Design Issues Lectures

Lecture series of the Institute for Art and Design Studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts

Tuesday, 12.07.2016

Simone Post (Rotterdam): Post Production

The Institute for Art and Design Studies at the Folkwang University of the Arts welcomes Simone Post from Rotterdam as its last guest before the summer break. It is above all the "Post-Vlisco" body of work that makes her one of the most interesting designers of the present day. After a thorough analysis of the manufacturing and production processes, she has reworked and reworked defective layers of fabric and other remnants of the wax batik fabrics from the Dutch company Vlisco, which are so popular in Africa, into a series of home textiles, of which the colorful, shimmering, circular "Vlisco Recycled Carpet" stands out due to its iconic qualities.

Looking at Simone Post's young work seems like a belated confirmation of Gottfried Semper's famous dictum that "all other arts borrowed their types and symbols from textile art". The pronounced will to form that characterizes all her works is coupled with a subtle sensitivity for the expressive forms of human creativity. It is no coincidence that she has a proven interest in children's imagination, to which she pays particular attention in the style of the artists' group CoBrA or the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck. Simone Post has dedicated herself to the field of textiles, which, with its diverse patterns and structures from all times and cultures, is a constant source of inspiration for her. She does not simply make use of traditional forms. She examines the forms for their creative consistency. In a double twist, she is concerned with the direct translation of the imagery of the human imagination into the technical craftsmanship of the design process, just as the design process generates new forms, which in turn shape the human capacity for expression.

Simone Post (*1990) completed the Man and Living program at the Design Academy Eindhoven, where she graduated Cum Laude in 2015. She attracted attention during her studies when the Dutch department store chain HEMA included her contribution to the traditional HEMA design competition (Ontwerpwedstrijd), a cardboard stool, in its range. Her final project "Vlisco Recycled" was awarded the Keep an Eye Grant and the René Smeets Award. She was recently nominated for the Dutch Design Awards and the New Material Award. in 2015, Hella Jongerius selected her alongside Joel and Kate Booy (Studio Truly Truly) as the first designers for the new collection "by TextielMuseum" of the TextielMuseum Tilburg. For the fall/winter collection 2016/17 "Let's hear it from the lions" by Liselore Froweijn, she designed necklaces inspired by African cultures. Together with Iwan Pol and Sanne Schuurman, Simone Post is the initiator of Envisions, an association of young designers who want to stimulate a new, critical dialog between designers, producers and consumers. Simone Post lives and works in Rotterdam.

Tuesday, 05.07.2016

rENs (Eindhoven)

Today, the process of design is often the actual and often only subject of design. Products are becoming objects that raise fundamental design questions more than pure works of art. The Eindhoven-based duo rENs (Renee Mennen and Stefanie van Keijsteren) focus their attention on the significance of color. However, it is not color theories or color systems to which they pay particular attention. Their works reveal to us the relativity and limits of human perception and show that color is not an autonomous quantity. The impression of a color is not only dependent on atmospheric conditions and psychological dispositions or moods; the perception of a color is above all also determined by the organic materiality of the objects themselves. At the same time, color is subject to external influences, and time is of particular importance here.

For Renee Mennen and Stefanie van Keijsteren, thinking in concepts has always been a natural part of good and conscious design. Their early, often ironically connoted works such as Kopje Kopje (2008), Sjaalgerei (2008) and Langpotkaast (2009) bear witness to their preferred materials: ceramics, textiles and wood. They are always self-reflective design works that have a variety of semantic references beyond their aesthetic impression and pure utility value. Since 2011, red, or "Rood" in Dutch, the "highest intensification of colors" according to Goethe, has been the subject of ongoing research for rENs, with which Renee Mennen and Stefanie van Keijsteren are able to demonstrate the multifaceted beauty of a color. The systematic research of their projects results in product objects that are created in cooperation with established companies such as Canon, Cor Unum and Desso. Her work remains essentially enlightening, as it shows us the limits of human expression. Her new monochrome design turns seeing into a spectacle. Paraphrasing the well-known phrase from Paul Klee's "Creative Confessions" (1920), the following applies to rENs: 'Design does not reproduce the visible, but makes visible

Renee Mennen (*1984) and Stefanie van Keijsteren (*1985) completed their design studies at the Akademie voor Kunst en Vormgeving St. Joost (AKV | St. Joost) in Breda in 2008. At the beginning of 2009, they formalized their collaboration by officially founding Studio rENs. The peculiar name of the studio is an acronym formed from the first names of the two designers. Their works are represented in the Zuiderzeemuseum Enkhuizen and the Stedelijk Museum in s'Hertogenbosch. Renee Mennen and Stefanie van Keijsteren now live and work in Eindhoven.

Participation is free of charge, registration is not required. The English-language lecture will take place in the SANAA building on the Zollverein campus of the Folkwang University of the Arts and will begin at 6 p.m. on July 5, 2016. The lecture will be followed by a joint discussion.

The lecture series "Gestaltungsfragen" is organized by the Institute for Art and Design Studies at Folkwang University of the Arts. The Institute sees itself as a dialogical platform for critical discourse on design from both a historical and contemporary perspective. From May 2016, it will be inviting designers who have set standards in their field to rethink the concept of design under the title "Design Questions".

