First, here was an opportunity to work in my home country of Portugal for the first time in ten years; second, it allowed me to stretch the definition of what is design in an event that just incorporated in its program; and finally, it gave me the opportunity to commission new work to some of the most interesting designers working in Portugal and abroad at the moment. I was thrilled to be able to develop new work with AATB, Catarina Carreiras, Orlando Lovell and Pedro Augusto, and had a lot of fun curating the design program of the biennial with Inês Revés. Below an excerpt of the essay detailing the curatorial approach, and more details on each commission after the jump below.

In post-industrial, twenty-first century Europe design is facing a transitional moment. Born with the Industrial Revolution, this discipline experienced a moment of great abundance after the post-war reconstruction boom of the 1950s. The capitalist explosion of the mid-twentieth century brought along the fiction of endless growth. We now know – after the hard consequences of the last two decades – that this was not true. Among financial crises, global warming, the potential failure of the European project and mass layoffs, the context in which the discipline emerged is no longer extant. We face a brave new world in which crisis spread to the point of becoming a quasi-permanent state of affairs, and in which the confrontation of preceding decades will no longer exist. At this moment, we must question all certainties of the last hundred years in order to dream and invent what is yet to come, and to test out a future that we are unable to envision.

In this context, design has met with an impasse, a moment of profound questioning in which the questions that were always answered no longer make sense and the silos of specialization into which it developed are increasingly less relevant. Today, graphic and product design have expanded to encompass other fields and disciplines as new specializations take shape with abstract names such as conceptual design, speculative design, biodesign, social design. Designations aside, what unites these new areas is a sceptical, questioning attitude regarding what design is and what it could be. At the same time, the new ramifications of design are not enclosed in a single disciplinary silo but seek dialogue and mediation with other disciplines – from the social sciences to biology, from economy to literature. This is the advent of a new mentality and new priorities for this disciple: on the one hand, it has realized that its initial objectives are not sustainable; on the other, it recognizes that this is a moment for reinvention and opportunity.

Today, design works with other disciplines as a mediating discipline. It takes on multiple forms and scales, it is visible and invisible, it does not necessarily generate objects or solutions, but interactions, connections and possibilities. Above all, it generates many – if not all – of our interactions with the world, from the technology that we carry in our pockets every day to our relationship with our governments, distribution systems and one another. In doing so, it is a platform for deep experimentation and, most of all, a meeting point.

The Maia Biennial of Contemporary Art’s disciplinary axis of Design also wants to be a meeting point, a stage for sharing, for knowledge, for points of view and modes of producing. In doing so, it carries with it the contemporary reality of design, proposing new ways of making design. Guest participants have all presented new commissions. Two of them manifest formally and occupy the territory with large-scale installations; two other manifest invisibly through interactions with the territory and its inhabitants to generate unexpected unforeseen and multi-sensorial results. All of these are modes of making design; and they are all pathways for contemporary design.

Continue reading Bienal da Maia 2019: Design looks ahead

Add to the Cake: Preview

Foreign Legion and Raby-Florence Fofana amidst the scenography developed for Add to the Cake. Photo by  Jenny Peñas for Freunde von FreundenForeign Legion and Raby-Florence Fofana amidst the scenography developed for Add to the Cake. Photo by  Jenny Peñas for Freunde von Freunden.

Following the A Woman’s Work symposium which I organized with Matylda Krzykowski under our Foreign Legion moniker, we were invited to transform the symposium material into an exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Dresden. This was an incredible opportunity to further continue working in the themes first developed in the symposium and allowed us to further test and stretch a commonly known format – the exhibition.

We titled the project Add to the Cake: Transforming the Roles of Female Practitioners, and structured it over the course of two iterations. The first was a preview, in which we worked through the themes discussed in the symposium and presented them in a three-dimensional space, surrounded by the many references, examples and role models discussed on that occasion. This was all presented amidst custom scenographic elements developed by Andrea Anner and Raby-Florence Fofana for the occasion.

The second iteration of the exhibition will open on 5 July, and present a variety of visions for the future of female practice specifically commissioned for the show. Below an excerpt of the curatorial text:

Contemporary cultural constructs have us believe that not everyone can get a fair share of the cake, and that only a limited few can write history. In the case of female practitioners in design, architecture and the arts, their erasure from the history and the memory of their disciplines has been systematic; but in the first two decades of the 21st century, they have regained visibility. In this pivotal moment, female practitioners have the chance to usher in an important transformation for their disciplines.

We can – and need to – add to the existing cake: infinite layers for an expanded canon. Adding to museum collections and to historical accounts, adding to collective memory and to possible futures. Most importantly, we must realize that ‘adding’ doesn’t mean ‘taking away’, but that it enriches the existing context with multiple, varied voices and perspectives.  

The exhibition Add to the Cake is an exercise in enacting the kind of transformation that design, architecture and arts are about to experience. It develops over the course of an exhibition, an active public program, and a series of performative moments over the course of six months.

