Open Design for the Future, Designers in residence Kortrijk, 2015
This is an introductory chapter to the Designers in Residence publication of 2015. It pleas for a... more This is an introductory chapter to the Designers in Residence publication of 2015. It pleas for a social design approach in an aim to create things which make sense in a society of non-sense. It stresses the responsibility young designers have in this age of waste.
Bouchez H. The fabulous mind of a new generation. In: , Open Design in Practice. Kortrijk: Designregio Kortrijk., 2015
Oftewel de fabelachtige, fantastische, ongelooflijke, onwaarschijnlijke, verbazingwekkende mensel... more Oftewel de fabelachtige, fantastische, ongelooflijke, onwaarschijnlijke, verbazingwekkende menselijke geest. Het is een term die de respectievelijk Japanse en Finse curatoren Noriko Kawakami en Ikko Yokoyama bedacht hebben voor een tentoonstelling (2014) in Tokio en hebben afgekort tot The Fab Mind. Een verwijzing naar het begin van een nieuwe beweging in design: de fablabs en de fabuleuze ontwerpmogelijkheden die deze met zich hebben meegebracht. 1 Een fablab is, in de meest poëtische betekenis van het woord, een afkorting voor fabulous laboratory. Daarnaast is het ook de afkorting van de meer voor de hand liggende betekenis: fabrication laboratory, met als belangrijkste doelstelling het digitaal fabriceren van dingen in een open proces. Dit gebeurt met behulp van een aantal technisch hoogstaande machines, waaronder een 3D-printer, een computergestuurde lasercutter, een freesmachine en open software, waarmee de gebruikers van het lab binnen een netwerk alledaagse objecten, maar ook veel complexere producten en/of onderdelen kunnen maken. Daarbij ziet bedenker en oprichter Neil Gershenfeld een revolutie van personal computer naar personal fabrication, want bij het bedenken en maken van bijvoorbeeld geavanceerde vliegtuigen zijn het niet de materialen die intelligent moeten zijn, maar de werktuigen waarmee ze gemaakt worden. Als docent aan het prestigieuze MIT zag Gershenfeld hoe westerse studenten op een bepaalde manier verwend zijn door de technische mogelijkheden die ze hebben en daardoor een frisse, creatieve intelligentie hebben verloren. Iets wat hij wel zag in de straatwijsheid in landen als India, waar constant op een creatieve manier gedacht wordt vanuit noodzaak. En waar men anderzijds geen toegang heeft tot slimme machines, die in samenspraak met dat creatieve en wilde denken misschien wel tot baanbrekende nieuwe bedenksels en producten zouden kunnen leiden. Bovendien is er een altruïstische onderstroom in zijn concept: Our mission is to provide access to the tools, the knowledge and the financial means to educate, innovate and invent using technology and digital fabrication to allow anyone to make (almost) anything, and thereby creating opportunities to improve lives and livelihoods around the world. 2 Het idee van het fablab groeide in 2001 uit de populaire lessenreeks How To Make (Almost) Anything die Gershenfeld aan het MIT doceerde. Het vond een eerste toepassing in een sociaal project voor jongeren in de Verenigde Staten. Snel volgden fablabs in onder andere Kenia en India, landen waar het niet voor de hand ligt om te studeren. Gershenfeld en zijn team hoopten met hun labs jongeren aan te trekken die veel verder en vooral vrijer zouden denken dan de studenten aan het MIT. Het belangrijkste kenmerk van de fablabs is daarom dat ze vrijwel gratis toegankelijk en vooral laagdrempelig zijn. In ruil voor de mogelijkheid om gratis gebruik te maken van dit fabuleuze laboratorium wordt gevraagd om kennis te delen – als een soort 3D-Wikipedia, het bekendste
For the exhibition Instant Icon, Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, I published a chapter on... more For the exhibition Instant Icon, Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, I published a chapter on the genius marketing of Vitra, through which they successfully address what they call a 360° target group, meaning every single consumer. This leads to a questionable collaboration with lifestyle media worldwide, which eagerly publishes Vitra's products as 'high design' icons and museum pieces and thus participating into Bourdieu's 'credit-based system.
Summary:
Since 1980 design has at the one hand become increasingly popular and is today omnipr... more Summary:
Since 1980 design has at the one hand become increasingly popular and is today omnipresent, at the other hand the design practice has since a couple of years been emphasising the identity crisis of design.
This PhD aims at understanding why and how design has become so popular and to what consequences. In order to grasp this quite complex and especially wide research question, the research was narrowed down to 6 case studies, representing the three moments of meaning-giving in the life cycle of a product: production-mediation-consumption, within the geographic scope of Flanders.
The most obvious reason why design has become omnipresent, is the hypothesis that the reflexive consumer buys into the goods as a means to construct an identity through consumption. In this respect the status-value of an object is of prime-importance and explains why design has become so desired in neo-liberal society. In the course of its history design has expressed a growing accumulation of cultural capital, with the success of designart as its triumph.
However the research show that it is not so much the consumer who has ratified the high cultural meaning of design. The consumer seems to have mainly adopted the narratives and labels bestowed upon it by the producer in positioning the goods onto the market. Through very particular and successful branding strategies, the producer’s message has been confirmed and authorised by the lifestyle media. This implies that design’s success is driven by commercial and economic imperatives, veiled under the pretext of high culture.
Looking into the three major moments of mediation, shows that producers of high design invest in high cultural branding, which doesn’t necessarily have a direct economic outcome, but does generate a brand image of an industrial investor who is rather an altruistic maecenas, than an industrialist creating new desires in the endless cycle of consumption. Alessi for example has invested in the Tea and Coffee Piazza, a collection of silver objects designed by internationally known architect. These designs were only produced in threefold in analogy of the limited editions within the art circuit, and worldwide found a direct entry into the main art museums. Vitra and Tecta opened their own musem under the altruistic aim of sharing the private collections of their CEO’s with the world. Next to this obvious strategy, it is especially the interplay between the created high cultural narrative of the producers with the lifestyle media that has led to the accumulation of cultural capital of the goods, but also of the producer, the media and the consumer who does buy into the goods. Case 4 of the research shows that the media not only echo, but enforce the narratives of the producer in their own strive to accumulate cultural capital. In doing so, they present life amidst high design objects as an ideal to strive for. This interplay between producers and media has proven producers to invest in cultural branding, rather than advertising. The products of for example, Vitra and Alessi are broadly represented throughout different editorial formats. TECTA at the other hand, which does invest in cultural initiatives as for example a museum and book publications, is not covered in ‘Weekend Knack’, precisely because it is not willing to provide the magazines with flattened-out, easy manageable narratives, which can be directly copied and pasted into the eitorials.
