Journalism, research, storytelling: not surprisingly, both the spoken word and the printed word figure prominently in Taylor’s practice (the artist himself belonging to a generation of practitioners for whom a definite facility with language, both on a theoretical and literary level, has become a key aspect of artistic identity), and many of his installations have also been accompanied by publications and/or artist books.
This artist book is published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Ursula Blickle Stiftung, “The Units,” from May 29 to July 10, 2011. 

 

Castiglioni is one of the true geniuses of the design world, having designed beautiful artifacts that are still nowadays of a great value. As not so many may know, Castiglioni had a passion for collecting objects, particularly glasses. If you happen to have the opportunity to go and visit his studio, you can still find two big closets full of these 'memorabilia', little souvenirs that he collected during his travels and loved to show to friends to make them laugh. Castiglioni was the sort of man who would be sat in a meeting and, all of a sudden, would turn his face around to reveal that he was wearing a pair of springy eyeball glasses, astonishing his clients not only with his capacity for designing great products, but also with his playful nature. This is the kind of attitude we like, and the kind of attitude we would like to underline: the particular penchant for little objects and the emotions that they can convey. For the 50th birthday of the Salone del Mobile, we would like to present an exhibition that expresses stories and memories and not only the objects in themselves. We have asked various international designers and creators of objects to give us a personal, everyday object, which will be feature in the exhibition, accompanied by each designer's own words. 

The curatorial framework for the 10th edition of the Sharjah Biennial, titled Plot for a Biennial draws on the idea of a treatment for film, replete with a plot, characters and motives. It is woven from a constellation of key words and themes that include Treason, Necessity, Insurrection, Affiliation, Corruption, Devotion, Disclosure and Translation. Within this conceptual and lexical framework, artists, filmmakers, musicians, writers and performers constitute a cast of protagonists that include The Traitor, The Collaborator, The Experientialist and The Traducer. 

 

The publication is part of the series of artists' projects edited by Christoph Keller. 

Monitor MEMEX, a publishing platform established as part of Sint Lucas College of Art, Antwerp last autumn caught my eye after our discussions with Jenna about the emerging models of design education. So, I met up with its founder Boy Vereecken, a designer and advising researcher at Sint Lucas, to talk about the function of the platform.

How did you come up with the idea to establish Monitor MEMEX?

Practicing both as a researcher and graphic designer at Sint Lucas, my task is to explore the contemporary professional field in relation to the school. Consequently, one of the main motives for establishing Monitor MEMEX was to encourage students to explore pragmatic ways of practicing research in the context of a design department. Finding Sint Lucas quite fragmented, I felt that it was worthwhile to first create a comprehensive structure, a new programme within the campus, and only after that move over to more specific research topics. The idea was also to restructure the documentation and archiving of activities taking place within the college as well as to organise publishing and distribution in a way that would reflect more profoundly on the outside world. In addition, the platform covers everything from workshops to online publishing, facilitating collaboration between different departments. It is my reaction to the challenges of Sint Lucas.

How can an academic institution benefit from this kind of an independent platform?

Through Monitor MEMEX, the academia can reflect on topics outside the institution and vice versa. The platform is fundamentally more dynamic than rigid institutions, slowed down by their complex structures and large scale. Thus, it offers the institution a just-in-time approach. The aim is to open up the institution by inviting people from different fields – most of them outside the design context – to contribute and, through that, recreate the study programme. Documenting and publishing these contributions, the platform compliments the institution not only as a provider of “real-life” content but also as a distribution channel.

In addition, Monitor MEMEX functions as an important intersection and common ground for collaborations between different disciplines, because it is open for students from all departments: printing, fine art, jewellery design, graphic design, advertising, etc. Often these kinds of collaborations take place through established roles – the roles set by respective departments. However, working in a shared context and towards a shared aim leads to the abolition of titles. As a result, the almost frontal approaches as well as methodologies are forgotten, and genuine collaboration can take place.

Can you tell me a little bit more about how Monitor MEMEX works in practice?

Since the platform was established only a few months ago, it is still taking its shape and the programme will appear more structured the next academic year. To begin with, lectures and screenings are organised around certain topics, and interesting responses to these will be documented in publications.

What kind of research topics are, in your opinion, relevant in the context of design at present? Which ones did you choose to tackle within the programme?

First of all, it is central to consider different ways of establishing one’s own practice – which methods to use, and how to resolve certain things in the process. Building up one’s own body of work, oeuvre, contributes to personal evolvement and the other way around. Thinking about one’s work as a long term process is natural for artists and researchers, but unfortunately rarely applied in the field of design.

The first Monitor MEMEX research topic was ‘What does research mean in design practice?’. This was discussed with two designers, Daniel van der Velden and David Bennewith, who both presented their approach to design and research. One of the current topics is ‘New and its meaning at present’; how to be progressive today. Another topic is ‘Scenario making’, which takes a look at the relationship between film and graphic design. ‘As Found’ encourages students to use research and questioning as methods in their work.

Can you think of similar initiatives that would have inspired or functioned as models for Monitor MEMEX?

At present, there are some similar platforms, but their approach and motives are very different. Maybe the most interesting example of all times is Black Mountain College that operated in North Carolina from 1933 to 1957 (often these types of initiatives seem to work because of their temporary nature). Quite a few prominent figures, such as Josef Albers, came to teach at the college after Bauhaus closed down due to Nazi pressure. Therefore, Black Mountain continued the Bauhaus legacy in many ways. The interaction between the academia and the professional field – one of the best educational tools in my opinion – was central also at Black Mountain. Through bringing the professional field into the school programme, design decisions are reflected on the outside world and students get to take part in the current design discourse.
How would you describe your personal research methods?

