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Utrecht Manifest 2009
04 – 18 october 2009
Artistic Director: Guus Beumer
Utrecht Manifest 2009 (UM 2009) will be held in Utrecht from 4 through 18 October 2009, the exhibitions last longer. This biennial is intended to draw attention to the question of how and where 'the social' is produced today: not thematically, but by approaching the cultural models of which biennials are usually composed, such as the museum exhibition, the educational project, the model of the real intervention, and even the communication trajectory, primarily as social models that each raise the question of what the need and urgency of social design is. The result of this method is that each part of the programme is specific instead of being illustrative, so that the perspective on the social emerges from the model itself. This makes it interesting for visitors to visit the whole biennial. Instead of only seeing one part, in each part they are offered a completely separate answer to a specific question and can thus experience the complexity and even the contradictions of social design. Each section has a parallel programme of its own consisting of films and videos, temporary and improvised presentations, meetings in the form of dinners or teas, and more regular lectures and debates.
www.utrechtmanifest.nl
Here you can find current information about Utrecht Manifest, take part in the debate, exchange information and share ideas and views about and experiences of social design. www.utrechtmanifest.nl is a platform for all those involved and anyone who in whatever way is concerned with social design.
Unresolved Matters: Social Utopias Revisited
What contribution can design make to the future of our society? In the context of current discussions of social design, it seems appropriate to take a look at the past. Already in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, Germany and the Netherlands in particular were the site of a growing number of attempts to critically review everyday culture, industrial culture, and even the totality of life ‘from sofa cushion to urban design’ (Herman Muthesius). With regard to this fundamental questioning of traditional styles of life and living, there is a resemblance between the fins-de-siècle of 1900 and 2000. The retrospective perspective on which the exhibition Unresolved Matters is based is not, however, intended as a simplistic ‘learning from history’. Instead, it follows on from the question of to what extent a society can discover its potential, evolve, and reflect on it.
Three books – Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898); Siegfried Giedion, Befreites Wohnen (1929); Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World (1971) – provide a structure for three visual areas: Social Greenery, Social Transparency, Social Sculpture. Chair designs from Thonet to Castiglioni, glass from A.D. Copier to Wilhelm Wagenfeld, fashion from Henry van de Velde via Johannes Itten to paper clothing, multiples by Joseph Beuys, utopian designs by Haus-Rucker-Co or Archigram, Earth Cloths by El Anatsui, conceptual works of Stephen Willats, will all represent the various layers and facets of social design since 1900.
Unresolved Matters: Social Utopias Revisited
04.10.2009–14.02.2010
Centraal Museum, Nicolaaskerkhof 10, Utrecht
www.centraalmuseum.nl
Open: Tuesday-Sunday 11 am-5 pm
Unforeseen Magic
Facing the Centraal Museum is CM Studio, which will function for two weeks as the central location, including an information desk, for all visitors to Utrecht Manifest. Bas van Tol has reproduced here the physical conditions of the exhibition Koer Locale, held in W139 in Amsterdam in 1992. This exhibition, which was initiated and curated by Van Tol on that occasion too, together with Madje Vollaers and Pascal Zwart, was one of the first models of an open channel platform in the Netherlands, which for several months was in a process of ongoing change and united all kinds of networks and disciplines.
This time the content will be dictated to a large extent by chance and by such considerations as direct accessibility and low costs: Unforeseen Magic! For instance a historic video of Buckminster Fuller will be shown, who is questioned by hundreds of hippies about how we can all contribute to the world. Debra Solomon is organising a dinner for and with various action groups in the city of Utrecht. Club Donny presents the latest edition of the magazine of the same name and bags and other products from Guatemala will be sold that have been designed and produced by women from the organisation Ajkem’a Loy’a with assistance from students from The New School in New York. Photographs, film stills, drawings and text fragments by the artist Paulien Oltheten will be exhibited.
Unforeseen Magic
04.10.2009-18.10.2009
CM Studio, Agnietenstraat 2, Utrecht
www.centraalmuseum.nl
Open: Tuesday-Sunday 11 am-5 pm
Urgent Methods: Design Education Examined
In the year marking the sixtieth anniversary of by far the most influential model of twentieth-century design education – the Bauhaus – Utrecht Manifest explores Dutch design education in terms of its principles, social ambitions and results. In interviews Louise Schouwenberg and Gert Staal found out how key figures in Dutch design education held up specific agendas to their students, under which influences those agendas evolved over time, and what results they have led to. The exhibition presents the texts of the interviews and shows examples of student projects which the tutors and heads of design departments consider to be typical of their vision of the discipline.
Urgent Methods does not offer a full portrait of design education in the Netherlands, but presents several clearly distinctive visions of the discipline by six key figures. Three courses, six tutors: Design Academy Eindhoven: Gijs Bakker (head of the IM master course) and Lidewij Edelkoort (former artistic director); TU Delft: Bruno Ninaber van Eyben and Matthijs van Dijk (both Professors of Industrial Design); HKU: Henk Slager (research fellow and head of the master courses) and Jeroen van Mastrigt (research fellow in Art & Technology and initiator of the first full-time game course in Europe: Game Design & Development). Eighteen students: a.o. Sonja Bäumel, Joris Laarman, Richard Hutten, Marije Vogelzang, Maarten Baas, Lonny van Rijswijck c.s., Gerwin Hoogendoorn, Doeke de Walle, Femke de Boer, Richard Boeser, Marc Andrews, Josine Vermeij, Ignacio Carmona, Fabian Akker c.s., Douwe-Sjoerd Boschman c.s., Yishay Cohen c.s.
