Design Line: 10 - 16 February
We all know the world is a complex place and this week’s Design Line sees everyone, from governments and funding bodies to art collectives and AI, grappling with how to navigate this complexity – some, we feel, are doing a far better job than others.
The means of production becomes the message in MSCHF’s newest product drop (image by MSCHF).
Bags of mischief
The game of telephone can be surprisingly thrilling. The level of anticipation it provokes is disproportionate to the simple mechanics of the game itself, where a secret message naturally changes as one player whispers it to the next. Sometimes, however, you might find yourself playing with a mischief-maker who deliberately changes the message, manipulating the outcome. Leaning into this role of mischief-maker is, fittingly, MSCHF (read more about the art collective/design business in The Spicy Present published in Disegno #31) with its latest product drop: the Global Supply Chain Telephone Handbag. Its design process began when MSCHF presented a Birkin bag to a factory in Peru, asking them to knock it off; this knock-off was then shown to a factory in Portugal who incorporated a Celine bag into its design; in India, notes of Dior were added; and, finally, a Chinese manufacturer topped it off with a sprinkling of Balenciaga. The result is a slightly odd, finely crafted and charmingly frankinstein-ed handbag, but what secret message was revealed at the end of this cross-continental game of telephone? You can find this information tucked into the product’s website. “The factory performs tremendous amounts of invisible creative labor,” reads the webpage. “It is [a] creativity only evident, for example, in the way you cannot see a parting line. It happens in places where the designer doesn’t even know to provide instructions.” In mischievously intervening in the global supply chain, MSCHF makes the often obscured and unacknowledged creativity, skills and labour visible.
An aerial view of a city that is reported to be at risk of becoming “grandchild-less” (image by Maksym Kozlenko via Wikimedia).
AI, buildings and babies
How do you fix a city at risk of becoming “grandchild-less”? Ask AI to sort it out. Now, this may seem a large and… um… biologically impossible leap in logic, but let us explain. On Tuesday this week, a report released in Australia by the NSW Productivity Commission revealed that 30- to 40-year-olds are leaving the state’s largest city, Sydney, at an alarmingly high rate as a result of soaring house prices and lack of affordable rental properties. No young people = no young families and, therefore, no grandkids (not to mention a reduced workforce). The most straightforward approach to fixing this problem, then, might be to invest in building more affordable housing. But the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI) has, instead, decided to invest in AI. On Wednesday it announced it has allocated $5.6m “towards artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate the process of assessing development applications and increase housing supply.” Basically, the AI is intended to speed up the over-a-year-long waiting times that property developers are facing to gain building permissions. Exactly how the AI will do this remains in question. The announcement was accompanied by a call for “AI industry suppliers” to submit “existing and mature” tender proposals before March 11. Should this investment into the more administrative side of city planning pay off, it could change the pace and ambition of building in the state. But if not, one wonders how many grandchildren $5.6m might have housed instead.
Politics-free art?
In March 2022, Arts Council England (ACE) tweeted “We’re pleased so many cultural organisations & practitioners are showing solidarity with Ukraine.” This week, however, the organisation seemed to have rowed back on its position, hamfistedly warning the organisations that it funds to be wary of “overtly political or activist” statements that may expose them to “reputational risk” and thereby jeopardise funding agreements – a caution that many were quick to link to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. ACE has subsequently apologised for its communication, arguing that it is not seeking “to stop any artist or organisation from making the art they want to make”, and stating that its ambition is to support cultural organisations navigating the current “polarised” environment. Regardless of its cause, however, it seems clear that ACE’s blunder will feed into ongoing concerns around art-world censorship surrounding Palestine. In Germany, for instance, artists Banu Cennetoglu and Pilvi Takala announced this week that they would be cancelling planned shows for the Neue Berliner Kunstverein, arguing that the museum had rejected their wishes to “accommodate an artistic gesture we proposed, which aimed to align with the collective solidarity with Palestine” (an account that the museum contests). New York’s Jewish Museum, meanwhile, was subject to protests by “anti-Zionist Jews”, who argued that a current exhibition by Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky was “imperial propaganda”. They are events which, if nothing else, seem to flag the sheer folly and naiveté of ACE’s attempt to take politics out of culture.
