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WISHFUL THINKING IN ART AND DESIGN INTRODUCTION TO THE EXHIBITION Contemporary

WISHFUL THINKING IN ART AND DESIGN INTRODUCTION TO THE EXHIBITION Contemporary culture is witnessing one of the most significant shifts of recent times. The old dividing lines between artists and designers appear to be dissolving into one another. Indeed the breadth and range of investigation and inspiration they share is possibly the widest to date. The exhibition ‘ Wouldn’t it be nice…’ hopes to present a series of projects emerging from these lines of dissolution, which reflect the current spirit of cultural production internationally. The commonalities between artists and designers are partly due to the reconsideration by designers of the modern tradition and its utopian hopes for universal, simple and mechanistic solutions. Since then there has been the realization that form can never be neutral. Pioneering design historians such as Reyner Banham and later Dick Hebdige have pointed out that even those most pared down and simple of modernist forms are suffused with cultural meaning. In turn, there has been a concomitant recognition that the consumer / user is a complex cultural, social, political and economic being, and that his or her needs are not purely mechanistic. This represented a loss of faith with the notion of pure function. Indeed, as early as the 1950s Jan Tschichold recognized that the rules he established in his earlier book ‘ The New Typography ’ intended to render typography perfectly functional, smacked of fascist authoritarianism. Rather than leading designers to despair, this questioning of the modernist design orthodoxies has rendered them more ambitious. Recognising that form carries meaning, many designers (working on graphics, fashion and products) have chosen to investigate the messages they create. This shift of parameters has enabled designers to think in terms of a concept. Partly this is related to self-expression, but more importantly it concerns taking responsibility for the broader ramifications of design. The works of the best of today’s designers displays self-awareness and, at times, political intent. Above all designers have developed a keen sense of critique, and work within what is best described as a culture of ideas. If historically artists from Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol to Jeff Koons and Heim Steinbach questioned the threshold between art and the everyday, between the work of art and the quotidian object, today’s artists are going one step further. The work of this new generation reflects, on the one hand, a pop sentiment of the kind expressed by Warhol when he said: ‘the world fascinates me. It’s so nice, whatever it is…I accept things. I’m just watching, observing the world’. In line with this, artists today demonstrate a greater interest in other disciplines, such as design per se and how it has penetrated our popular- and our visual culture. Added to this there is also a keen desire to explore the ‘situational’ and ‘relational’ aspects of the object, installation and environment making. Such works rely heavily on the designed object and require the direct participation of the public, be it in such seemingly banal tasks as eating, playing pool or learning to make paper flowers; or in resolving quite serious issues such as prostitution and the lack of fuel in African villages. In this moment of cultural fluidity so-called artistic and design strategies are being explore by each other’s counterparts. To further compound matters some practitioners work in collaboration with each other’s disciplines, and others simply do not wish to be categorized in any one camp. Over and above any questions of definition, what is shared by these creators is an interest in questioning life, by exploring and experimenting with contemporary culture at all levels. WISHFUL THINKING IN ART AND DESIGN October 26 –December 16 2007 An exhibition part of the AC*DC (Art Contemporain/Design Contemporain) project A project in collaboration with Geneva University of Art and Design A co-production with the Museum of Design Zurich and the Zürcher Hochschule der Künste. