Utrecht Manifest 2009
3rd biennial for social design
October 4 - 18, 2009
This biennial is intended
to draw attention to the question of how and where the social is produced
today. Not thematically, but by approaching the cultural models of which
biennials are usually composed, such as the museum exhibition, the educational
project, the model of the real intervention, and even the communication
trajectory, primarily as social models that each raise the question of
what the need and urgency of social design is. The result of this method
is that each part of the programme is specific instead of being illustrative,
so that the perspective on the social emerges from the model itself. This
makes it interesting for visitors to visit the whole biennial. Instead
of only seeing one part, in each part they are offered a completely separate
answer to a specific question and can thus experience the complexity and
even the contradictions of social design. Each section has a parallel
programme of its own consisting of films and videos, temporary and improvised
presentations, meetings in the form of dinners or teas, and more regular
lectures and debates.
Unresolved Matters: Social Utopias Revisited
October 4, 2009 -
February 14, 2010
Centraal Museum, Utrecht
What contribution
can design make to the future of our society? In the context of current
discussions of social design, it seems appropriate to take a look at the
past. Already in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, Germany
and the Netherlands in particular were the site of a growing number of
attempts to critically review everyday culture, industrial culture, and
even the totality of life ‘from sofa cushion to urban design’
(Herman Muthesius). With regard to this fundamental questioning of traditional
styles of life and living, there is a resemblance between the fins-de-siècle
of 1900 and 2000. The retrospective perspective on which the exhibition
Unresolved Matters is based is not, however, intended as a simplistic
‘learning from history’. Instead, it follows on from the question
of to what extent a society can discover its potential, evolve, and reflect
on it.
Three books – Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898);
Siegfried Giedion, Befreites Wohnen (1929); Victor Papanek, Design for
the Real World (1971) – provide a structure for three visual areas:
Social Greenery, Social Transparency, Social Sculpture. Chair designs
from Thonet to Castiglioni, glass from A.D. Copier to Wilhelm Wagenfeld,
fashion from Henry van de Velde via Johannes Itten to paper clothing,
multiples by Joseph Beuys, utopian designs by Haus-Rucker-Co or Archigram,
Earth Cloths by El Anatsui, conceptual works of Stephen Willats, will
all represent the various layers and facets of social design since 1900.
Unforeseen Magic
October 4 - 18, 2009
Centraal Museum Studio,
Utrecht
Facing the Centraal Museum is CM Studio, which will function for two weeks
as the central location, including an information desk, for all visitors
to Utrecht Manifest. Bas van Tol has reproduced here the physical conditions
of the exhibition Koer Locale, held in W139 in Amsterdam in 1992. This
exhibition, which was initiated and curated by Van Tol on that occasion
too, together with Madje Vollaers and Pascal Zwart, was one of the first
models of an open channel platform in the Netherlands, which for several
months was in a process of ongoing change and united all kinds of networks
and disciplines.
This time the content will be dictated to a large extent by chance and
by such considerations as direct accessibility and low costs: Unforeseen
Magic! For instance a historic video of Buckminster Fuller will be shown,
who is questioned by hundreds of hippies about how we can all contribute
to the world. Debra Solomon is organising a dinner for and with various
action groups in the city of Utrecht. Club Donny presents the latest edition
of the magazine of the same name and bags and other products from Guatemala
will be sold that have been designed and produced by women from the organisation
Ajkem’a Loy’a with assistance from students from The New School
in New York. Photographs, film stills, drawings and text fragments by
the artist Paulien Oltheten will be exhibited.