The Construction School featuring Icarus
Initiated during a residency at Spike Island, 2011, and presented at Corner College, in June 2012, The Construction School – featuring Icarus at Kunstverein - is a project by designer James Langdon and explores the history of a bold attempt to establish an experimental art school in a provincial English context. The first phase (1964 to 1968) placed an emphasis on interdisciplinary working and collaboration. The second phase (1975 to 1977) was defined by a radical attempt to decentralise the educational structure of the school.
The school’s history is closely bound to the career and concerns of its founder Norman Potter, a practitioner in the margins of a mid-twentieth century English design culture. His work at the Construction School represents a period of intense critical thought about the structure of design education. The constitution of the school exemplified many of the ideas expressed in Potter’s What is a Designer, a text that was formulated during his time in Bristol. In particular Potter’s emphasis on the relational aspects of design – the mechanics of social interactions that shape design processes – was a defining feature of his programme.
From September 08, 2012
Kunstverein, Amsterdam
Excursus III: Ooga Booga
Excursus is a multifaceted initiative at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, in which artists, designers, publishers, and other cultural producers whose work engages the archive and publications are invited to create a platform for more intimate programming, alongside an online residency at excursus.icaphila.org. Building on the idea of an excursus (an exposition or digression from a primary text) each invited artist-in-residence will activate and re-imagine both the physical and discursive space of the ICA, creating a hub for reflection on issues related to the exhibitions on view in the galleries.
Wendy Yao’s Ooga Booga is a nexus for independent art, design, fashion, and music located in the heart of Chinatown in Los Angeles. More than a bookstore, Ooga Booga is a publishing imprint, record label, meeting place, and exhibition venue.
For Excursus III, Yao will bring her collaborators to ICA for a series of workshops, events, and pop-up exhibitions.
September 26 – December 16, 2012
Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia
The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON
The Grand Domestic Revolution (GDR) is an ongoing “living research” project initiated by Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht as a multi-faceted exploration of the domestic sphere.
Inspired by US late nineteenth-century “material feminist” movements that experimented with communal solutions to domestic life and work in order to connect it to the public domain. The GDR involves artists, designers, writers, researchers, activists, domestic workers and others in collaboratively experimenting with and re-articulating the domestic sphere, and exercising notions of the social, the public and the commons.
At The Showroom, The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON, exhibition of contemporary and historical artworks and a diverse and growing reference library, will form a base for workshops and events that will develop the GDR further. Exhibited works employ a wide range of methodologies to playfully problematise domestic issues and questions of labour, and range from the satirical to social critique and activist actions.
September 12 – October 27, 2012
The Showroom, London
mono.kultur #32 – MARTINO GAMPER
mono.kultur is an interview magazine from Berlin which deals with art and culture – or rather with the people who make them happen – and features one interview per issue.
mono.kultur latest issue – #32 – Martino Gamper: All channels personal – features product designer and artist Martino Gamper who talked about his idea of fun, why a chair is the ultimate challenge and what design has in common with cooking.
Martino Gamper is concerned with how design might affect the everyday. Coming to attention in 2007 with his epic project 100 Chairs in 100 Days, where he assembled discarded furniture and waste material into curious and charismatic new pieces, considering the history of materials as well as the context of his work has become an important element of Gamper’s practice, which sits comfortably and playfully between the worlds of industrial design and fine art…
Visually, the issue is bursting with references and ideas, reclaiming image material from left and right, while unveiling the structure of a book with three booklets of different sizes all assembled into one.
MY BAUHAUS IS BETTER THAN YOURS
MY
BAUHAUS
IS
BETTER
THAN
YOURS is an interdisciplinary company devoted to conceptual furniture, fashion and graphic design.
The Kingsboro Press issue 8
Founded in 2007 in Brooklyn, The Kingsboro Press is a critical and engaged look at young art, design, literature, and approach every new issue as an artists print or unique edition, an entirely self-produced object with its own inherent visual language.
The Kingsboro Press issue 8 contributors: Becca Albee, David Armacost, Jordan Awan, Walter de la Mer, Dx, Noel Friebert, Dmitri Hertz, Chip Hughes, Gb Jones, Cat Kron, Melissa Levin, Greil Marcus, Nik Planck, Zephyr Pavey, Asher Penn, Jeremy Sigler, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Wegman, Yan Yan, Seth Zucker, and more…
OPEN FIELD ROLU RESIDENCY
From June to September, Open Field transforms the Walker Art Center’s big, green yard into a cultural commons. The space is designed in the spirit of the “gift economy,” to explore what happens when people get together to share and exchange skills and interests, to create something new, or delve into the unknown.