However the economically successful initiatives of companies as for example Alessi and Vitra and the strategies implied by the media in advising the consumer in the obtaining of an ideal lifestyle, through high design consumption, has implications on the meaning of design in general and is symptomatic for the crisis in design.
The above briefly described strategy of uploading goods with cultural capital, implies meticulously constructed narratives, which are layered upon the intrinsic qualities of design goods and can even be contradictory to the intended meaning and use of the designers. Thus erasing their mere reason for existing. Secondly, the commodification of high design has lead to the spreading of the high cultural aura to all objects with a related design-style, and thirdly, to the assumption that the function of an object is subordinate to its form and expression.
The case-study on the acquisition and assimilation of high design by the consumers in 2009 shows the preliminary hypothesis: that the success of high design is linked to the drive of the consumer to buy positional goods in the construction of an identity, to be false. Most of the consumers claim not to buy design, precisely for its positional and non-functional aura. They do however all buy adapted copies of high design, or products expressing a design-style at cheap chain stores as for example Ikea or Weba. Surprisingly, most consumers do not label these goods as design. This implies that the meaning of high design, as being artistic and exclusive has from the perspective of the consumer, become synonymous to the meaning of design in general, which of course does give reason to believe that the design is in crisis.
The consumer’s refusal to identify with the artistic and exclusive character of design and the critique from the design practice and academia has led to the construction of a new and at first glance deviating narrative by producers and media. Vitra as one of the first producers started photographing its products in everyday situations with a stress on the use-value of the goods and the reflexive capacity of the consumer in creating a personal home, which radiates creativity rather than social position. However this shift in context: from the white-cube, museum kind of settings to a presentation of the products in everyday homes, is not devoid of a high cultural meaning, on the contrary. These new settings and images are complete in tune with art and fashion avant-garde as for example the photography of Juergen Teller. The applied strategy of the producers and media is rather infused by their fear for a trickle down effect, and again contra productive to the real aims of designers, and needs of consumers. For producers of high design goods, there seems to be no direct interest in promoting design as an innovation driven practise with as intrinsic value and desire to improve things.
In mapping the narratives and labels of the three major moments in a product’s lifecycle it becomes clear that in order to understand the dynamics underlying the popularisation of design it is not the moment of creation, nor the moment of consumption that should be solely looked at, but the interplay or mediation between those moments, and the generated flow or flux of meaning.
Networks of Design maps a new methodological territory in design studies, conceived as a field of... more Networks of Design maps a new methodological territory in design studies, conceived as a field of interdisciplinary inquiry and practice informed by a range of responses to actor network theory. It brings together a rich body of current work by researchers in the social sciences, technology, material culture, cultural geography, information technology, and systems design, and design theory and history. This collection will be invaluable to students and researchers in many areas of design studies and to design practitioners receptive to ...
From the fields of design history and design theory (Lees-Maffei, 2009) the quest for a focus on ... more From the fields of design history and design theory (Lees-Maffei, 2009) the quest for a focus on mediation, rather than production (Pevsner, 1936) or consumption (Giddens, 1991, exemplifies the ubiquitous role of design as mediator, as well as the role of new mediating strategies in the success of design forms and design ideas. In the quest to sustainability, similar methods, which lay at the foreground of the popularisation of design as artistic and iconic form, can be used to re-negotiate the meaning of design towards an open-source, sustainable service. Beautification and storytelling are two major assets, which can be brought into action to initiate and popularise a new narrative.
Into the Wild, with Erwan Bouroullec
Hilde Bouchez
“You’re lucky, I’m the clever brother,” jok... more Into the Wild, with Erwan Bouroullec
Hilde Bouchez
“You’re lucky, I’m the clever brother,” jokes Erwan Bouroullec to his audience. The other brother is Ronan Bouroullec. Together they make well-known furniture and other everyday things, also called design.
*
The Maarten Van Severen Foundation and KASK joined forces, and in mid-2015 the MVSC or Maarten Van Severen Chair was founded in Ghent.
*
In December of the same year, Erwan gave the first MVSC lecture to more than 700 attendees and the following week he guided fifteen students from five different art schools into the wild—the title of his workshop.
*
Erwan had no clue what to expect from the students. I had no clue what to expect from him and the students. He asked for an empty room, where the students could do anything with whatever material at hand. In preparation for the workshop he sent them some images of artworks and unworked material. There were no guidelines, no objectives. And he was not there to give instructions.
It made me nervous. It looked as if he was also nervous, but I think that had more to do with the non-smoking policy inside the school buildings than with the workshop.
I left him with his students, into their wildness, whatever that could mean… And once in a while I dropped in, checked on them as a sort of gatekeeper.
After one day, one student had given up, some were totally struggling, and others were immersed in whatever it was they were doing. And Erwan, like a flâneur with his coat on—at times even his hat—strolled amid them, as if they were trees he was admiring and sometimes silently talking to.
After two days the room became a wilderness and out of the chaos forms arose and discussions commenced. Erwan and the students stayed until very late working, talking, and little by little blossoming.
On the last day, Erwan decided it was not the last day, it was just the beginning and the students agreed. We made an online platform and all the students engaged themselves to continue working on whatever it was they were making.
Some with branches, some with salt, some with coal, ropes, paint, stretch belts…
And so time passed and Erwan wrote letters to his birds, because that was what he was calling them. The birds… because they all flew out and all had different rhythms, different ways of relating to the blog, different ways of being reached…
And it made me nervous again. Stretching a week’s workshop over a full academic year with students from all over Europe, who as soon as they were back home would be drawn to their projects in their proper schools, by their proper teachers, and their mandatory assignments and duties. Schools are not wild and teachers are not flâneurs…
But the birds managed. At irregular times, with irregular intensity they uploaded their processes. Some with hundreds of photos, some with just one movie. All with their own peculiarities.
*
And over the year the materials became forms, tools, expressions. No words needed. Just by following the images they uploaded one could understand what the search was about, what the process brought.
*
The precious gem hidden in the wild became visible little by little.
