Z33

Steve Robyns (1981) is a Limburg-based maker, designer and artist. Z33 presents Into The Unknown, his first solo exhibition, in collaboration with Kunstenwerkplaats VONK. The show features Robyns’ full collection of functional sculptures, born from a long-standing fascination with the extraterrestrial. His sources of inspiration are documentaries and science fiction films.

The Seasonal Neighbours exhibition Our Invisible Hands at Z33 examines the role of seasonal workers in the rich global agricultural economy and offers new insights into the interconnectedness of seasonal and economic rhythms and the relationship between humans and plants in the rural landscape. In this article, writer and curator Alice Bonnot expands on the themes of planetary interdependence, organic farming systems and regenerative land practices. The text brings to the exhibition the long-term temporality of ancestral time and questions the unsustainability of the Western relationship to agriculture.

For Archibald Godts (1990) and Theresa Bastek (1990) of Studio Plastique, we live in exciting times. Our current era is characterized by changes, challenges and wicked problems. Studio Plastique focuses on topics that range from resources to production processes, and always try to understand the materials they work with from the bottom up. In their practice, they are very aware of their role, impact and possibilities as a designer in reshaping the world around us. Studio Plastique sees the most value in using curiosity to question or lay bare the impact of larger systems and infrastructures, and are therefore known for research-heavy investigations into the material origins and wider technological infrastructure of our everyday lives.

“Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree”

In this essay, André Rottmann examines how Sam Lewitt’s exhibition CURE (the Work) at Z33 problematizes the site of artistic production.

Last year, when we initiated the topic of A School of Schools, it was exactly 99 years ago that the Bauhaus was inaugurated. This ground-breaking German design school actually defined design education around the world. This year, centenary celebrations of the Bauhaus are taking place in nearly every city in Europe. How does A School of Schools contribute to the contemporary dialogue about the Bauhaus?

Staged in Salt Galata’s exhibition space, Time School speaks to the overarching concept of the Biennial, A School of Schools, an investigation into the role of learning, knowledge and education through art and design practice today. Its first iteration was shown in April this year at ALCOVA during Milan Design Week under the name School of Time. This show premiered two interactive installations developed by artist group Commonplace Studio, Jesse Howard & Tim Knapen, and a second installation developed by Teis De Greve. For Istanbul, the Time School exhibition has expanded and is featuring works by four new artists: Danilo Correale, Ecole Mondiale, Emilie Röndahl and Helga Schmid, of which the last three all produced new works for this show.

Each DESIS Philosophy Talk aims to explore how philosophical reflections can not only help understand but also empower new forms of experimentations within cutting-edge design research. The conversation always take place within a specific context which in this case is the exhibition Time School, one of the subthemes developed within the 4^th Istanbul Design Biennial. This talk is a further expansion of the topics that were addressed at the Desis Philosophy Talk #5.4 held previously this year, at the Time School’s first presentation during the Milan Design Week.[1]

I wake up in a splendid mood. It is 4:40 am when I first stand up somewhere on someone’s bed- my cousin Hugo’s- bed, someplace in Lyon. I repack what I had unpacked the night before; but this time with a little euphoria as I close the case.

Adam Gibbons writes about the time of the archive, competence, and how the one-off rehearsal was staged in the recent exhibition White Horse/Twin Horse by artist duo Revital Cohen and Tuur Van Balen.

Virginia Tassinari explores how Walter Benjamin’s reflections on history can illuminate speculative design’s implicit critique of the linear understanding of history and time.

Curator Ele Carpenter looks back on the Nuclear Culture Roundtable held on November 17th at Z33, and shares what she took home from the talks and debates, inspired by Pieter Fannes’ drawings.

On November 17 last year, the seventh Nuclear Culture Roundtable took place at Z33, a day of debates accompanying the exhibition Perpetual Uncertainty. What exactly is nuclear culture, and what’s the origin of the Nuclear Culture Roundtable?

Perpetual Uncertainty is an exploration of contemporary art in the nuclear anthropocene. The exhibition brings together international artists from across Europe, the USA and Japan to investigate experiences of nuclear technology, radiation and the complex relationship between knowledge and deep time.