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice… Wishful Thinking in Art and Design” is a major exhibition which addresses the application of wishful thinking in art and design today. It explores the thinking processes and working methods, that fall into the gap between various attitudes, forms of behaviour and creative practices. On the one hand, the dichotomy between activism and acceptance, as well as social concern and social control. On the other hand, the juxtaposition between grand plans and harsh realities, between the benign and the confrontational. This project conceived by design historian and art historian Emily King and director of the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève, Katya García-Antón in collaboration with Christian Brändle, Director of the Museum of Design Zurich, will present art and design alongside one another, undifferentiated. As the former barriers between artists and designers – but also graphic designers, stylists and architects – has become uncertain, the breadth and range of investigation and inspiration they share is possibly the widest to date. The exhibition hopes to present a series of projects emerging from these lines of dissolution, which reflect the current spirit of cultural production internationally. A number of these projects will be specially commissioned. Furthermore some of these will have a direct pertinence to the infrastructure of the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. Among the creators invited to participate : Dexter Sinister (UK/US), Jurgen Bey (NL), Bless (F-D), Dunne&Raby and Michael Anastassiades (UK), Alicia Framis (ES), Martino Gamper (IT/UK), Ryan Gander (UK), Martí Guixé (ES), Tobias Rehberger (D) and Superflex (DK). A publication will be created on the occasion in collaboration with the London-based design group Graphic Thought Facility. ARTISTS DEXTER SINISTER Dexter Sinister is the compound name of David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey. Dexter Sinister recently established a workshop in the basement at 38, Ludlow Street, on the Lower East Side in New York City. The workshop is intended to model a ‘Just-In-Time’ economy of print production, running counter to the contemporary assembly-line realities of large-scale publishing. This involves avoiding waste by working on- demand, utilizing local cheap machinery, considering alternate distribution strategies, and collapsing distinctions of editing, design, production and distribution into one efficient activity. In 2000, Stuart Bailey co-founded the arts journal Dot Dot Dot with Peter Bilak. Dexter Sinister will be working on a new issue of this fanzine/journal on the occasion of the exhibition, as observers of the AC*DC project in its entirety and of the different events punctuating it. Stuart Bailey made a name for himself in the Netherlands for his contributions to art and design as a graphic designer, critic and editor. On an international level, he is better known for the graphics and co-editing with Peter Bilak of Dot Dot Dot, a biannual publication covering the fields of art, music, design, architecture, literature and language. Stuart Bailey will be working on a new issue of this fanzine /journal created in 2000 on the occasion of the exhibition, as observer of the AC DC project in its entirety and of the different events punctuating it. Dot Dot Dot # 11 Cover Dot Dot Dot # 12 cover April 2006 January 2007 JÜRGEN BEY The designer Jurgen Bey is reputed for his rich and innovative creations and for his involvement in design research and teaching. He became known in the 1990’s in the context of the Dutch phenomenon known as Droog Design, before founding the Studio Jurgen Bey whose philosophy is “to consider urban and architectural construction as indissolubly linked to the design of products”. For “ Wouldn’t it be nice … Wishful thinking in art and design ” Jurgen Bey will present several maquettes. Working on a reduced scale enables him to remain on the ideas level, free from the logistical restraints encountered when making a full- size model. In his own words, “if one could work in a model world, reality would never bore us”. Exhibition views « Ontwerpers maken ruimte » (2006) BLESS Bless is both an evolutive, collaborative project and a brand, created in 1995 by Desirée Heiss and Ines Kaag, based respectively in Paris and Berlin. Hailed as two of the most creative fashion designers of their generation, they refuse to be pigeonholed, moving easily from fashion to beauty, from interiors to art exhibitions, and working with other brands. Their production, situated between art object and design, functional object and fashion, is always unique and marked by the adaptation of unexpected elements put to use in a totally new way. The 30 collections produced up to the present day show not only a fascination for recycling materials, subverting customary functions and deconstruction, but also an interest in textiles and traditional handicrafts. Fur Hammock (2004) Shop 6 - Raw Fitting, Berlin, Germany (2000) DUNNE + RABY & MICHAEL ANASTASSIADES Dunne & Raby is a collaborative duo formed in 1992 by the industrial designer Anthony Dunne and the architect Fiona Raby. They have developed an original line of research aiming to create prototypes of “hypothetical objects” which question the beliefs and usages of the contemporary consumer society. They explore in particular the social, psychological and aesthetic dimensions of everyday life in relation to electronic technologies, both through commercial projects uploads/Industriel/ wouldnt-it-be-nice-en.pdf