Add to the Cake could not have been developed without the unwavering support of the Museum of Decorative Arts Dresden’s team, especially Nils Hilkenbach. A few installation shots, all by Klemens Renner, can be seen after the jump.

Continue reading Add to the Cake: Preview

Design as a Tool for Transition: The Atelier Luma Approach

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Design as a Tool for Transition: The Atelier Luma Approach. Designed by Studio Folder. Courtesy Studio Folder.

During this year’s Salone del Mobile, we finally presented to the public the book we’ve been developing for Atelier Luma, titled Design as a Tool for Transition: the Atelier Luma Approach. I co-edited the volume with Jan Boelen, and was thrilled to work alongside Studio Folder on this project, as they developed the editorial design and a fantastic set of maps and other visual treats that help tell the story of this ambitious and impactful project.
The book, a bi-lingual edition in French and English, combines insights from international experts with the visual storytelling of the first years of several projects, bringing together the wide network of this initiative and opening up new avenues of practice for the field of design. It is available here.

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Design as a Tool for Transition: The Atelier Luma Approach. Designed by Studio Folder. Courtesy Studio Folder.

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Design as a Tool for Transition: The Atelier Luma Approach. Designed by Studio Folder. Courtesy Studio Folder.

 

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Browsing Design as a Tool for Transition: the Atelier Luma Approach. Photo Atelier Luma.

To hell with good intentions

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The collapsed Makoko Floating School by NLE Works. Photo Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters, first seen at the Guardian.

I hardly ever rant on social media, but when I visited the recent Social Design exhibition at the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich, I couldn’t help myself. Here was another noble attempt at celebrating a nascent field for design, but once again, falling short for a number of reasons – which I listed online.
I was thrilled when Gabrielle Kennedy, the editor in chief of DAMN magazine, asked me to turn my post into a proper op-ed piece for the magazine, which was published in their April 2019 issue. What an honor! Thank you for the invitation and for the opportunity to once again revisit the fundamental need to do away with good intentions if we ever want social design to become all it can be. Below a small excerpt of my piece:

When design steps outside of its silo to engage with other disciplines and contexts, the stakes are much, much higher. We’re not just making chairs and lamps, and therefore social design needs better research and assessment, a willingness to listen and embrace complexity, time to develop, mature, test solutions – away from media cycles and yearly product launch calendars. Ultimately, social design is a brave new world. And it needs to do away with the structures that inspired and modelled it in the first place. You want to engage with social design? Then you need to do better. Social design has to be about more than good intentions. It is political, complex, and not easily digestible in feel-good blurbs. It deserves critical analysis and rigorous evaluation. To hell with good intentions – social design deserves better, much better than what we’ve given it so far.

Looking back on BIO

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Curators of BIO editions past and present. Photograph courtesy MAO.

This Salone marked an opportunity to gather curators of BIO editions of the recent years, and discussed lessons learned and perspectives for the future. It was a pleasure to reminisce on the work I developed with Jan Boelen for BIO 50, the 24th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana, alongside the event’s stellar team and curators from the last three editions. We also discussed the upcoming BIO 16 – Common Knowledge, which will open doors to the public in November this year.

Scratching the Surface

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I had a great time talking to Jarrett Fuller in the latest episode of his Scratching the Surface podcast, which has just been released. We discussed career paths, our shared love of graphic design, criticism and education, how we made the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, and ended talking about how design can evolve and change as a discipline. You can listen to the whole episode here! 

School Fundamental at the Bauhaus Dessau

Festival School Fundamental, Bahaus Dessau, March 2019. Photo by Thomas Meyer / OstkreuzFestival School Fundamental, Bahaus Dessau, March 2019. Photo by Thomas Meyer / Ostkreuz

At the end of March, the Bauhaus Dessau welcomed an extraordinary festival. Titled School Fundamental, it transformed the historic building into a temporary school, a “testing location” of design learning experiments. The festival brought together several educational experiments taking place all over the globe, and featured an impressive roster of speakers and participants. I was happy to take part and to present, alongside Jan Boelen and Deniz Ova, the work we developed for the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools.

A School of Schools was born out of an examination of contemporary design education, and informed by an attitude of critical reflection towards the past and present of design education with an appreciation of the singular contexts and spaces in which it happens. The curatorial team sought to transcend the traditional spaces of design education and explored design practices that have learning at their core.

Ultimately, the biennial’s many dimensions acted as a starting point, illuminating how the much-needed shift in the field of design and design education is already underway. This shift appears in many shapes and colours, and opens several doors towards possible futures. It calls for greater responsibility and greater agency. It demands visibility and creates spaces for the opinions of others. It pushes design out of its silo and into the spaces where it connects with other disciplines. It insists on learning as a permanent, embodied attitude, one that transcends the formal, spatial and temporal boundaries of the school, and overflows into the world and life itself.