*
It was quite an uncanny method. One of total freedom. And so are the results. Erwan did guide the students, but only by simple talks and encouragement—often humorous but questioning comments. More like a grandfather than a teacher. More like a flâneur looking for beauty and involvement, in a very relaxed and seemingly detached way.
*
It was an intense journey. With half drunken discussions at a badly lit hotel bar, frustrated phone calls, and e-mails over a lack of responsibility and misunderstandings, long working days with little or no food. And me smoking Erwan’s cigarettes until he stopped smoking altogether…
And it was a grand journey! Balancing along with the clever brother. From the past to the future, from minimalism to total wildness, from playfulness to dogmas, from animism to tradition.
If Erwan says “Yes!” he also says “No!”
As if constantly walking along a thin line, a tightrope without a safety net. I guess that is exactly the secret of their success. Playing along and playing against. A constant questioning, a constant deliberation.
*
A permanent confrontation really: with each other as brothers, with themselves as humans, and with the world, in their continual aim to create cultural objects that make sense. Or nonsense.
Page 1. onen en Leven in &vsr . >*i HR--.4J lannoo Page 2. Page 3. Page 4... more Page 1. onen en Leven in &vsr . >*i HR--.4J lannoo Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. IN DEZELFDE REEKS Wonen ft Leven in Vlaanderen Piet Swimbcrghe en Jan Verlinde 232 hlz. ca. 250 afbeeldingen in kleur 250 x 250 mm Gebonden ...
Open Design for the Future, Designers in residence Kortrijk, 2015
This is an introductory chapter to the Designers in Residence publication of 2015. It pleas for a... more This is an introductory chapter to the Designers in Residence publication of 2015. It pleas for a social design approach in an aim to create things which make sense in a society of non-sense. It stresses the responsibility young designers have in this age of waste.
Bouchez H. The fabulous mind of a new generation. In: , Open Design in Practice. Kortrijk: Designregio Kortrijk., 2015
Oftewel de fabelachtige, fantastische, ongelooflijke, onwaarschijnlijke, verbazingwekkende mensel... more Oftewel de fabelachtige, fantastische, ongelooflijke, onwaarschijnlijke, verbazingwekkende menselijke geest. Het is een term die de respectievelijk Japanse en Finse curatoren Noriko Kawakami en Ikko Yokoyama bedacht hebben voor een tentoonstelling (2014) in Tokio en hebben afgekort tot The Fab Mind. Een verwijzing naar het begin van een nieuwe beweging in design: de fablabs en de fabuleuze ontwerpmogelijkheden die deze met zich hebben meegebracht. 1 Een fablab is, in de meest poëtische betekenis van het woord, een afkorting voor fabulous laboratory. Daarnaast is het ook de afkorting van de meer voor de hand liggende betekenis: fabrication laboratory, met als belangrijkste doelstelling het digitaal fabriceren van dingen in een open proces. Dit gebeurt met behulp van een aantal technisch hoogstaande machines, waaronder een 3D-printer, een computergestuurde lasercutter, een freesmachine en open software, waarmee de gebruikers van het lab binnen een netwerk alledaagse objecten, maar ook veel complexere producten en/of onderdelen kunnen maken. Daarbij ziet bedenker en oprichter Neil Gershenfeld een revolutie van personal computer naar personal fabrication, want bij het bedenken en maken van bijvoorbeeld geavanceerde vliegtuigen zijn het niet de materialen die intelligent moeten zijn, maar de werktuigen waarmee ze gemaakt worden. Als docent aan het prestigieuze MIT zag Gershenfeld hoe westerse studenten op een bepaalde manier verwend zijn door de technische mogelijkheden die ze hebben en daardoor een frisse, creatieve intelligentie hebben verloren. Iets wat hij wel zag in de straatwijsheid in landen als India, waar constant op een creatieve manier gedacht wordt vanuit noodzaak. En waar men anderzijds geen toegang heeft tot slimme machines, die in samenspraak met dat creatieve en wilde denken misschien wel tot baanbrekende nieuwe bedenksels en producten zouden kunnen leiden. Bovendien is er een altruïstische onderstroom in zijn concept: Our mission is to provide access to the tools, the knowledge and the financial means to educate, innovate and invent using technology and digital fabrication to allow anyone to make (almost) anything, and thereby creating opportunities to improve lives and livelihoods around the world. 2 Het idee van het fablab groeide in 2001 uit de populaire lessenreeks How To Make (Almost) Anything die Gershenfeld aan het MIT doceerde. Het vond een eerste toepassing in een sociaal project voor jongeren in de Verenigde Staten. Snel volgden fablabs in onder andere Kenia en India, landen waar het niet voor de hand ligt om te studeren. Gershenfeld en zijn team hoopten met hun labs jongeren aan te trekken die veel verder en vooral vrijer zouden denken dan de studenten aan het MIT. Het belangrijkste kenmerk van de fablabs is daarom dat ze vrijwel gratis toegankelijk en vooral laagdrempelig zijn. In ruil voor de mogelijkheid om gratis gebruik te maken van dit fabuleuze laboratorium wordt gevraagd om kennis te delen – als een soort 3D-Wikipedia, het bekendste
For the exhibition Instant Icon, Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, I published a chapter on... more For the exhibition Instant Icon, Trapholt Museum of Modern Art, Denmark, I published a chapter on the genius marketing of Vitra, through which they successfully address what they call a 360° target group, meaning every single consumer. This leads to a questionable collaboration with lifestyle media worldwide, which eagerly publishes Vitra's products as 'high design' icons and museum pieces and thus participating into Bourdieu's 'credit-based system.
Summary:
Since 1980 design has at the one hand become increasingly popular and is today omnipr... more Summary:
Since 1980 design has at the one hand become increasingly popular and is today omnipresent, at the other hand the design practice has since a couple of years been emphasising the identity crisis of design.
This PhD aims at understanding why and how design has become so popular and to what consequences. In order to grasp this quite complex and especially wide research question, the research was narrowed down to 6 case studies, representing the three moments of meaning-giving in the life cycle of a product: production-mediation-consumption, within the geographic scope of Flanders.
The most obvious reason why design has become omnipresent, is the hypothesis that the reflexive consumer buys into the goods as a means to construct an identity through consumption. In this respect the status-value of an object is of prime-importance and explains why design has become so desired in neo-liberal society. In the course of its history design has expressed a growing accumulation of cultural capital, with the success of designart as its triumph.
