Utrecht Manifest 2009
3rd biennial for social design
4-18 October 2009
(exhibitions last longer)
Artistic Director: Guus Beumer
Centraal Museum, CM Studio, Casco House,
Villa Jongerius and De Pastoe Factory
http://www.utrechtmanifest.nl
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.
What is social design? Five projects:
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. The retrospective perspective on which Unresolved Matters in Centraal Museum 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.
Facing the Centraal Museum is CM Studio, which will function as the central location of the biennial which for two weeks will be in a process of ongoing change and unites all kinds of networks and disciplines: Unforeseen Magic! Film of Buckminster Fuller, dinner with Debra Solomon, presentation of Club Donny, products from Guatemala produced by women from Ajkem’a Loy’a with The New School in New York, photographs, film stills and video by the artist Paulien Oltheten.
The exhibition Urgent Methods: Design Education Examined tries to find out how key figures in Dutch design education hold up specific agendas to their students, under which influences those agendas evolved over time, and what results they have led to. With works of students and former students of Design Academy Eindhoven, TU Delft and Utrecht School of the Arts: a.o. Sonja Bäumel, Joris Laarman, Richard Hutten, Maarten Baas, Gerwin Hoogendoorn, Doeke de Walle, Marc Andrews, Fabian Akker.
Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory investigates the current state of domestic space in relation to the neighbours, the neighbourhood and the city, as well as exploring the potential for change: User’s Manual: The Grand Domestic Revolution. To this end Casco’s space will be extended for a one-year period to a nearby flat from where the transformation of a private household into a location for collective habitation and shared authorship will take form.
In the Utrecht Hoograven neighbourhood, Utrecht Manifest residents, corporations, local authority and training courses in the transformation project Hoograven Invites you!, an urban design research led by the architects Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner. The exhibition United Minds: Hoograven Invites You! in the Pastoe Factory, presents analyses and visualisations and challenges visitors to join in thinking about the significance of social design for urban development.
