... Another chair? (Another object d'stylistic stasis, James Yood?)
This great article by David Clark is about how designers are addressing the problem of a lack of consumers at the moment by focusing on the making process as a selling point. Though the end of the process results in a product to sell, the process itself appears to be non-materialistic and appeals to today's less consumerist climate. (It is, perhaps, a form of the way 60s counterculture was appropriated into the Peace & Love tshirt/hat/purse explosion.) In selling "design" are the factory/shop processes real or simply appropriated because they are good advertising right now? That is what we have to discern daily these days. It's an endless process--Is it real or is it advertising?--Most of us are good at figuring it out because when we don't we feel duped and taken advantage of.
If this is relevant to glass, it is in the future. Right now, most glassblowing is very authentic and very difficult (expensive) to duplicate if you were going to exploit it for it's punk-machismo-sex appeal. But not in the future. The greater in popularity and the more it is accepted as fine art, the opportunities will be there (and will pay a lot) to return to technique, but in commercial form. What will happen then? There is "performance" of glassblowing and then there is the actual glassblowing itself. What is the difference?
[This intersects with a topic I've been wanting to explore for a long time: commercial sponsorship of the arts, including gallery sponsorship of juried competitions.]
Oh, and in case you forgot, quilting is always at the bottom of the art/craft pecking order...
"Craft Punk will feature a selection of young
designers working onsite with traditional handcraft methods to create nonconformist, cutting-edge objects, installations, and encounters."
http://www.designmiami.com/craftpunk/designers0.html
"‘Craft Punk’ is a response to new currents in design, fashion and in the
world. Today’s financial climate calls for a powerful statement in support
of young creativity and experimentation, which remains as vital to design
production in times of scarcity as it is in times of abundance.
The economic situation has also generated wide support for design with a
message, and there is a great pool of young and established designers
who incorporate social commentary and artistic narrative into their work.
“Craft is an area of design production that designers often turn to in the
early stages of their careers,” Design Miami/ Associate Director Wava
Carpenter points out. “The materials are relatively simple and the quality
of the finished products can be controlled through their own talent and
attention to detail. In addition, the hands-on nature of craft-based
design allows for the greatest degree of expressiveness and narrative.”
The word “Punk” is used, not as an aesthetic signifier but rather a
description of attitude and spirit; it suggests fearless defiance in the face
of adversity; individuality despite pressure to conform; the drive and
inspiration to make something from nothing; finding beauty in things that
are imperfect and asserting one’s voice despite restricted opportunities.
It is the power of creative thinking over high production values.
“We want people to reapproach the word ‘craft’ by reclaiming it from the
world of folksy quilting and re-engaging with the simple notion of things
made by hand,” Ambra Medda adds. “’Craft Punk’ is about showing a
talented designer’s brilliant innovation, even when faced with a tiny
budget. Real genius doesn’t need a huge amount of money to do
something great. It’s about having a terrific idea and making ends meet to
adapt to a situation.”
The designers were invited on the basis of their characteristics, but also
with the aim of shining a light on emerging talents who could benefit from
being given a stage on which to show their creativity at an event that is
attended by the industry’s powerbrokers...
...Examples of interactions and performances that will take place during
‘Craft Punk’ include:
• Simon Hasan will boil leather, completely transforming its texture and
aesthetic properties;
• Sarah Becker will be reworking FENDI accessories using embroidery
and collage techniques;
• Yuri Suzuki & Household will craft a large-scale animatronic machine
composed of discarded, everyday objects;
• Kwangho Lee will weave together common objects such as electrical
cords and garden hoses in elaborate patterns to create a jungle-like
installation;
• Studio Libertiny will re-approach traditional welding techniques,
working metal like clay;
• Raw-Edges will borrow folding techniques from fashion production to
create paper furniture;
• Studio Glithero will experiment with an obscure, old-fashioned printing
technique that will magically transform ceramics and fabrics from plain
white into a brilliant blue.
Consistent with the message of this event, ‘Craft Punk’ is an entirely non-
commercial endeavor, and the designers’ creations will remain their own."
Craft Punk press release. website accessed July 7, 2009. http://www.designmiami.com/craftpunk/press.html
www.ArtsJournal.com posted a link to this story:
2009 David Clark:
"THERE have been times in the past few years when the excesses of the design industry could lead one to think that we were witnessing the last days of an empire.
Extravagant furniture pieces fit for modern-day kings and queens, uber-rich bankers and pop stars carried price tags in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Decorative flourishes outdid the heights of the baroque, and frivolity appeared to be more important than the consequences of a design or its usefulness. I wondered when it would all come crashing down.
So how would that vast and intense incubator of ideas and directions, Milan Design Week, respond to 2009? It hasn't all come crashing down exactly, but the furniture industry, like many others, feels somewhat chastened by the present economic climate and environmental imperatives.
Attendances were still high (official figures for the Salone Internazionale del Mobile were 313,385 compared with last year's record of just under 350,000). There was just as much to see as before, as many companies, as many parties, and the hotels were still charging through the roof. But the mood overall seemed calmer, a little more reflective and, most especially, thoughtful.
Those companies that had the momentum behind their new product launches and couldn't stop or chose not to were oddly out of kilter with the current mood: a desire to detect and celebrate creativity, ideas and evidence of deeper thought and effort to respond to the issues facing the design world.
Finnish company Artek delivered a simple, bold message, "One chair is enough", presumably hoping that buyers would decide that its chair - a modular design by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban - was indeed the one. Often at these fairs one is overcome with such a sense of ennui that it doesn't seem possible to look at another chair.