However the research show that it is not so much the consumer who has ratified the high cultural meaning of design. The consumer seems to have mainly adopted the narratives and labels bestowed upon it by the producer in positioning the goods onto the market. Through very particular and successful branding strategies, the producer’s message has been confirmed and authorised by the lifestyle media. This implies that design’s success is driven by commercial and economic imperatives, veiled under the pretext of high culture.
Looking into the three major moments of mediation, shows that producers of high design invest in high cultural branding, which doesn’t necessarily have a direct economic outcome, but does generate a brand image of an industrial investor who is rather an altruistic maecenas, than an industrialist creating new desires in the endless cycle of consumption. Alessi for example has invested in the Tea and Coffee Piazza, a collection of silver objects designed by internationally known architect. These designs were only produced in threefold in analogy of the limited editions within the art circuit, and worldwide found a direct entry into the main art museums. Vitra and Tecta opened their own musem under the altruistic aim of sharing the private collections of their CEO’s with the world. Next to this obvious strategy, it is especially the interplay between the created high cultural narrative of the producers with the lifestyle media that has led to the accumulation of cultural capital of the goods, but also of the producer, the media and the consumer who does buy into the goods. Case 4 of the research shows that the media not only echo, but enforce the narratives of the producer in their own strive to accumulate cultural capital. In doing so, they present life amidst high design objects as an ideal to strive for. This interplay between producers and media has proven producers to invest in cultural branding, rather than advertising. The products of for example, Vitra and Alessi are broadly represented throughout different editorial formats. TECTA at the other hand, which does invest in cultural initiatives as for example a museum and book publications, is not covered in ‘Weekend Knack’, precisely because it is not willing to provide the magazines with flattened-out, easy manageable narratives, which can be directly copied and pasted into the eitorials.
However the economically successful initiatives of companies as for example Alessi and Vitra and the strategies implied by the media in advising the consumer in the obtaining of an ideal lifestyle, through high design consumption, has implications on the meaning of design in general and is symptomatic for the crisis in design.
The above briefly described strategy of uploading goods with cultural capital, implies meticulously constructed narratives, which are layered upon the intrinsic qualities of design goods and can even be contradictory to the intended meaning and use of the designers. Thus erasing their mere reason for existing. Secondly, the commodification of high design has lead to the spreading of the high cultural aura to all objects with a related design-style, and thirdly, to the assumption that the function of an object is subordinate to its form and expression.
The case-study on the acquisition and assimilation of high design by the consumers in 2009 shows the preliminary hypothesis: that the success of high design is linked to the drive of the consumer to buy positional goods in the construction of an identity, to be false. Most of the consumers claim not to buy design, precisely for its positional and non-functional aura. They do however all buy adapted copies of high design, or products expressing a design-style at cheap chain stores as for example Ikea or Weba. Surprisingly, most consumers do not label these goods as design. This implies that the meaning of high design, as being artistic and exclusive has from the perspective of the consumer, become synonymous to the meaning of design in general, which of course does give reason to believe that the design is in crisis.
The consumer’s refusal to identify with the artistic and exclusive character of design and the critique from the design practice and academia has led to the construction of a new and at first glance deviating narrative by producers and media. Vitra as one of the first producers started photographing its products in everyday situations with a stress on the use-value of the goods and the reflexive capacity of the consumer in creating a personal home, which radiates creativity rather than social position. However this shift in context: from the white-cube, museum kind of settings to a presentation of the products in everyday homes, is not devoid of a high cultural meaning, on the contrary. These new settings and images are complete in tune with art and fashion avant-garde as for example the photography of Juergen Teller. The applied strategy of the producers and media is rather infused by their fear for a trickle down effect, and again contra productive to the real aims of designers, and needs of consumers. For producers of high design goods, there seems to be no direct interest in promoting design as an innovation driven practise with as intrinsic value and desire to improve things.
In mapping the narratives and labels of the three major moments in a product’s lifecycle it becomes clear that in order to understand the dynamics underlying the popularisation of design it is not the moment of creation, nor the moment of consumption that should be solely looked at, but the interplay or mediation between those moments, and the generated flow or flux of meaning.
Networks of Design maps a new methodological territory in design studies, conceived as a field of... more Networks of Design maps a new methodological territory in design studies, conceived as a field of interdisciplinary inquiry and practice informed by a range of responses to actor network theory. It brings together a rich body of current work by researchers in the social sciences, technology, material culture, cultural geography, information technology, and systems design, and design theory and history. This collection will be invaluable to students and researchers in many areas of design studies and to design practitioners receptive to ...
From the fields of design history and design theory (Lees-Maffei, 2009) the quest for a focus on ... more From the fields of design history and design theory (Lees-Maffei, 2009) the quest for a focus on mediation, rather than production (Pevsner, 1936) or consumption (Giddens, 1991, exemplifies the ubiquitous role of design as mediator, as well as the role of new mediating strategies in the success of design forms and design ideas. In the quest to sustainability, similar methods, which lay at the foreground of the popularisation of design as artistic and iconic form, can be used to re-negotiate the meaning of design towards an open-source, sustainable service. Beautification and storytelling are two major assets, which can be brought into action to initiate and popularise a new narrative.
Into the Wild, with Erwan Bouroullec
Hilde Bouchez
“You’re lucky, I’m the clever brother,” jok... more Into the Wild, with Erwan Bouroullec
Hilde Bouchez
“You’re lucky, I’m the clever brother,” jokes Erwan Bouroullec to his audience. The other brother is Ronan Bouroullec. Together they make well-known furniture and other everyday things, also called design.
*
The Maarten Van Severen Foundation and KASK joined forces, and in mid-2015 the MVSC or Maarten Van Severen Chair was founded in Ghent.
*
In December of the same year, Erwan gave the first MVSC lecture to more than 700 attendees and the following week he guided fifteen students from five different art schools into the wild—the title of his workshop.
*
Erwan had no clue what to expect from the students. I had no clue what to expect from him and the students. He asked for an empty room, where the students could do anything with whatever material at hand. In preparation for the workshop he sent them some images of artworks and unworked material. There were no guidelines, no objectives. And he was not there to give instructions.
It made me nervous. It looked as if he was also nervous, but I think that had more to do with the non-smoking policy inside the school buildings than with the workshop.