I have been very interested in figuring out the meaning of oeuvre in relation to my own design practice: How can a designer build on oeuvre? How can one’s practice reflect on itself in order to create something timeless? I hope that whenever something that I have created leaves the studio – and to whatever context it arrives – it will speak to things beside it as well as those before and after it. A guiding line, or a method in my work, is to picture how the result will look like in ten years time and in different contexts. This keeps me motivated.

What kinds of methods do you use in your teaching?

The methods are very much influenced by the fact that instead of giving classes or assignments, I have appointments with the Master students in the course of their final projects. The meetings are based on guiding and reflection.

Can you give me an example of a workshop that you have given as well as explain the ways in which research was part of it?

I usually introduce the students to design research through my own research-based projects. An example of this was a workshop that I gave in Venice with Kasia Korczak. It dealt with info graphics, which is a an area of design that I am not particularly close to. However, by chance, we were working on a book consisting of quite a few graphs at the time. So, we showed the book in progress to the students and asked them to make questions about the graphics and work with them, too. The aim was to find solutions to problems that we had while working on the book. In the end, the workshop involved many discussions, and even though the results didn’t exactly fit for the book in question (as I had wished for) they were much more interesting than I had expected. This experience also reminded me of how discussion certainly plays an important role in workshops.

This brings to my mind the phrase “doing research by design”, which points out research being part of the design process.

I definitely consider that an applicable approach. In the context of design, the tendency is to conceive research and execution as separate entities. Students tend to be done with the research part when moving on to working with visual means. The main aim of the platform is to encourage students to integrate research more profoundly into their practice.

On the other hand, like you mentioned in the context of the info graphic workshop, design is traditionally defined as problem solving. Does your approach relate to this kind of design thinking in general, or is it something parallel to it?

This kind of an approach is necessary from the client’s point of view. On the contrary, I am interested in questioning the content through the creation of a subtle conflict. Adding to the “necessary” problem solving, I like to use my designs to open up the imagination. However, there are certainly many design practices based on problem solving, and I do acknowledge as well as introduce them while teaching.

What kinds of projects are you currently working on at Monitor MEMEX?

Just recently, we finished a master class on typography given by Karl Nawrot, an illustrator and type designer. He has a strong oeuvre, and therefore I felt that it was worthwhile to introduce him to the students. Nawrot is very aware of how he positions himself in the field. He manages to incorporate his rather artistic practice into commissioned design projects so that both ends, the client and the designer, are content. Usually his projects result in vivid typefaces that enhance the character of the commissions and, at the same time, are fulfilling for him to work with. Nawrot’s secret lies in limitations that he sets for himself in the form of very particular models and tools applied throughout his design process. And that is exactly what, for me, is even more valuable than the end results – the way he carries out research through his practice. 

 

 

 

Working within the VORMAT guidelines, the bachelor and master students of the Jewellery Design & Goldsmithing Department created a series of exceptional ornaments and objects which establish unexpected connections between similar and/or different materials. Subsequently, in December 2009, seven guest curators from the artistic and academic world were given a preview of the show. They were asked to choose two works from the VORMAT collection and to link them to a third object which was related to their own research field. In this way, the technical aspect of the “connections” topic was broadened to include the mental associations of different research fields. The result of this research experiment is collected in this volume, which is the fruit of a collaboration between VORMAT and the publication platform Monitor Memex. 

An important dimension of this presentation is an emphasis on interdisciplinarity, its use of the category of an 'art act' (as a special kind of an extremely rare event) that may appear in every field of human creativity (be it scientific or cultural). A reflection on the nature of creativity as such, on the autonomy of art and science in an age of an increasingly complex reality governed by 'rare events', in an age of cognitive (creative) capitalism feeding on the, fundamental for every genuine scientific or cultural creativity, autonomy of the art act, in an age of complexity sciences. The artists contained their own definition of the 'art act', informed by the above context, in the "Noo-Avantgarde and New Autonomy Manifesto," 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The installation consists in a series of six islands, little models realized in rapid prototyping, which are placed at the centre of vinyl records. Theses landscapes, situated on minimalist turntables, slowly revolve whilst corresponding tracks are being played. Each ensemble is positioned a few meters away from the others in the exhibition space, letting the visitors freely move from one to another in order to listen to the music each diffuses alternatively.

The six instrumental songs that accompany the diorama are each interpreted with a modified synthesizer mimicking certain acoustic principles. Each track uses only two sounds, and finally resembles simple acoustic duets. The six pieces are also each based on a different scale and tuning systems, borrowed from diverse areas of the world. These systems generally translate, through a specific tone ordering that is shaped both by acoustic principles and cultural developments, a musical identity belonging to a recognizable tradition. Here is the origin, largely summarized, of the scales that are used in the installation:

Kokin is a traditional Japanese scale / Myxolidian is an ancient Greek scale, at the origin of certain western tonal systems / Kourd Atar Todi is originally an Arabic scale, that was slightly transformed after its emigration to India / Pigmy is a traditional scale from Rwanda, also used in other countries of central Africa / Rumanikos is an old Greek scale, nowadays popular thanks to Gypsy music / Slendro is an Indonesian tuning system, principally used by Gamelan orchestras

Each of the six entities that are presented within the installation – Kokin, Myxolydian, Kourd Atar Todi, Pigmy, Rumanikos and Slendro – is thus formed by the association of a territory, with its own relief and vegetation, and of a music piece that has both a specific scale and a particular instrumentation. Automated and synchronized, the six record players function in a particular ordering, creating a dialog between the different entities. 

 

At the start of the 21st century there has been a marked shift – both economic and political – from the West to the East. Dubai vies with other Gulf cities to create the ultimate Middle Eastern hub for business, culture and leisure. China’s feverish construction industry is operating at an unprecedented scale, as it builds higher and faster than anyone else…