Dear gatekeepers

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“Dear gatekeepers”, in Icon Magazine, March 2019 

Right after our A Woman’s Work symposium, Matylda Krzykowski and I were thrilled to be able to take the conversation on design and gender politics further, as we jointly authored an op-ed in the March 2019 issue of Icon magazine, titled “Dear Gatekeepers”.  The op-ed can be read in the Foreign Legion website, below an excerpt:

On 18 January this year, we made our first attempt to dismantle such structures, organising a collaborative conversation at the Museum of Applied Arts in Dresden. Titled A Woman’s Work, the event gathered voices from the discipline of design to discuss the roles and influence of female practitioners. The symposium took place alongside the exhibition Against Invisibility, which rewrote a fraction of modern design history by rescuing the nearly-forgotten stories of female designers working in the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau in the early decades of the 20th century.

What are the differences between them and us? As design critic Alice Rawsthorn pointed out in the symposium, “we need to build on [past achievements] with a dynamic and critical discourse … While many skirmishes have been won, others await.’

We must ensure that our stories won’t get lost like theirs. We must create spaces for their – and our – voices to be heard once the present generation is long gone. We must ensure that the current enthusiasm doesn’t get lost, and after an object designed by a woman is sold, exhibited, commissioned and exchanged for inflated sums of money, women – and their stories – will remain.

It is the responsibility of the gatekeepers – who write, who teach, who collect, who curate, who sell, who promote, who advocate – to open the gates for the dismantling of past and present conditions, in order to make women’s work, contributions and visibility a permanent condition.

The birth of Foreign Legion

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A screenshot of the Foreign Legion website, designed by AnnerPerrin.

This year helped materialize the outcome of many months of conversations and discussions between Matylda Krzykowski and myself, and shaped into Foreign Legion, a new curatorial initiative we launched with the A Woman’s Work symposium. The Foreign Legion website documents our work on design, gender politics and other themes, and the several experimental formats we have developed and will continue to develop. You can also follow the initiative over on Instagram.

Claiming space and enacting transformation

SKD_awomanswork_MG_8138_davidpinzer_1901An aspect of the A Woman’s Work symposium at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden. Photo David Pinzer.

Thrilled to have just come out of a lively and thought-provoking day of discussions during A Woman’s Work at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden. If you were not able to make it, you can see a report by Emma Lucek at Pamono Stories on the event. Below an excerpt:

The dominance of women both on the panel and in the audience—curators, designers, educators, students, directors, and more—brought home just how far we’ve come already. The significant rise in the visibility of women in the world of design today is undeniable. But as Rawsthorn very articulately summed it up, “We need to build on [these achievements] with a dynamic and critical discourse… While many skirmishes have been won, others await.”

A Woman’s Work

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The visual identity of the symposium, developed by Andrea Anner.

On the occasion of the exhibition “Against Invisibility – Women Designers at the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau 1898 to 1938”, currently on view at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, Matylda Krzykowski and I were invited to organize a symposium focusing on female practitioners in design. We organized it under the moniker of Foreign Legion, and called it A Woman’s Work, a symposium on the roles, influence and visibility of female practitioners today.

Taking the exhibition as a starting point, A Woman’s Work examines the contemporary, in order to shed light on the invisibility of the female practitioner as it continues to exist today.

Structured in three parts – ‘Advocates of History’, ‘Enablers of Visibility’ and ‘Dismantlers of Existing Conditions’ – the symposium brings together a wide range of practitioners, scholars, writers, critics and curators based in different parts of Europe, aiming to offer transversal, multigenerational and diverse perspectives on the present and the future of female practice.

Throughout the course of one day – 18 January 2019 –, conversations will take place in a variety of formats, creating platforms for exchange and connection. A Woman’s Work aims to bring women in and around design, art and architecture to the fore, advocating for their visibility to become a permanent condition. We hope to see you in Dresden, and that you will join us in conversation!

Steps Towards the Yin Revolution

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View of the essay “A Woman’s Work, or Steps Towards the Yin Revolution” in the catalogue of the “Against Invisibility” exhibition.

I co-wrote with Matylda Krzykowski an essay and manifesto for the catalogue of the excellent “Against Invisibility” exhibition at the Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden. The exhibition focuses on the forgotten stories of the female designers of the Deutsche Werkstätten Hellerau. Our essay focused on the present condition of the female practitioner, and outlines some steps towards what we are calling (after Ursula K. LeGuin) “the Yin Revolution”.

The essay (now published in English in Domusweb) is one of the ways in which we are contributing to the program of the exhibition – the other is a symposium on 18 January 2019, called “A Woman’s Work“. Thank you to Tulga Beyerle for inviting us to contribute!

Mediated Meaning

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An aspect of Judith Seng’s Acting Things VII: School of Fluid Measures at the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools. Photo by Ekin Özbiçer.

During the closing weekend of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial, A School of Schools, Judith Seng’s installation at the Scales School, in the Pera Museum, hosted a special roundtable. International guests – a sociologist, a curator, a philosopher and game theorist, and a theatre director – discussed the project from different angles, offering surprising views on the process and the interactions that Seng’s installation determined. The discussion, which I moderated, centered on the fluidity of standards, and on the possibility to create a notation system for fluid values. The result was published in Disegno #21, and I couldn’t be happier with the result.