RE-DESIGNING TH EAST

Political Design in Asia and Europe

Curator’s tour and
Conference
September 25 + 26, 2010
Language: English

PROGRAM

Saturday, September 25, 2010

1pm
Public exhibition tour with the artists and curators

3 pm
Sethu Das, Kerala
9 ways to understand Design & People
Design & People (founded in 2003 in Kerala by Sethu Das) is a noncommercial grouping of designers and architects that is dedicated to the communicating of social, humanitarian, ecological, and activist projects. Taking up Mahatma Gandhi’s idea of Swaraj (in English: self-rule), Design & People supports an open design and knowledge production.

4 pm
Maks Bochenek, Gdansk
The Solidarnosc Logotype
The Solidarnosc (Solidarity) logotype was designed by Jerzy Janiszewski as a result of the artist’s spontaneous reaction to the conditions of Polish workers and their struggle against the communist system. Since the time of its initial distribution in Polish towns, thirty years have passed. The aim of this presentation is to show how dynamic developments in politics, economics, and law have influenced the use and reception of the Solidarnosc symbol, which changed from a symbol of a uniting society into a trademark.

5:30 pm
Tomas Pospiszyl, Prague
Joska Skalník: Designer of Czechoslovakian Dissent
The presentation focuses on the work of the dissident graphic designer Joska Skalník, who in the nineteen-eighties in former Czechoslovakia worked, among other things, for the independent underground organization Jazz Section. During the so-called “Velvet Revolution” he advanced to become ringleader of this movement and ultimately took on the role of official advisor to President Václav Havel, who was elected in 1989. Since the nineteen-nineties, suspicions have arisen that Skalník may have operated at the same time for Czechoslovakia’s secret intelligence system: an accusation that Skalník has never denied.

6:30 pm
Nathalie Boseul SHIN, Seoul
Conspiracy by ...
(National Security / The Origin of Wealth / Common Ground)
Since the 2008 election of Lee Myung-bak as president of South Korea, the country’s relations to North Korea have considerably cooled. The newly activated “Cold War” rhetoric are going hand in hand with newly heightened repressions against leftist positions. Intensifying at the same time have been the excesses of an unchecked turbocapitalism in mega-enterprises of re-structuring urban and natural environments. Natalie Boseul Shin presents the collaborative design practices and activities by the design group Activism of Graphic Imagination (A.G.I.) and artist Noh Suntag that oppose the current policies in South Corea. Their positions will be compared to those currently being implemented in Seoul in the contexts of its celebrations as this year’s Capital of Design.

Sunday, September 26, 2010

11 am
Pracha Suveeranont, Bangkok
Vexed Brand Thailand: A Case of Political Design in a Troubled Paradise
Presently, in Thailand, a battle over social influence associated with advancing age of the demigod King is taking place. Widely differing groups are struggling to increase power under the auspices of democracy: a fight which, aside from entailing an increase in violent conflicts, is being carried out to no small degree on a visual level. The designer Pracha Suveeranont will present his graphic works seizing in various ways upon the presently escalating political situation in Thailand, as for example his 2007 “No Vote” campaign to boycott the election of a new constitution which had been conceived by the military.

12 pm
Nikolett Eross, János Sugár, Budapest
The Monument of the Nameless Scrum
Nikolett Eross and János Sugár will explore questions pertaining to the visual representation of political upheavals in Hungaria, precisely of the Revolution of 1956. They focus on a monument-concept by the ’56 communist resistance fighter István Angyal (executed in 1958) that has never been realized. Angyal suggested dedicating a big, rustic stone to the “nameless scrum.”