Design Campus 2022: The School of the Untold

Summer school 2022: The School of the Untold
Today, designers, architects and artists can be critical agents in the global system, but their skill set and perspective must expand rapidly beyond self-referential processes. As the finite resources of our planet become ever scarcer, we face an urgent need to revisit our knowledge of material supplies and production. This year, the appointed Head of School is the internationally renowned designer studio Formafantasma, founded in 2009 by Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin. Formafantasma invites participants to be part of ‘The School of the Untold’: The collaborative 6-weeks program aims to dissect the complex entanglements of today’s dealing with resources through materiality and will therefore dig into the rich collection of the museum itself to explore the untold stories behind the historic legacy of exhibited artefacts.

Weekly workshops, collection visits and lectures will be guided by designers and architects, but also by theoreticians, performance artists, curators, filmmakers and philosophers. The program explores material histories, cultural world-views, the relationship between tradition and local culture, critical approaches to ecology, colonialism, extractivism, the relation between human and non-human as well as the significance of objects as cultural conduits. We hope to provide participants with opportunities to build up new methodologies combining hands-on material techniques with innovative media formats, historical philosophy with urgent critical discourse, and transparent collaboration with tactical subversion.

Workshops
Week 1 (July 17–23)
Wood: Archive of the Lost Forest
The Museum as a Festival (Terraforma Festival, Ruggero Pietromarchi (Italy))
Toy Corners (Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno (Spain))

Week 2 (July 27–30)
Metal: A Geography of Malleability
Casting Journeys (Johanna Seelemann (Germany, Iceland))
MOOD BOARDS: Scrambled Temporality (Floriane Misslin (UK))

Week 3 (July 31–August 6)
Earth: Archeological Illusion
Question, Reframe, Expose, Repeat (Irakli Sabekia (Georgia, Netherlands))
Wood, Objects and other Stories (Guiditta Vendrame (Italy, Netherlands))

Week 4 (August 7–13)
Plastic: Performative Plasticity
The Untold River Composing Forces Among Us (Future Farmers (US, Belgium))
Transitive Matters (Studio Plastique (Belgium))

Week 5 (August 14–20)
Miscellaneous: Mundane Hardware
Comrade Animal (Parasite 2.0 (Italy, UK))
Material Flexibilities (Buro Belén (Netherlands))

Week 6 (August 21–28)
Immaterial: Beyond the Plinths
De-/Reconstruct (Armature Globale by Luigi Alberto Cippini)
Invisible: Beyond the Plinths (Martina Muzi (Italy, Netherlands))

Design Campus
Part internal think tank and part external connector and incubator, The Design Campus is a curatorial-driven, interdisciplinary, and future-oriented platform for rethinking the world’s biggest questions through design practices and culture. Rooted in contemporary global issues, in dialogue with historical and transdisciplinary knowledge, the Design Campus hopes to foster big, idealistic, systemic, utopian thoughts back into design practice, and to rethink the role of decorative and applied arts museums on the way. The goal is to explore new grounds and search for better ways forward. We want to challenge the way we navigate a world in crisis, in all its complexity, charting a new course and a possible different directions by design.

Part of this initiative is a yearly summer School on themes relevant to both the museum, and its future projects, and to the wider world. Each year, as part of its six-week summer school program, the Design Campus offers a series of one-week workshops, led by world-renowned creative professionals.

Who can apply?
Curious, restless, dreamer of better places, creative, fearless, social, collaborative, interested, engaged, inquisitive, designer, architect, artist, scientist, curator, journalist, engineer, developer, photographer, filmmaker, skilled students, recent graduates or young-professionals, open-minded people: welcome!

Why
Great chance to think and dream big, with like-minded people, learn new skills, get involved in future projects in the museum, its environs, and its network, and perhaps change the world by design.

How
Applications online

Stay tuned and sign up to our newsletter to get to know first-hand about the summer school’s workshops, programs, and how to apply: designcampus.org