Head of the unit
While Arts Council England may have spent the week attempting to clamp down on politics in culture, the Greater London Authority (GLA) seems to have gone in the opposite direction in its effort to appoint a new head of its Design Unit. Announced last year, the Design Unit is a new body responsible for promoting design within the GLA, formed out of elements of the organisation’s existing London Plan and Growth Strategies Team and the Good Growth by Design programme. The role is responsible for promoting “world-class architecture, sustainability, viability and inclusive design in London’s buildings, public spaces and urban fabric”, with the job advert calling for extensive experience in urban design, architecture or planning, as well as an understanding of “the complexities of political dynamics”. It should go without saying (take the hint Arts Council England), but the work of architecture and design is inherently political, and an ability to navigate such systems is a prerequisite for producing work of meaning and value. For anybody who feels they may be up to the challenge, applications close at 23:59 GMT on 18 February.
The new collection of Eames Plastic Chairs RE staged at the Eames House, Pacific Palisades, California (image courtesy of Vitra and Eames Foundation).
RE: a material overhaul
This week Vitra announced that the shells of its Eames Plastic Chairs have, from January 2024, begun being produced in recycled plastic. In doing so, the family will be renamed Eames Plastic Chairs RE. With this change in material comes a change in colours, with Vitra explaining that the new tones will contain flecks of different shades because of their recycled nature. Due to these variations in colour, the popular 04 white chair in virgin polypropylene will continue to be sold, but is only expected to be available until December 2024 (a recycled version called cotton white RE is also available). The original family of Eames Plastic Chairs were conceived by Charles and Ray Eames in 1948 as a response to the Low-Cost Furniture Design competition organised by MoMA and were designed to offer affordable furniture in the economic aftermath of the Second World War. At their launch, the chairs’ use of plastic mixed with fibreglass was a breakthrough material innovation, whereas Vitra’s contemporary shift in materials is a move already seen elsewhere in the company. In 2020, Vitra released a recycled version of Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby’s Tip Ton (2011) in the form of the Tip Ton RE, a chair whose dark grey colour was determined by the shade that recycled plastic appears in when processed. The shift to RE, then, is a gradual change, but no less noteworthy for it. We look forward to seeing more greys, flecks and cotton whites across the Vitra board moving forward.
Crystal Bennes’ textiles are a “homage to binary code, to women weavers and ‘scanner girls’, to suppressed histories and to the labour of making”, says the artist, writer and critic on instagram (image courtesy of Crystal Bennes).
Betwixt the streets
If you find yourself in London this weekend, you might welcome the opportunity to visit Betwixt (17 February – 23 February) an exhibition from the Freelands Artist Programme. The exhibition collects artists from across the UK in a week-long event shown across four venues, themselves curated around four corresponding themes. The works on display at the Freelands Foundation site in Chalk Farm, for example, is curated around the theme “inching towards” and invites artists to present work from long-term research that works closely with communities. The theme “beneath” is (fittingly) housed in The Crypt Gallery at St. Pancras Church, presenting work exploring the unseen sides of resistance, whilst work exploring our relationships with ancestors, colonial violence, and collective healing can be found in Fitzrovia Chapel, collected under the theme “beyond”. Finally, Mimosa House in Holborn is curated around the notion of “held”, displaying work made between women and queer artists with a focus on domestic or emotional interiors. Showcasing a large number of artists we’re curious to see, a particular mention should go to Crystal Bennes and her contribution When Computers Were Women (at which point we'd like to add you can also read about Bennes’ work in Disegno #31). As part of Betwixt, Bennes is showing four large monochrome Jacquard tapestries translating 2,131 computer punchcards from a physics experiment at CERN (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research) into a set of weaving instructions: one work amongst many that we’re looking forward to perusing further.