For their residency (July 17-29), ROLU have developed a series of hands-on public activities organized around the ideas and people that have influenced them, as well as their wide-ranging interests: landscape and architectural design, urban planning, furniture design, modern and contemporary art history, collaborative public art, and more.
ROLU is an experimental design studio located in Minneapolis that’s focused on exploring the relationship between life, our surroundings and the objects and ideas that fill those spaces. Its practice was founded and continues to have a strong connection to landscape design but also extends to furniture design and collaborative architectural projects as well as urban planning work and public art.
The Aspen Complex – Martin Beck
The Aspen Complex documents Martin Beck’s exhibition which draws on the events of the 1970 International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) and the development of the Aspen Movie Map to form a visual environment that reflects the interrelations between art, architecture, design, ecology, and social movements. The book also brings together yet unpublished archival material and new research.
The 1970 IDCA marked a turning point in design thinking. The conference’s theme, “Environment by Design”, brought together venerable figures of modern design in the United States, including Eliot Noyes, George Nelson, and Saul Bass; environmental collectives and activist architects from Berkeley such as the Environmental Action Group, Sim Van der Ryn, and Ant Farm; as well as a group of French designers and sociologists, among them Jean Aubert, Lionel Schein, and Jean Baudrillard. The conference quickly escalated into a site of unresolvable conflict about communication formats and the potential role of design for environmental practices in a rapidly changing society.
The ensuing decade heralded the development of an interactive navigation system, which used the same Colorado resort town as its test site. The Aspen Movie Map – initiated by MIT’s Architecture Machine Group (the predecessor to the Media Lab) and partially funded by the US Department of Defense – is an image-based surrogate travel system using footage filmed in Aspen. Meant to prepare users for quick orientation in places they have never been to, the Aspen Movie Map was a seminal prototype for today’s military and consumer navigation systems.
Book launch & film screening
June 20 2012, 7pm
castillo/corrales, Paris
The Transdisciplinary Studio
Alex Coles is the author of The Transdisciplinary Studio, a study of the studio models of artists and designers including Jorge Pardo, Konstantin Grcic, Olafur Eliasson, and Åbäke; and Vito Acconci, Gui Bonsiepe, James Clifford, Dexter Sinister, Martino Gamper, Ryan Gander, Caroline Jones, Ronald Jones, Maria Lind, Alessandro Mendini, Rick Poynor, and Andrea Zittel. The book posits that artists and designers are now defined not by their discipline but by the fluidity with which their practices move between them.
The Transdisciplinary Studio is the first volume of a series of books by Alex Coles on the expanded studio model and contemporary praxis.
Book launch & talk,
Alex Coles with Martin Boyce, Konstantin Grcic, June 17, 2012, 1pm, Art Basel, Basel
Alex Coles with Ryan Gander, Michael Marriot, Åbäke, July 13, 2012, 1pm, ICA, London
Construction School – James Langdon
James Langdon will present an ongoing research project on the subject of the Construction School, an experimental design programme in Bristol, England (1964 to 1979).
This work explores the history of a bold attempt to establish an experimental art school in a provincial English context. The first phase (1964 to 1968) placed an emphasis on interdisciplinary working and collaboration. The second phase (1975 to 1977) was defined by a radical attempt to decentralise the educational structure of the school.
The school’s history is closely bound to the career and concerns of its founder Norman Potter, a practitioner in the margins of a mid-twentieth century English design culture. His work at the Construction School represents a period of intense critical thought about the structure of design education. The constitution of the school exemplified many of the ideas expressed in Potter’s What is a Designer, a text that was formulated during his time in Bristol. In particular Potter’s emphasis on the relational aspects of design – the mechanics of social interactions that shape design processes – was a defining feature of his programme.
June 29, 2012
Corner College, Zürich
Useless: New Writing in Art and Design
Useless: New Writing in Art and Design: The inaugural class of the MA in Critical Writing in Art and Design at the Royal College of Art offer their writing skills for the purpose of exploring value in the useless; in art, in design, in life. Developed through a series of workshops in collaboration with Icon deputy editor and author of Care of Wooden Floors Will Wiles, work presented deconstructs and rebuilds in earnest the fundamentals of being useless. The book has been designed by RCA graduate Pedro Cid Proença, with cover illustration by Fabienne Hess.