I left him with his students, into their wildness, whatever that could mean… And once in a while I dropped in, checked on them as a sort of gatekeeper.
After one day, one student had given up, some were totally struggling, and others were immersed in whatever it was they were doing. And Erwan, like a flâneur with his coat on—at times even his hat—strolled amid them, as if they were trees he was admiring and sometimes silently talking to.
After two days the room became a wilderness and out of the chaos forms arose and discussions commenced. Erwan and the students stayed until very late working, talking, and little by little blossoming.
On the last day, Erwan decided it was not the last day, it was just the beginning and the students agreed. We made an online platform and all the students engaged themselves to continue working on whatever it was they were making.
Some with branches, some with salt, some with coal, ropes, paint, stretch belts…
And so time passed and Erwan wrote letters to his birds, because that was what he was calling them. The birds… because they all flew out and all had different rhythms, different ways of relating to the blog, different ways of being reached…
And it made me nervous again. Stretching a week’s workshop over a full academic year with students from all over Europe, who as soon as they were back home would be drawn to their projects in their proper schools, by their proper teachers, and their mandatory assignments and duties. Schools are not wild and teachers are not flâneurs…
But the birds managed. At irregular times, with irregular intensity they uploaded their processes. Some with hundreds of photos, some with just one movie. All with their own peculiarities.
*
And over the year the materials became forms, tools, expressions. No words needed. Just by following the images they uploaded one could understand what the search was about, what the process brought.
*
The precious gem hidden in the wild became visible little by little.
*
It was quite an uncanny method. One of total freedom. And so are the results. Erwan did guide the students, but only by simple talks and encouragement—often humorous but questioning comments. More like a grandfather than a teacher. More like a flâneur looking for beauty and involvement, in a very relaxed and seemingly detached way.
*
It was an intense journey. With half drunken discussions at a badly lit hotel bar, frustrated phone calls, and e-mails over a lack of responsibility and misunderstandings, long working days with little or no food. And me smoking Erwan’s cigarettes until he stopped smoking altogether…
And it was a grand journey! Balancing along with the clever brother. From the past to the future, from minimalism to total wildness, from playfulness to dogmas, from animism to tradition.
If Erwan says “Yes!” he also says “No!”
As if constantly walking along a thin line, a tightrope without a safety net. I guess that is exactly the secret of their success. Playing along and playing against. A constant questioning, a constant deliberation.
*
A permanent confrontation really: with each other as brothers, with themselves as humans, and with the world, in their continual aim to create cultural objects that make sense. Or nonsense.
Page 1. onen en Leven in &vsr . >*i HR--.4J lannoo Page 2. Page 3. Page 4... more Page 1. onen en Leven in &vsr . >*i HR--.4J lannoo Page 2. Page 3. Page 4. IN DEZELFDE REEKS Wonen ft Leven in Vlaanderen Piet Swimbcrghe en Jan Verlinde 232 hlz. ca. 250 afbeeldingen in kleur 250 x 250 mm Gebonden ...
Everyday objects can have an extra dimension or quality that has no relation to functionality, fo... more Everyday objects can have an extra dimension or quality that has no relation to functionality, form, a concept or a trend. So what is it that gives a particular glass an “aura”? Why should one thing have more shine, passion and “mystical allure” than another? A Wild Thing attempts to identify and describe these often intangible qualities.
There seems to be an inner light that shines from certain things. Unlike the blinding spotlight of media and marketing, this light is gentle and clear and reflects the methodology and intention of the maker. Ancient craftsmen designed from a place of unity with matter and the cosmos, putting themselves at the service of the making process and thereby creating a moment of transference from maker to thing.
A Wild Thing focuses on how this unity between a person, a thing and the universe can be attained through a particular manner of both designing and experiencing objects. This approach is in stark contrast to that of the star designer, who frequently conceives useless products that are nothing more than status symbols designed to generate wasteful consumption.
In a series of essays, Hilde Bouchez reflects on design history and the latest movements within the design world. She also presents a phenomenological methodology that opens up a new, more poetic approach to everyday objects for both maker and consumer. The texts are linked by the author’s search for a sustainability and meaning that transcends the organic component of materials.
Hilde Bouchez writes, thinks and teaches on the subject of our material culture and especially on the aspects that are closest to humans. She worked as a journalist, founded BEople, was editor-in-chief of A-magazine and a lecturer at Design Academy Eindhoven. Bouchez holds a doctorate in Fine Arts from KU Leuven and teaches at KASK, which provided the research funds that made the writing of this book possible.
With the support of KASK / School of Arts Gent
12 x 18 cm, 296 p, ills colour, paperback, english
Misschien is de essentie van dit boek het idee dat dingen leven. De stoel waarop we zitten, de kapstok waar we onze jas aan hangen, het kopje waar we elke ochtend thee uit drinken. Of misschien beter, dat al die dingen ook kunnen leven, want de meeste consumptieproducten zijn dood, zoals ook de meeste consumenten in wezen dood zijn. Maar er zijn dingen, veel dingen die een intrinsiek licht in zich dragen en dat licht speelt met het licht dat ook door ons mensenlichaam waart. Wanneer iets vanuit een bepaalde plek ontstaat (zowel in tijd als ruimte): die plek waar passie ontvlamt, liefde groeit en waanzin heerlijkheid wordt, leeft het ding. Dan leeft het heel hard, en lacht het en streelt het en danst het. Dit soort dingen zijn wilde dingen. Ze raken onze lippen zoet, strelen onze rug zacht en laden onze jas elke ochtend weer op met nieuwe goesting. Hilde Bouchez, schrijft, denkt en doceert over onze materiele cultuur en in het bijzonder, over datgene wat dicht bij de mens staat. Ze werkte als journalist, was oprichter van BEople, hoofdredacteur van A-magazine, docent aan de Design Academy Eindhoven. Ze behaalde een doctoraat in de kunstwetenschappen aan KUleuven. Dit boek schreef ze dank zij een onder-zoeksfonds van het KASK, waar ze tevens docent is. www.artpapereditions.org
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Papers by Hilde Bouchez
Since 1980 design has at the one hand become increasingly popular and is today omnipresent, at the other hand the design practice has since a couple of years been emphasising the identity crisis of design.
This PhD aims at understanding why and how design has become so popular and to what consequences. In order to grasp this quite complex and especially wide research question, the research was narrowed down to 6 case studies, representing the three moments of meaning-giving in the life cycle of a product: production-mediation-consumption, within the geographic scope of Flanders.