Beyond debates around ethics of responsibility to future generations, artist and writer Andy Weir argues that what is invoked is a more radical futurity, where human thought confronts its contingency alongside nuclear timescales. What specific knowledge can art practices give us in this context? What are their potentials and problems? And what could this mean for the historical conditions of ‘contemporary art’?

Over the last 6 years, Fukushima-based artist Kota Takeuchi has made a series of intelligently informed and aesthetically embedded artworks that draw us closer to the contaminated site of the dilapidated Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant

Ele Carpenter, curator of Nuclear Culture, reflects on overcoming nuclear fear and reclaiming agency through a visit to Belgium-based nuclear research lab, High-Activity Disposal Experimental Site HADES. What can be the agency of art and architecture in this radioactive deep time context?

Nuclear industry is undergoing a process of decommissioning and waste management. At the same time, a renewed interest in the ‘nuclear humanities’ is now also reaching art and curating. Curator and writer Ele Carpenter reflects on the relation of art and nuclear culture.

New Z33 Research book, ‘Future Thinking in Art and Design,’ approaches questions imagination, future literacy and ethics of future-oriented design and art practices. The publication, which will be published in the early 2018, consists of essays and reflections of prominent art and design thinkers and designers, and art and design projects.

Exhibition MANUFACTUUR 3.0 searches for new production models in a fast changing world. Digital revolutions, ecological awareness and shifts in the fields of work and labour encourage us to rethink the traditional industrial production model. MANUFACTUUR 3.0 brings designers and artists together to work around alternative production scenarios. The exhibition functions as a production platform, continuously in progress.

The Earth is not in crisis, but in a new condition for living and for design. How can a designer be aware of how the world is represented and how it shapes, mediates and affects our thoughts, behaviour and worldviews? How can designers take action to intervene or reshift and reconfigure the construction of the world?

‘Konstantin Grcic – Panorama’ is the largest solo exhibition on one of the most influential designers of our time. ‘Panorama’ is not a mere retrospective exhibition, but rather a personal statement by Konstantin Grcic on the future.

Co-produced by Z33, Disaster Playground by Nelly Ben Hayoun is a platform investigating future outer space catastrophes and the design of procedures that allow us to manage these catastrophes and assess the risks involved.

In a Z33 commissioned ‘Not Here, Not Now,’ Dunne & Raby present different interfaces for an alternative world. The interfaces belong to the digitarian world; one of the kingdoms of the United Micro Kingdoms project, characterized by neoliberalism and digital technology.

In the grey areas of “social innovation”, policy experts and computer hackers are adopting a design ethos to rethink intractable social problems. Nothing embodies the merging of these two phenomena in the field of design quite like open-source design.

What is authorship in open source design? How is an object system based on open source distributed? Belgian designer Thomas Lommée, initiator of OpenStructures, talks about OpenStructures and prospective future of open source design in an interview published in connection with BIO 50 – 24th Biennial of Design Ljubljana in 2014.

Partly triggered by the crisis and partly fighting to stay relevant, in recent years biennials have stepped out of their traditional boundaries by inviting multidisciplinary teams of curators to share relevant perspectives, exploring controversial niches in the design world or overlapping design and architecture with politics and policy.

Future visions are everywhere. Politicians promise us a better future – certainly in times of elections – scientists and technologists work towards it, companies try to shape a version of the future in which their products and services become necessities, and you and I sometimes think about our future, or our children’s and grandchildren’s. But can we find our way in the midst of all those visions? Can we read and appraise them? Which parameters are important in order to do so?

Prior to the opening on March 21, 2014, of the exhibition Konstantin Grcic: Panorama (coproduced by Z33 and the Vitra Design Museum), the Vitra Design Museum hosted an opening talk in Zaha Hadid’s Fire Station on the Vitra Campus. Konstantin Grcic talks about his work with Mateo Kries (Director, Vitra Design Museum), and Jan Boelen (Artistic Director, Z33 ). They discuss inspiration and innovation, the challenges of contemporary design, and the social and technological utopias that could shape the world of tomorrow.

