The Politics of Design

The Politics of Design

Konferenz, Salone del Mobile 2019

Mittwoch, 10. April 2019, 14 Uhr
Triennale Milano, Teatro dell’Arte

Speaker: 
Paola Antonelli, Bruce Sterling, Danah Abdulla, Jan Boelen, Claudia Chwalisz, Indy Johar, Amelie Klein und Etienne Turpin

Design ist ein politischer Akt. Jeden Tag treffen Designer auf der ganzen Welt Entscheidungen über so komplexe gesellschaftliche Themen wie Inklusion, Identität und Nachhaltigkeit. Dies macht Design zu einem mächtigen Werkzeug für soziale und politische Veränderungen. Aber hat es tatsächlich eine Wirkung? In welcher Weise kann Design dazu beitragen, die drängendsten Probleme der Welt zu lösen, und was bedeutet das für die Designpraxis? In einer Zeit des Wandels, in der wir alte Ideen, Überzeugungen und Strategien hinter uns lassen und uns weiter ins 21. Jahrhundert hineinbewegen, müssen wir uns fragen: Wie kann Design ein Teil der Lösung und nicht des Problems sein?

Im Rahmen der Milan Design Week 2019 veranstaltete das Vitra Design Museum in der Triennale Milano am 10. April 2019 eine interdisziplinäre Konferenz mit dem Titel »The Politics of Design«, um über diese dringliche Fragen zu diskutieren. Bei drei Podiumsdiskussionen – Design & Post-Industry, Design & Post-Governance und Design & Post-Nature – sprachen international bekannte Experten aus unterschiedlichen Bereichen wie Design, Designtheorie, Philosophie, Soziologie und Wirtschaft. Über die sich wandelnde Rolle und Verantwortung von Design im 21. Jahrhundert diskutierten u.a. Paola Antonelli, Bruce Sterling, Danah Abdulla, Jan Boelen, Claudia Chwalisz, Indy Johar, Amelie Klein und Etienne Turpin. Die Konferenz sollte die Debatte über die politische Bedeutung von Design fördern und die Mehrdeutigkeiten und Widersprüche einer zunehmend komplexen und konfliktbelasteten Welt verdeutlichen. Sie sollte der klassischen Designindustrie als Mittel der Umgestaltung dienen und eine breitere Diskussion über ein Design anregen, das Verantwortung für die Gesellschaft und unseren Planeten übernimmt. An jede Podiumsdiskussion schloss sich eine erweiterte Fragerunde für das Publikum an. Die Konferenz fand ihren Abschluss bei einem Aperitivo in der Triennale, veranstaltet von Atelier Luma anlässlich der Buchvorstellung »Design as a Tool for Transition: The Atelier Luma Approach«.

#PoliticsOfDesign

Die Konferenz »The Politics of Design« wurde präsentiert vom Vitra Design Museum in Kooperation mit der Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft.



Programm der Konferenz

Programm der Konferenz

13:30 Uhr Einlass

14 Uhr Begrüßungsansprachen
Mateo Kries (Direktor Vitra Design Museum)
Benita von Maltzahn (Director Cultural Engagement, Volkswagen Aktiengesellschaft)

Design und Post-Industry
Key Notes und Diskussion: Danah Abdulla, Bruce Sterling
Moderiert von Amelie Klein

Design und Post-Governance
Key Notes und Diskussion: Claudia Chwalisz, Indy Johar
Moderiert von Jan Boelen

Design und Post-Nature
Key Notes und Diskussion: Paola Antonelli, Etienne Turpin
Moderiert von Amelie Klein

18:30 Uhr Aperitivo, Buchvorstellung Atelier Luma, Caffè in Giardino
Die Konferenz findet ihren Abschluss bei einem Aperitivo in der Triennale, veranstaltet von Atelier Luma anlässlich der Buchvorstellung von »Design as a Tool for Transition: The Atelier Luma Approach«.

Biografien der Speaker

Biografien der Speaker

Paola Antonelli

Paola Antonelli joined The Museum of Modern Art in 1994 and is a senior curator in the Department of Architecture & Design, as well as MoMA’s founding director of Research and Development. She has curated numerous shows at MoMA and in other international institutions, lectured worldwide, and has served on several international architecture and design juries. She has taught at the University of California, Los Angeles; the Harvard Graduate School of Design; and the MFA programs of the School of Visual Arts in New York. The recipient of a Master’s degree in Architecture from the Polytechnic of Milan in 1990, Paola Antonelli holds honorary doctorate degrees from the Royal College of Art and from Kingston University London, from the ArtCenter College of Design, Pasadena, and from Pratt Institute in New York. She earned the »Design Mind« Smithsonian Institution’s National Design Award in October 2006, and in 2007, she was named one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries by Time magazine. In 2011, she was inducted in the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame, and in 2015, she received the AIGA Medal. Paola Antonelli’s goal is to insistently promote design’s understanding, until its positive influence on the world is universally acknowledged. Her most recent project, the XXII Triennale di Milano, entitled »Broken Nature: Design Takes on Human Survival«, opened in March 2019.

Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling is an author, journalist, editor, and critic. Best known for his ten science fiction novels, he also writes short stories, book reviews, design criticism, opinion columns, and introductions for books ranging from Ernst Juenger to Jules Verne. His nonfiction works include »The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier« (1992), »Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years« (2003), »Shaping Things« (2005), and »The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things« (2014). His most recent book is a collection of Italian fantascienza stories, called »Utopia Pirata: I racconti di Bruno Argento« (2016). During 2005, he was »Visionary in Residence« at the ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena. In 2008, he was guest curator for the Share Festival of Digital Art and Culture in Turin, Italy, and the »Visionary in Residence« at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. In 2011, he returned to the ArtCenter in Pasadena to run a special project on augmented reality. In 2013, he was »Visionary in Residence« at the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. A year later, he curated the »Casa Jasmina« project at the Turin Fab Lab. In 2016, Sterling was »Visionary in Residence« at the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination, San Diego. He has appeared in ABC's Nightline, BBC's The Late Show, CBC's Morningside, on MTV and TechTV, and in Time magazine, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Fortune, Nature, I.D., Metropolis, Technology Review, Der Spiegel, La Stampa, La Repubblica, and other media.