Urgent Methods: Design Education Examined
04.10.2009-15.11.2009
Jongeriusvilla, Kanaalweg 64, Utrecht
www.jongeriuscomplex.nl
Open: Tuesday-Sunday 11 am-5 pm
User’s Manual: The Grand Domestic Revolution
What happens if the domestic sphere is taken as the point of departure for public activities? Can we challenge current design practice by combining different forms of habitation within a single apartment? At the invitation of Utrecht Manifest Casco Office for Art, Design and Theory proposes to investigate the current state of domestic space in relation to the neighbours, the neighbourhood and the city, as well as exploring the potential for change. To this end Casco’s Nieuwekade space in Utrecht will be extended for a one-year period to a nearby apartment from where the transformation of a private household into a location for collective habitation and shared authorship will take form. During that year, artists, designers and other interested parties will be invited to the flat as temporary residents. This domestic domain will also remain open for the public. Visitors can not only view the ongoing transformation of the space, but also contribute to this process and thus to the compilation of a collective user manual for a changing vision of both the private and the public domain.
Please do not hesitate to inquire about the possibility of making a contribution of your own to the project and/or about temporary occupation of the flat by contacting Casco. You can keep track of our activities via the websites of Utrecht Manifest and of Casco.
User’s Manual: The Grand Domestic Revolution
04.10.2009-03.10.2010
Casco, Nieuwekade 213-215, 3511 RW Utrecht
Casco House, Bemuurde Weerd OZ 18B, Utrecht
www.cascoprojects.org
Open: Tuesday-Sunday 12 am-6 pm
United Minds: Hoograven Invites You!
Local authorities, housing corporations and residents are wrestling with the legacy of the post-war building boom in all kinds of places in the Netherlands. Neighbourhoods that once embodied the promise of social harmony and individual fulfilment are by now suffering from impoverishment and disintegration. Demolition followed by the construction of modern new buildings seems to be the only remedy. But is this tabula rasa model really the ultimate strategy? Or are there alternatives that do more justice to the social ambitions of the original design?
In the Utrecht Hoograven neighbourhood, Utrecht Manifest involved all the parties (residents, corporations, local authority, training courses) in the transformation project Hoograven Invites you!, an urban design research led by the architects Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner. Their firm Urban-Think Tank is used to working in the slums of Caracas. Although everything is scarce there, the residents do not lack the inventiveness and energy to change things. The architects mobilise this energy to design and build communal facilities with the residents and thereby to strengthen the social structure of the neighbourhood, ‘barrio’, not by imposing terms, but by sharing entrepreneurship with the residents.
The architects are now following the same strategy in their approach to Hoograven. Students from Columbia University (New York), the Utrecht School of the Arts and Utrecht University take part in the exploration of the future Hoograven.
The exhibition in the Pastoe Factory in Hoograven presents analyses and visualisations and challenges visitors to join in thinking about the significance of social design for urban development.
United Minds: Hoograven Invites You
04.10.2009-08.11.2009
De Pastoe Fabriek, Rotsoord 3, Utrecht
www.ccaa.nl/page/3392/nl?lang=en
Open: Wednesday-Friday 12-5 pm, Saturday 10 am-5 pm, Sunday (only 04.10 & 08.11) 12-5 pm
UM 2009 was made possible by
Bo-Ex, Dutch Design Double, Gemeente Utrecht, K.F. Hein Fonds, Ministerie van Economische Zaken, Mitros, Mondriaan Stichting, Pastoe, Portaal, Provincie Utrecht, SNS REAAL Fonds, Vrede van Utrecht
Initiators
Centraal Museum, Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht, Pastoe, Universiteit Utrecht
Unresolved Matters, Unforeseen Magic, Urgent Methods, User’s Manual, United Minds:
Elly Albers, Sanne Bais, Claudia Banz, Hanneke Beukers, Guus Beumer, Binna Choi, Deneuve Cultural Projects (Daniël Bouw & Taco de Neef), EventArchitectuur (Herman Verkerk & Paul Kuipers), John Finedit, Olga Godschalk, Wieteke van Hecke, Renee van der Heijden, Kein.org (Florian Schneider), Liquid Frontiers (Sabine Dreher & Christian Muhr i.s.m. Gregor Eichinger), Hendrikje Loof, Peter Mason, Metahaven (Daniël van der Velden, Vinca Kruk, Gon Zifroni i.s.m. Femke Herregraven), Anneke Moors, Saskia Schoenmaker, Louise Schouwenberg, Maarten Smeets, Debra Solomon, Gert Staal, Studio Makkink & Bey (Jurgen Bey & Merel van Tellingen), Engelien van Thiel, Bas van Tol, traast + gruson (Edith Gruson), Urban-Think Tank (Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner)