The most obvious reason why design has become omnipresent, is the hypothesis that the reflexive consumer buys into the goods as a means to construct an identity through consumption. In this respect the status-value of an object is of prime-importance and explains why design has become so desired in neo-liberal society. In the course of its history design has expressed a growing accumulation of cultural capital, with the success of designart as its triumph.
However the research show that it is not so much the consumer who has ratified the high cultural meaning of design. The consumer seems to have mainly adopted the narratives and labels bestowed upon it by the producer in positioning the goods onto the market. Through very particular and successful branding strategies, the producer’s message has been confirmed and authorised by the lifestyle media. This implies that design’s success is driven by commercial and economic imperatives, veiled under the pretext of high culture.
Looking into the three major moments of mediation, shows that producers of high design invest in high cultural branding, which doesn’t necessarily have a direct economic outcome, but does generate a brand image of an industrial investor who is rather an altruistic maecenas, than an industrialist creating new desires in the endless cycle of consumption. Alessi for example has invested in the Tea and Coffee Piazza, a collection of silver objects designed by internationally known architect. These designs were only produced in threefold in analogy of the limited editions within the art circuit, and worldwide found a direct entry into the main art museums. Vitra and Tecta opened their own musem under the altruistic aim of sharing the private collections of their CEO’s with the world. Next to this obvious strategy, it is especially the interplay between the created high cultural narrative of the producers with the lifestyle media that has led to the accumulation of cultural capital of the goods, but also of the producer, the media and the consumer who does buy into the goods. Case 4 of the research shows that the media not only echo, but enforce the narratives of the producer in their own strive to accumulate cultural capital. In doing so, they present life amidst high design objects as an ideal to strive for. This interplay between producers and media has proven producers to invest in cultural branding, rather than advertising. The products of for example, Vitra and Alessi are broadly represented throughout different editorial formats. TECTA at the other hand, which does invest in cultural initiatives as for example a museum and book publications, is not covered in ‘Weekend Knack’, precisely because it is not willing to provide the magazines with flattened-out, easy manageable narratives, which can be directly copied and pasted into the eitorials.
However the economically successful initiatives of companies as for example Alessi and Vitra and the strategies implied by the media in advising the consumer in the obtaining of an ideal lifestyle, through high design consumption, has implications on the meaning of design in general and is symptomatic for the crisis in design.
The above briefly described strategy of uploading goods with cultural capital, implies meticulously constructed narratives, which are layered upon the intrinsic qualities of design goods and can even be contradictory to the intended meaning and use of the designers. Thus erasing their mere reason for existing. Secondly, the commodification of high design has lead to the spreading of the high cultural aura to all objects with a related design-style, and thirdly, to the assumption that the function of an object is subordinate to its form and expression.
The case-study on the acquisition and assimilation of high design by the consumers in 2009 shows the preliminary hypothesis: that the success of high design is linked to the drive of the consumer to buy positional goods in the construction of an identity, to be false. Most of the consumers claim not to buy design, precisely for its positional and non-functional aura. They do however all buy adapted copies of high design, or products expressing a design-style at cheap chain stores as for example Ikea or Weba. Surprisingly, most consumers do not label these goods as design. This implies that the meaning of high design, as being artistic and exclusive has from the perspective of the consumer, become synonymous to the meaning of design in general, which of course does give reason to believe that the design is in crisis.
The consumer’s refusal to identify with the artistic and exclusive character of design and the critique from the design practice and academia has led to the construction of a new and at first glance deviating narrative by producers and media. Vitra as one of the first producers started photographing its products in everyday situations with a stress on the use-value of the goods and the reflexive capacity of the consumer in creating a personal home, which radiates creativity rather than social position. However this shift in context: from the white-cube, museum kind of settings to a presentation of the products in everyday homes, is not devoid of a high cultural meaning, on the contrary. These new settings and images are complete in tune with art and fashion avant-garde as for example the photography of Juergen Teller. The applied strategy of the producers and media is rather infused by their fear for a trickle down effect, and again contra productive to the real aims of designers, and needs of consumers. For producers of high design goods, there seems to be no direct interest in promoting design as an innovation driven practise with as intrinsic value and desire to improve things.
In mapping the narratives and labels of the three major moments in a product’s lifecycle it becomes clear that in order to understand the dynamics underlying the popularisation of design it is not the moment of creation, nor the moment of consumption that should be solely looked at, but the interplay or mediation between those moments, and the generated flow or flux of meaning.
Books by Hilde Bouchez
Hilde Bouchez
“You’re lucky, I’m the clever brother,” jokes Erwan Bouroullec to his audience. The other brother is Ronan Bouroullec. Together they make well-known furniture and other everyday things, also called design.
*
The Maarten Van Severen Foundation and KASK joined forces, and in mid-2015 the MVSC or Maarten Van Severen Chair was founded in Ghent.
*
In December of the same year, Erwan gave the first MVSC lecture to more than 700 attendees and the following week he guided fifteen students from five different art schools into the wild—the title of his workshop.
*
Erwan had no clue what to expect from the students.
I had no clue what to expect from him and the students.
He asked for an empty room, where the students could do anything with whatever material at hand. In preparation for the workshop he sent them some images of artworks and unworked material.
There were no guidelines, no objectives.
And he was not there to give instructions.
It made me nervous.
It looked as if he was also nervous, but I think that had more to do with the non-smoking policy inside the school buildings than with the workshop.
I left him with his students, into their wildness, whatever that could mean…
And once in a while I dropped in, checked on them as a sort of gatekeeper.
After one day, one student had given up, some were totally struggling, and others were immersed in whatever it was they were doing. And Erwan, like a flâneur with his coat on—at times even his hat—strolled amid them, as if they were trees he was admiring and sometimes silently talking to.
After two days the room became a wilderness and out of the chaos forms arose and discussions commenced. Erwan and the students stayed until very late working, talking, and little by little blossoming.
On the last day, Erwan decided it was not the last day, it was just the beginning and the students agreed. We made an online platform and all the students engaged themselves to continue working on whatever it was they were making.
Some with branches, some with salt, some with coal, ropes, paint, stretch belts…
And so time passed and Erwan wrote letters to his birds, because that was what he was calling them. The birds… because they all flew out and all had different rhythms, different ways of relating to the blog, different ways of being reached…
And it made me nervous again.