Danah Abdulla

Danah Abdulla is a designer, educator and researcher. She is a senior lecturer in Communication Design at Brunel University London. Previous to this, she was a lecturer on the BA (Hons) Design Management and Cultures course at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London), teaching design practice and theory modules. In 2010, she founded Kalimat Magazine, an independent, non-profit magazine about Arab thought and culture. She is also a founding member of the Decolonising Design research group, a research associate at the Design Against Crime Research Centre at Central Saint Martins, and visiting professor at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. She obtained her PhD titled »Design Otherwise: Towards a Locally-Centric Design Education Curricula in Jordan« in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2018.

Indy Johar

Indy Johar is an architect, co-founder of 00 (project00.cc), a senior innovation associate with the Young Foundation in London and visiting professor at the University of Sheffield. On behalf of 00, he has co-founded multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham and the HubLaunchpad Accelerator, along with working with large global multinationals and institutions to support their transition to a positive Systems Economy. He has also co-led research projects such as »The Compendium for the Civic Economy«, whilst supporting several 00 explorations and experiments, including the wikihouse.cc and opendesk.cc. Johar is an advisor to the Earth Security Initiative and a director of WikiHouse Foundation, as well as co-founder of the »Project00.cc Research Laboratory & Skunk Works«. He is a fellow of the RSA (Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), a Respublica fellow, a JRF Anti-Poverty Strategy Programme Advisory Group member and a member of the Mayor of London's SME Working Group and most recently a member of the RSA Inclusive Growth Commission. He was director of the Global Impact Hub Association and Impact Hub Islington - the original Impact Hub in the Hub Network - and worked with Jonathan Robinson to design the protocols and modes of the network scaling. Johar has taught and lectured at various institutions, ranging from the University of Bath, TU Berlin, to the Architectural Association in London, the University College London and Princeton. He has written for many national and international publications on the future of design, systems change and social investment.

Claudia Chwalisz

Claudia Chwalisz is an expert on democratic innovation, deliberative democracy, citizen engagement in policy making, populism, and comparative political economy. Her research and writings also touch on European and Canadian politics, elections and public opinion. Currently, she is based in Paris, leading work on innovative citizen participation at the OECD’s Open Government Unit. She also contributes to Carnegie Europe’s Reshaping European Democracy Project and mentors the Social Design masters students at the Design Academy Eindhoven. Previously, she was a strategy consultant working with political parties and campaigns at Populus in London. Prior to that, she led Policy Network‘s work on populism, democracy and political economy, and completed a public service fellowship with the Crick Centre for the Public Understanding of Politics.

Etienne Turpin

Etienne Turpin is a philosopher, co-founder and CEO of User Group, an office for design research, software development, and digital strategy based in Berlin and London. He is also visiting studio instructor at the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. Previously, he worked as a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and taught advanced design and theory at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, and the University of Toronto. Turpin is the author of numerous essays on philosophy, design, and environmental politics. He is also co-editor of the »intercalations: paginated exhibition« series (K. Verlag, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2015-2017) in the context of »Das Anthropozän-Projekt« (K. Verlag, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 2013-2014), »The Work of Wind: Sea« (K.Verlag, forthcoming 2019), »The Work of Wind: Land« (K. Verlag, 2018), »Fantasies of the Library« (MIT Press, 2016), and »Art in the Anthropocene« (Open Humanities Press, 2015); and editor of »Architecture in the Anthropocene« (Open Humanities Press, 2013). His first monograph »When he fuck me good« (Strelka Press, forthcoming 2019) surveys assemblages of desire, infrastructure, and ownership through the music and media of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter.

Biografien der Moderatoren

Biografien der Moderatoren

Amelie Klein

Amelie Klein joined the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, in 2011, where most recently she opened the international travelling exhibition »Victor Papanek: The Politics of Design«. Previous international exhibitions include »Hello, Robot. Design between Human and Machine« and »Making Africa – A Continent of Contemporary Design«. Klein was nominated twice for the art-Magazine Curator Prize, an award granted for the best exhibitions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. She completed an MA in Design Criticism at New York’s School of Visual Arts as well as an MBA at the Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria. She was the design editor for the Austrian daily newspaper Die Presse in Vienna and deputy editor-in-chief of its weekly supplement Schaufenster. Her writing has also appeared in publications such as Metropolis, Abitare, domus online and Stylepark.

Jan Boelen

Jan Boelen is the artistic director of Z33 House for Contemporary Art in Hasselt, Belgium, artistic director of Atelier LUMA - an experimental laboratory for design in Arles, France - and curator of the 4th Istanbul Design Biennial 2018 in Istanbul, Turkey. He also holds the position of the head of the Master department Social Design at Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. In 2012, at the initiative of Z33 and the Province of Limburg, Manifesta 9 took place in Belgium. As part of his role at Z33, Boelen curated the 24th Biennial of Design in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 2014. Boelen also serves on various boards and committees including the advisory board of the V&A Museum of Design Dundee in the UK, and the Creative Industries Fund in the Netherlands. Boelen holds a degree in product design from the Media and Design Academy (now the LUCA School of Arts) in Genk, Belgium.