Launch June 13, 2012, 6.30pm
Will Wiles will be on hand to ponder the idea of uselessness
while performance artists will, throughout the evening, make both object and text their own.
Banner Repeater, London
Blank book makers – Le Saloon du livre
“Word Rain or a discursive introduction to the intimate philosophical
investigations of G,R,E,T,A G, A, R, B, O, it says”, Madeline Gins,
1969, Grossman
“Blank Book Makers In Memoriam Michael Gibbs – during Saloon du livre – is meant to address the latest developments in artists’ book history. An amazing corpus of new works makes up a most dynamic overview. There are many books dealing with topics such as emptiness, space, or the very substance of pages, and we deemed it necessary to look at the influence of books that have been published in neighbouring fields to that of the artist’s book or bookworks publications, in order for us to better define our investigation. Showing all facets and aspects through the most significant images was an option made difficult by the abundance of publications. We attempted to identify and showcase the current ideas and needs of the artist’s book medium.”
June 2-17, 2012
Fonderie Kugler, Geneva
Bauhaus: Art as Life
The biggest Bauhaus exhibition in the UK in over 40 years presents the modern world’s most famous art school. From expressionist beginnings to a pioneering model uniting art and technology, this London exhibition presents the Bauhaus’ utopian vision to change society in the aftermath of the First World War. Bauhaus: Art as Life explores the diverse artistic production that made up its turbulent fourteen-year history and delves into the subjects at the heart of the school: art, culture, life, politics and society, and the changing technology of the age.
Bauhaus: Art as Life will feature a rich array of painting, sculpture, design, architecture, film, photography, textiles, ceramics, theatre and installation. Exemplar works from such Bauhaus Masters as Josef and Anni Albers, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Walter Gropius, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Hannes Meyer, László Moholy-Nagy, Oskar Schlemmer, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Gunta Stölzl, will be presented alongside works by lesser-known Bauhaus artists and students.
May 3 – August 12, 2012
Barbican, London
Things to Do
Things to Do
compiled by Rafael Koch, Jürg Lehni and Urs Lehni
The world of instruments available to the designer has expanded dramatically in recent years and thanks to rapid technological progress is today available to a broad mass of users. The works shown here reflect this democratization of the means used in various ways. On the one hand new production processes created especially for specific situations are employed, while on the other hand existing processes are appropriated, adapted and transformed. This produces an distinct aesthetic, while at the same time questioning the role of technology and its standards. The works in “Things to Do” operate within a deliberately restricted range of design possibilities. These stubborn tools can do almost nothing, but they can do it all the better.
With Hisham Almannai, Jürg Lehni & Alex Rich, Maximage, Karl Nawrot, Jonathan Puckey, Rokfor, Rollo Press, écal Lausanne.
During 100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design
April 19 – June 3, 2012
Museum für Gestaltung, Zürich
Archizines + Arch-Art! Books
Archizines + Arch-Art! Books
A double exhibition with 80 magazines, 80 feet of books and other printed matters.
Archizines + Arch-Art! Books is a double exhibition consisting of Archizines curated by Elias Redstone and Arch-Art! Books, curated by Adam O’Reilly for Printed Matter, Inc. that brings to the table a hypothesis: printed matter matters . Consisting of an eclectic selection of new independent and alternative magazines, fanzines and journals from around the world (that can be read as a contemporary response to the Clip Stamp Fold exhibition curated by Beatriz Colomina at Storefront in 2007, which explored the little magazines phenomenon in the 60’s and 70’s), together with a selection of contemporary artist books with architecture at the center, the exhibition is a temporary library for contemporary approaches to architecture from different disciplinary origins and degrees of expertise.
Archizines was recently launched by Elias Redstone as a research project to celebrate and promote the resurgence of independent and alternative publishing.
In Storefront, a bespoke design by 
(Giancarlo Valle, Isaiah King, Ryan Neiheiser) that draws inspiration from the quintessential New York model of publication display – the newstand – and turns it on its side.
Arch-Art! Books presents a selection of artists’ books culled from Printed Matter, Inc.’s current catalog and presents them as a medium through which architecture might be photographically and representationally explored. Each book is an flâneur’s response to the urban environment, documenting the social patina and environmental decay left on architectural space.
Together, the complementary shows form an exhibition of exchange and dialog; mining the overlap and friction found in the recent resurgence of alternative and independent architecture and art publishing from around the world.
The exhibition also includes additional printed material (a graphic façade, newsprint, and catalogue) designed by Benjamin Critton that bring together ideas presented in each exhibition.