Stretching a week’s workshop over a full academic year with students from all over Europe, who as soon as they were back home would be drawn to their projects in their proper schools, by their proper teachers, and their mandatory assignments and duties.
Schools are not wild and teachers are not flâneurs…
But the birds managed. At irregular times, with irregular intensity they uploaded their processes. Some with hundreds of photos, some with just one movie. All with their own peculiarities.
*
And over the year the materials became forms, tools, expressions. No words needed. Just by following the images they uploaded one could understand what the search was about, what the process brought.
*
The precious gem hidden in the wild became visible little by little.
*
It was quite an uncanny method. One of total freedom. And so are the results.
Erwan did guide the students, but only by simple talks and encouragement—often humorous but questioning comments. More like a grandfather than a teacher. More like a flâneur looking for beauty and involvement, in a very relaxed and seemingly detached way.
*
It was an intense journey. With half drunken discussions at a badly lit hotel bar, frustrated phone calls, and e-mails over a lack of responsibility and misunderstandings, long working days with little or no food. And me smoking Erwan’s cigarettes until he stopped smoking altogether…
And it was a grand journey! Balancing along with the clever brother. From the past to the future, from minimalism to total wildness, from playfulness to dogmas, from animism to tradition.
If Erwan says “Yes!” he also says “No!”
As if constantly walking along a thin line, a tightrope without a safety net.
I guess that is exactly the secret of their success. Playing along and playing against.
A constant questioning, a constant deliberation.
*
A permanent confrontation really: with each other as brothers, with themselves as humans, and with the world, in their continual aim to create cultural objects that make sense.
Or nonsense.
Since 1980 design has at the one hand become increasingly popular and is today omnipresent, at the other hand the design practice has since a couple of years been emphasising the identity crisis of design.
This PhD aims at understanding why and how design has become so popular and to what consequences. In order to grasp this quite complex and especially wide research question, the research was narrowed down to 6 case studies, representing the three moments of meaning-giving in the life cycle of a product: production-mediation-consumption, within the geographic scope of Flanders.
The most obvious reason why design has become omnipresent, is the hypothesis that the reflexive consumer buys into the goods as a means to construct an identity through consumption. In this respect the status-value of an object is of prime-importance and explains why design has become so desired in neo-liberal society. In the course of its history design has expressed a growing accumulation of cultural capital, with the success of designart as its triumph.
However the research show that it is not so much the consumer who has ratified the high cultural meaning of design. The consumer seems to have mainly adopted the narratives and labels bestowed upon it by the producer in positioning the goods onto the market. Through very particular and successful branding strategies, the producer’s message has been confirmed and authorised by the lifestyle media. This implies that design’s success is driven by commercial and economic imperatives, veiled under the pretext of high culture.
Looking into the three major moments of mediation, shows that producers of high design invest in high cultural branding, which doesn’t necessarily have a direct economic outcome, but does generate a brand image of an industrial investor who is rather an altruistic maecenas, than an industrialist creating new desires in the endless cycle of consumption. Alessi for example has invested in the Tea and Coffee Piazza, a collection of silver objects designed by internationally known architect. These designs were only produced in threefold in analogy of the limited editions within the art circuit, and worldwide found a direct entry into the main art museums. Vitra and Tecta opened their own musem under the altruistic aim of sharing the private collections of their CEO’s with the world. Next to this obvious strategy, it is especially the interplay between the created high cultural narrative of the producers with the lifestyle media that has led to the accumulation of cultural capital of the goods, but also of the producer, the media and the consumer who does buy into the goods. Case 4 of the research shows that the media not only echo, but enforce the narratives of the producer in their own strive to accumulate cultural capital. In doing so, they present life amidst high design objects as an ideal to strive for. This interplay between producers and media has proven producers to invest in cultural branding, rather than advertising. The products of for example, Vitra and Alessi are broadly represented throughout different editorial formats. TECTA at the other hand, which does invest in cultural initiatives as for example a museum and book publications, is not covered in ‘Weekend Knack’, precisely because it is not willing to provide the magazines with flattened-out, easy manageable narratives, which can be directly copied and pasted into the eitorials.
However the economically successful initiatives of companies as for example Alessi and Vitra and the strategies implied by the media in advising the consumer in the obtaining of an ideal lifestyle, through high design consumption, has implications on the meaning of design in general and is symptomatic for the crisis in design.
The above briefly described strategy of uploading goods with cultural capital, implies meticulously constructed narratives, which are layered upon the intrinsic qualities of design goods and can even be contradictory to the intended meaning and use of the designers. Thus erasing their mere reason for existing. Secondly, the commodification of high design has lead to the spreading of the high cultural aura to all objects with a related design-style, and thirdly, to the assumption that the function of an object is subordinate to its form and expression.
The case-study on the acquisition and assimilation of high design by the consumers in 2009 shows the preliminary hypothesis: that the success of high design is linked to the drive of the consumer to buy positional goods in the construction of an identity, to be false. Most of the consumers claim not to buy design, precisely for its positional and non-functional aura. They do however all buy adapted copies of high design, or products expressing a design-style at cheap chain stores as for example Ikea or Weba. Surprisingly, most consumers do not label these goods as design. This implies that the meaning of high design, as being artistic and exclusive has from the perspective of the consumer, become synonymous to the meaning of design in general, which of course does give reason to believe that the design is in crisis.
The consumer’s refusal to identify with the artistic and exclusive character of design and the critique from the design practice and academia has led to the construction of a new and at first glance deviating narrative by producers and media. Vitra as one of the first producers started photographing its products in everyday situations with a stress on the use-value of the goods and the reflexive capacity of the consumer in creating a personal home, which radiates creativity rather than social position. However this shift in context: from the white-cube, museum kind of settings to a presentation of the products in everyday homes, is not devoid of a high cultural meaning, on the contrary. These new settings and images are complete in tune with art and fashion avant-garde as for example the photography of Juergen Teller. The applied strategy of the producers and media is rather infused by their fear for a trickle down effect, and again contra productive to the real aims of designers, and needs of consumers. For producers of high design goods, there seems to be no direct interest in promoting design as an innovation driven practise with as intrinsic value and desire to improve things.