Tuesday, 21.06.2016

Tejo Remy (Utrecht)

in 1993, Tejo Remy was able to show three of the four works from his graduation project in the legendary first Droog exhibition at the Milan Salone del Mobile. Since this presentation, the three iconic designs Chest of Drawers ("You can't lay down yor memory"), Milk Bottle Lamp and Rag Chair have become some of the most famous designs of the recent past, marking the beginning of a new understanding of design that continues to have an impact today.

Far removed from the often tumultuous appearance of his contemporaries, Tejo Remy remains one of the central figures of Dutch design of international importance to this day. According to popular opinion, he is still regarded as one of the protagonists of auteur design, which has been used since the 1990s to describe the much-invoked convergence of art and design. Today, as this buzzword vocabulary has proven to be a fruitless empty phrase, there is still no doubt about Remy's significance, only that it is far more complex.

The fact that design is above all a communicative and social practice is something that no designer of the last 25 years has made his theme more consistently than Tejo Remy. His radically conceptual works attempt to overcome the experience of alienation that has been present everywhere since modernism. The unconditional questioning of the material from both a material and semantic perspective allows him to rethink the self-evident proximity to the things we are only seemingly so familiar with in use. In addition, the Remy & Veenhuizen studio has repeatedly designed large interiors in recent years: for example, for the visitor center of the Rietveld Schröder House and the Nijntje Museum in Utrecht, which is dedicated to Dick Bruna's rabbit figure known in Germany as Miffy.

in 1991, Tejo Remy (*1960) completed his studies at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (HKU) in Utrecht. in 2000, together with René Veenhuizen (*1963), he founded the Utrecht-based studio Remy & Veenhuizen. Works by the two are represented in internationally renowned collections such as the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the Design Museum, London, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Neue Sammlung, Munich, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney and the Centraal Museum, Utrecht. in 2015, the CAB - Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Caja de Burgos honored her with the major retrospective "Our World as a Toolkit". The book "THE WORLD = OUR TOOLKIT" was recently published by Lecturis under a slightly different title, providing an overview of her work to date.

In the lecture, Tejo Remy will talk about his understanding of design. Participation is free of charge, registration is not required. The English-language lecture will take place in the SANAA building on the Zollverein campus of the Folkwang University of the Arts and will begin at 6 p.m. on June 21, 2016. The lecture will be followed by a joint discussion.

Tuesday, 03.05.2016

Anna van Lingen and Denisa Kollarová (Amsterdam): Aldo's Web of Playgrounds. The Amsterdam playgrounds of Aldo van Eyck

With his playgrounds, the Dutch architect Aldo van Eyck (1918-1999) shaped the childhoods of countless youngsters in Amsterdam. Van Eyck gave them a natural place in the fabric of the city. With the playgrounds, he created a commercial-free retreat for children that took their special needs into account. He saw his children's playgrounds as a natural part of the urban fabric, thus fundamentally expanding the urbanistic ideal of the European city. Between 1947 and 1978, van Eyck designed well over 700 playgrounds on behalf of the city. The reduced, archetypal formal vocabulary of their play equipment still stimulates the imagination and creativity of children today. Economic pressure, the high intensity of use, but also a lack of aesthetic and design flair have reshaped or destroyed most of the playgrounds. Only a few have been preserved in their original design.

As contemporary urban archaeologists, Anna van Lingen and Denisa Kollarová have spent many years researching Aldo van Eyck's playgrounds. In the recently published handy guidebook "Aldo van Eyck. Seventeen Playgrounds" (Lecturis), they guide you to 17 preserved playgrounds in the city center of Amsterdam. With each individual playground, they reveal a new design principle and thus reveal Aldo van Eyck's deeply humanistic understanding of architecture.

During their research, Anna van Lingen and Denisa Kollarová discovered a climbing frame by Aldo van Eyck that is no longer in use, which they have turned into an artistic-urbanistic intervention in the form of an "adopted igloo". They are currently working on placing the "adopted igloo" permanently in Amsterdam. Their engagement with Aldo van Eyck has made them sought-after discussion partners for artistic playground design. In recent years, they have given numerous lectures, most recently at the Site Gallery in Sheffield and the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.

Denisa Kollarová studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. As an artist, author and exhibition organizer, she is primarily interested in ruins, public spaces, social architecture, urban planning and utopian urban concepts. Her latest projects are Under My Own Construction of Ruins and Migration of Form. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

Anna van Lingen also completed her studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie. As a freelance graphic designer, she deals with themes from architecture and urbanism, especially the ageing of cities and buildings, in artistic book and photographic works such as Amsterdam 1855-2013 and Tussentijds ("In Between"). Together with Denisa Kollarová, she researches childlike play and its places. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

Participation is free of charge, registration is not required. The English-language lecture will take place in the SANAA building on the Zollverein campus of the Folkwang University of the Arts and will begin on May 3, 2016 at 6 pm. The lecture will be followed by a joint discussion.