Do we need more chairs? The most environmentally responsible solution is surely to not make anything further, but recycle, reuse and adapt what already exists. That single idea undoes the entire furniture industry, which is perhaps why so many designers are sticking their heads in the sand and soldiering on regardless, or paying lip-service to green production values while struggling with the idea that consumption, as we know it, may be over.
The cut-through in this year's design morass was achieved by companies or exhibitions that made bold statements or who were more obtuse in their approach and in fact didn't celebrate product at all. One that did this best was Craft Punk, an exhibition of design "performances" that focused on the art of making as opposed to consumption, on process rather than the finished object, and that was purposely low-tech to the point that the techniques could have had root in a timeless past.
Curated by Ambra Medda of Design Miami (the other cool design fair in the world, though nowhere near the scale of Milan), Craft Punk took over the Fendi warehouse space usually reserved for fashion shows and presented nine designers plying their craft every afternoon between 4pm and 8pm.
In a space that was alive with activity, music and enraptured observers engaging with generous designers (who all understand the value of savvy self-promotion these days) the mood was refreshing and upbeat. It felt like a village circus where everybody could join in the fun. That the designers all shared adjacent dormitory accommodation heightened the sense of them being like a travelling troupe.
A highlight was Simon Hasan, a graduate of Britain's Royal College of the Arts, who boiled leather (a medieval technique used to make armour) and shaped it into vessels. Hasan wrapped leather around moulds of different shapes and placed them into bubbling tea urns.
The process shrinks and hardens the leather, which is then worked with hand tools and various finishes such as car paint to make surprisingly beautiful objects.
The focus on process rather than results also inspired Italian ceramics giant Richard Ginori to create one of the most talked-about spaces of the week and a clever piece of branding that placed a venerable, if slightly old-fashioned company, front and centre for the design cognoscenti.
In a vast warehouse in the intensely busy Tortona district, Ginori, in collaboration with designer Paola Navone, created Taste Lounge: an enormous chill-out space where foot-weary design travellers could relax on large leather sofas and read magazines or settle down for a moment and have a snooze. A cafe offered Italian organic regional food.
The masterstroke that kept the audience captive with the brand, sometimes for hours, was a series of displays lining the walls of the space that with large graphic images, machinery and works in progress from the factory provided a window into how these things are made. It was fascinating.
Ceramic-ware seems to be replacing the chair as the archetypal design medium. Another ceramic company, Royal Tichelaar Makkum, the oldest company in The Netherlands and in recent years a marker of contemporary design talent, tapped into a back-to-basics functionalism that also pervaded the fair. Its presentation of simple pottery dinnerware by Atelier NL used clays from different parts of The Netherlands to express their earthen colours. Regionalism matters again as we reconsider and appreciate what's made around the corner instead of on the other side of the planet.
A fundamental earthiness was expressed more powerfully in a show of recently graduated European design talent curated by prescient trend forecaster Li Edelkoort for her Dutch Designhuis.
Edelkoort's brief for Archaic Form, the show she curated, was for the designers to use primitive materials in order to "escape from a world of over-consumption with unplugged proposals taken from the roots of humanity". One piece expressed the idea literally: a chaise longue designed by Karen Frankenstein made from straw, peat and cow dung.
Another work from that show, Raw by Jens Fager, a rough-cut timber chair that approximated a more refined one, also exemplified this new simplicity. Timber, often raw and unfinished, was clearly the material of choice for many designers and companies wishing to establish their sustainability credentials.
At Droog, furniture was made from chipboard embellished with marquetry techniques to elevate it about its lowly status. In another work, flat-packed laminated timber panels with cut-out sections could be put together to make desks and stools and even a piece of architecture that didn't sacrifice any beauty in the detailing when it was assembled.
British company Established and Sons displayed their new collection in an extraordinary labyrinthine stage set, built from 30 tonnes of unfinished American tulipwood, a low-end timber usually painted over when used in furniture.
Supplied by the American Hardwood Export Council to promote its product, the timber will be recycled for the London Design Festival in September.
As a replenishable resource, timber has its advantages, but crucially, it is also a natural material with soul, good to touch. Like the earthiness that appeared elsewhere, its use exemplifies a need to literally ground ourselves in the increasingly groundless, ethereal digital world.
While we want to balance cyberspace with something real and tangible (think of the internet and books as desirable counterparts for each other) there is no doubt that designers of the next generation will increasingly engage with the possibilities and technological changes that the digital revolution brings.
Maarten Baas, designer of the now famous burnt furniture range called Smoke, decided not to show new furniture this year but to make films instead. For Real Time he played with the idea of the digital clock, in a series of 12 hour-long movies of people making the time, in real time: for example, street sweepers pushing debris into the hands of a clock, or a person constantly drawing the hands of time onto the face of a grandfather clock in marker pen. It is ingenious.
The interesting thing is that not all of these ideas are especially new: we have been talking about the supremacy of craft and the mark of the hand for years. Cow dung, for example, is a material that has been used in African villages since the beginning of civilisation.
But what was interesting about Milan 2009 was that - among this vast melange of ideas, products, directions and diversity - these were the ideas that mattered. It's as if the world has caught up to them. The focus of the buyers, the designers and media has shifted. And perhaps we'll never look at things the same way again."
David Clark is the editor of Vogue Living magazine. The July-August issue has a full report on Milan Design Week.
Clark, D. "Design goes back to basics in Milan." The Australian. June 26, 2009. website accessed June 27, 2009. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25689909-16947,00.html
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