When key materials and ingredients are scarce, those who control them have power. The rising value of a commodity can cause it to take on new meaning and can alter our relationship to it. Jan Boelen, artistic director of Z33 House for contemporary art, curated the exhibition ‘Designing Scarcity – Design and Innovation in Times of Scarcity’ at The New Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

‘Sense of Sound’ symposium brought together six curators specialized in sound art to discuss the status of sound art within the field of visual arts. The speakers include Joost Fonteyne, director of Festival van Vlaanderen Kortrijk and Sounding City, Carlo Fossati, director of sound art gallery E/Static, researcher, curator and author Nicole Gingras, Justin Luke, founder of Audio Visual Arts AVA gallery, curator Bernard Schulz, and Carsten Steiffart, founder of sound art gallery Singuhr.

Jan Boelen, Johanna Agermann Ross of Disegno magazine and  freelance design writer and critic Tamar Shafrir discuss the role of design discourse and critique at the horizon of Milan Design Week.

In the third debate, Jan Boelen, Aldo Bakker and Rianne Makkink discuss their practice of mentorship and collaboration in their role as teachers at the Design Academy Eindhoven, in their own studios, and as mentors in the upcoming design biennial BIO 50 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in September–December 2014.

In the second Z33 Debate, ‘Practice of Exhibiting,’ Jan Boelen and Joseph Grima discuss the background and their ideas for a ‘European Design Parliament.’

In the first Z33 Debate, ‘Future Thinking,’ Jan Boelen and Tobias Revell explore a series of questions related to design and future thinking. Whereas all designers design for the future, some do it more intentionally than others; for some, proposing or facilitating alternative future visions is the core of their work.

Since its founding in 1964, the Biennial of Design (BIO) in Ljubljana has surveyed the state of contemporary design from the heart of Central Europe. Witnessing the many shifts and changes the discipline has undergone in the last 50 years, BIO has seen design transition from its birth at the crossroads of industrialization and modernism towards a discipline that permeates all layers of everyday life.

As Studio Future unfolds into exhibitions and events, the Z33 Research archive of books, articles and videos about future thinking and design grows. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but a good set to start out with. Most of the articles and essays are available online for free.

The Salone Internazionale del Mobile di Milano is widely considered one of the most important showcases of furniture and design worldwide. The largest of its kind, it is the annual meeting place for anyone who has or wants to carve out a spot for him/herself in the design world. But, aside from the contacts made, the deals done, the objects sold, can Milan also claim to advance design thinking? Does Milan also shape design discourse and critique for the year to come?

They come and sit in a circle, nervously stare at each other, measuring distances between them and you, them and their next door neighbor, them and their feet. Some take out notebooks, pens: they are eager to start writing, translating their nervousness to the paper, biting the back end of a black ballpoint BIC.

The Induction Series by Aernoudt Jacobs, co-produced by Z33, reviews and re-interprets the laws of electromagnetic induction to make sounds, and emphasizes the transition between what can be seen and what can be heard.

In the case of sound art, the medium itself forces the viewer to change his normal mode of perception. Finding the right form for the presentation is a crucial element, especially in the world of visual arts that is mostly focused on the visual.

With exhibition ‘The Wilde Things,’ Z33 explores new presentation models for contemporary jewellery in context of a wearer and within a narrative framework. Furthermore it takes a critical look at current developments within this discipline, which has evolved since the 1960s to become an autonomous, artistic, and reflective design practice.

Artists increasingly take space in their own hands, create visions and prototypes, and collaborate with scientists and space organizations such as NASA or ESA. Obviously art plays a different game than science or technology, but the artist’s view on space travel invites us to look at the broader social, cultural and philosophical implications.

Based on performance, exhibition All the Knives (Any Printed Story on Request) is triggered by audience entering the exhibition space. Always animated by performers, the show gathers stories of objects that are in constant flux.

A conversation between Jan Boelen, former artistic director of Z33 and curator of The Machine – Designing a New Industrial Revolution and Matylda Krzykowski, one of the project managers of the exhibition. The talk covers the context of the presentation, the choice of location and why now is the most apropos time.

In an essay for exhibition The Machine – Designing a New Industrial Revolution, Jan Boelen reflects on changing production methods from Industrial Revolution to DIY 2.0 and from rise of network culture to the Slow Movement.