In conjunction with the presentation of Archizines, Storefront will host a 2-day symposium on publishing practices.
Archizines, April 18 – June 9
Arch-Art! Books, May 5 – June 9
Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York
Text Library – during Facing Pages
© Thomas Petitjean & Hugo Anglade
Text Library
A collection of writings – ideas & emotions – about Art & Design,
from international contemporary periodicals, selected by artists, curators, art historians, graphic designers, designers & publishers…
A periodical publication (magazine, journal, etc.) is a space for creation, incarnated in itself (treated as an object, designed), but it is also a space of expression, a specific medium in which communicate ideas and commitments, a tool to engage a debate, a good partner for criticism.
The space will gather critical texts extracted from contemporary art, design and graphic design independent magazines selected by Charlotte Cheetham and guests – artists, graphic designers, curators, publishers – who submitted texts/articles from periodicals and which they think must be read.
The space of the project will simulate a study/reading room of a library in which the public will be able to spend time to read but will also be welcomed to discuss and exchange ideas.
Thanks to an in-situ photocopier, the public will also be able to duplicate the texts and create their own reader, their own catalogue of the project, bounded within a cover specially designed for the event. In brief, a way to spread and archive the words of these authors presented during these 3 days… text-library.tumblr.com
April 20-22, 2012
Facing Pages, Arnhem
Summerland – Stockholm is our pleasure park
Project Room – Summerland – Stockholm is our pleasure park
The Project Room is a new exhibition format at the Swedish Museum of Architecture. The aim is to introduce a new, experimental program focused primarily on aspects of design and crafts, but also linked to adjacent fields like architecture and urban planning.
With its starting point in the city’s nature, the explorative project Summerland is a concept for a pleasure park with new types of attractions. Assuming the roles of designers and coordinators, Byggstudio’s long-term intention is for the project to result in a series of public events in Stockholm’s public countryside.
In the Project Room, a place for exploration and discussion is being created, and in the course of eight weeks, the project’s conceptual landscape with models, texts and images will be developed, including a public programme of meetings and excursions. The result of the research will be presented in a publication.
Until May 13, 2012
Arkitekturmuseet, Stockholm
Panorama n°7 – The book and its exhibition
Theophile’s Papers – Panorama n°7
The book and its exhibition
Based in Bruxelles and Paris, Théophile’s Papers is a platform dedicated to the diffusion of independent editors, fanzines, newspapers and magazines specialized in art, photography, typography and illustration, focusing on the promotion of emerging projects and artist books.
The Arc Editer workshop of the Fine Art School of Angers, in collaboration with the Espace 200×75, invite Théophile’s Papers and the designer Valerian Goalec for an intervention which has for topic “The book and its exhibition”.
Fonds De Documentation et de Lecture à l’Erg
Fonds De Documentation et de Lecture à l’Erg
Le conseil étudiant met en place un Fonds De Documentation et de Lecture à l’Erg. Le FDDDL vient d’une envie d’ouvrir, à l’intérieur de l’école, un espace dédié à la lecture et aux échanges d’idées. Un espace où l’on rendrait visible ce qui a été créé à l’Erg ces dernières années. Le FDDDL, c’est une sorte d’archive qui rassemble les productions de plusieurs générations d’étudiants et quelques ouvrages qui ont marqué leurs études et sont, pour eux, devenus des références. Le FDDDL rendrait ainsi visible (et présent) l’historique de l’école en faisant un état des lieux des travaux menés et des sujets abordés par ses étudiants. Une façon d’avoir un aperçu du projet singulier de l’Erg à l’aube de ses 40 ans.
Ouverture 16-17 mars 2012
pendant les portes-ouvertes de l’ERG
ERG, Bruxelles
Uglycute retrospective
Marabouparken is pleased to present a retrospective exhibition with the art and design group Uglycute. Markus Degerman (artist), Andreas Nobel (interior designer), Jonas Nobel (artist) and Fredrik Stenberg (architect) began collaborating as Uglycute in 1999 as a reaction against the Swedish design climate at the time. The group was part of a generation of designers and artists that used craft and design to discuss taste, quality, class, gender and politics. Their activities have branched out into the Swedish and international art and design worlds through objects, exhibition architecture, interior design and teaching.
According to Uglycute, their practice takes place between art, design and architecture. The goal is to expand the notion of design by cross-fertilizing it with the members’ different professions and by analyzing the effects of design on society not only through their own practice, but also through writing, teaching, and organizing workshops…
Until May 13, 2012
Marabouparken, Sundbyberg