In mapping the narratives and labels of the three major moments in a product’s lifecycle it becomes clear that in order to understand the dynamics underlying the popularisation of design it is not the moment of creation, nor the moment of consumption that should be solely looked at, but the interplay or mediation between those moments, and the generated flow or flux of meaning.
Hilde Bouchez
“You’re lucky, I’m the clever brother,” jokes Erwan Bouroullec to his audience. The other brother is Ronan Bouroullec. Together they make well-known furniture and other everyday things, also called design.
*
The Maarten Van Severen Foundation and KASK joined forces, and in mid-2015 the MVSC or Maarten Van Severen Chair was founded in Ghent.
*
In December of the same year, Erwan gave the first MVSC lecture to more than 700 attendees and the following week he guided fifteen students from five different art schools into the wild—the title of his workshop.
*
Erwan had no clue what to expect from the students.
I had no clue what to expect from him and the students.
He asked for an empty room, where the students could do anything with whatever material at hand. In preparation for the workshop he sent them some images of artworks and unworked material.
There were no guidelines, no objectives.
And he was not there to give instructions.
It made me nervous.
It looked as if he was also nervous, but I think that had more to do with the non-smoking policy inside the school buildings than with the workshop.
I left him with his students, into their wildness, whatever that could mean…
And once in a while I dropped in, checked on them as a sort of gatekeeper.
After one day, one student had given up, some were totally struggling, and others were immersed in whatever it was they were doing. And Erwan, like a flâneur with his coat on—at times even his hat—strolled amid them, as if they were trees he was admiring and sometimes silently talking to.
After two days the room became a wilderness and out of the chaos forms arose and discussions commenced. Erwan and the students stayed until very late working, talking, and little by little blossoming.
On the last day, Erwan decided it was not the last day, it was just the beginning and the students agreed. We made an online platform and all the students engaged themselves to continue working on whatever it was they were making.
Some with branches, some with salt, some with coal, ropes, paint, stretch belts…
And so time passed and Erwan wrote letters to his birds, because that was what he was calling them. The birds… because they all flew out and all had different rhythms, different ways of relating to the blog, different ways of being reached…
And it made me nervous again.
Stretching a week’s workshop over a full academic year with students from all over Europe, who as soon as they were back home would be drawn to their projects in their proper schools, by their proper teachers, and their mandatory assignments and duties.
Schools are not wild and teachers are not flâneurs…
But the birds managed. At irregular times, with irregular intensity they uploaded their processes. Some with hundreds of photos, some with just one movie. All with their own peculiarities.
*
And over the year the materials became forms, tools, expressions. No words needed. Just by following the images they uploaded one could understand what the search was about, what the process brought.
*
The precious gem hidden in the wild became visible little by little.
*
It was quite an uncanny method. One of total freedom. And so are the results.
Erwan did guide the students, but only by simple talks and encouragement—often humorous but questioning comments. More like a grandfather than a teacher. More like a flâneur looking for beauty and involvement, in a very relaxed and seemingly detached way.
*
It was an intense journey. With half drunken discussions at a badly lit hotel bar, frustrated phone calls, and e-mails over a lack of responsibility and misunderstandings, long working days with little or no food. And me smoking Erwan’s cigarettes until he stopped smoking altogether…
And it was a grand journey! Balancing along with the clever brother. From the past to the future, from minimalism to total wildness, from playfulness to dogmas, from animism to tradition.
If Erwan says “Yes!” he also says “No!”
As if constantly walking along a thin line, a tightrope without a safety net.
I guess that is exactly the secret of their success. Playing along and playing against.
A constant questioning, a constant deliberation.
*
A permanent confrontation really: with each other as brothers, with themselves as humans, and with the world, in their continual aim to create cultural objects that make sense.
Or nonsense.
There seems to be an inner light that shines from certain things. Unlike the blinding spotlight of media and marketing, this light is gentle and clear and reflects the methodology and intention of the maker. Ancient craftsmen designed from a place of unity with matter and the cosmos, putting themselves at the service of the making process and thereby creating a moment of transference from maker to thing.
A Wild Thing focuses on how this unity between a person, a thing and the universe can be attained through a particular manner of both designing and experiencing objects. This approach is in stark contrast to that of the star designer, who frequently conceives useless products that are nothing more than status symbols designed to generate wasteful consumption.
In a series of essays, Hilde Bouchez reflects on design history and the latest movements within the design world. She also presents a phenomenological methodology that opens up a new, more poetic approach to everyday objects for both maker and consumer. The texts are linked by the author’s search for a sustainability and meaning that transcends the organic component of materials.
Hilde Bouchez writes, thinks and teaches on the subject of our material culture and especially on the aspects that are closest to humans. She worked as a journalist, founded BEople, was editor-in-chief of A-magazine and a lecturer at Design Academy Eindhoven. Bouchez holds a doctorate in Fine Arts from KU Leuven and teaches at KASK, which provided the research funds that made the writing of this book possible.
With the support of KASK / School of Arts Gent
12 x 18 cm, 296 p, ills colour, paperback, english
Misschien is de essentie van dit boek het idee dat dingen leven. De stoel waarop we zitten, de kapstok waar we onze jas aan hangen, het kopje waar we elke ochtend thee uit drinken. Of misschien beter, dat al die dingen ook kunnen leven, want de meeste consumptieproducten zijn dood, zoals ook de meeste consumenten in wezen dood zijn. Maar er zijn dingen, veel dingen die een intrinsiek licht in zich dragen en dat licht speelt met het licht dat ook door ons mensenlichaam waart. Wanneer iets vanuit een bepaalde plek ontstaat (zowel in tijd als ruimte): die plek waar passie ontvlamt, liefde groeit en waanzin heerlijkheid wordt, leeft het ding. Dan leeft het heel hard, en lacht het en streelt het en danst het. Dit soort dingen zijn wilde dingen. Ze raken onze lippen zoet, strelen onze rug zacht en laden onze jas elke ochtend weer op met nieuwe goesting. Hilde Bouchez, schrijft, denkt en doceert over onze materiele cultuur en in het bijzonder, over datgene wat dicht bij de mens staat. Ze werkte als journalist, was oprichter van BEople, hoofdredacteur van A-magazine, docent aan de Design Academy Eindhoven. Ze behaalde een doctoraat in de kunstwetenschappen aan KUleuven. Dit boek schreef ze dank zij een onder-zoeksfonds van het KASK, waar ze tevens docent is. www.artpapereditions.org