The Reader
Negli anni recenti la riflessione critica sul graphic design e sul suo ruolo sembra avanzare sotto forma di operazioni collettive e/o partecipative. Ne è un esempio lo Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice, che fra il 2007 e il 2009 ha coordinato una serie di iniziative – una mostra, un seminario e una pubblicazione – testimoniando come la riflessione critica sul graphic design stia maturando sempre più nel cuore stesso della pratica, con il coinvolgimento diretto dei designer e utilizzando i diversi strumenti e le forme del graphic design stesso, concatenandoli in progetti che crescono nel tempo.
Nel caso dello Iaspis Forum l’obiettivo è stato quello di spostare l’attenzione oltre la relazione designer-cliente, esplorando come il design possa essere uno strumento critico per indagare e discutere il mondo, anche in relazione a discipline diverse.
Il punto di partenza del progetto è stata la mostra Forms of Inquiry: The Architecture of Critical Graphic Design, di cui abbiamo già scritto, di cui il curatore Zak Kyes spiega bene gli obiettivi:
«Forms of Inquiry [...] involves work that is motivated by a shared impulse to reframe the circumstances surrounding contemporary graphic practice by using intuitive modes of investigation to probe the boundaries of the discipline and to explore the mutual exchange and shared lineage between graphic design and architecture».
La riflessione sulle relazioni e sugli scambi fra design critically oriented, architettura e arte è stata anche alla base del seminario che si è tenuto a Stoccolma nel 2008 in occasione della mostra, offrendo una piattaforma di incontro e confronto, coinvolgendo i designer stessi, accanto a critici e curatori.
Il volume, The Reader, pubblicato nel 2009, vuole essere una “estensione” del seminario, una forma di approfondimento a livelli differenti.
Il libro comprende quattro conversazioni tra graphic designer, alcuni dei quali ospitati in mostra, in relazione al loro approccio nel fare design, ed ospita inoltre interviste e altri testi in relazione con le conversazioni stesse.
Tra i designer inclusi nella pubblicazione: Åbäke, David Reinfurt e Stuart Baley (Dexter Sinister), Vinca Kruk, Daniel Van Der Velde e Gon Zifroni (Metahaven), Marieke Stolk, Danny van den Dungen e Erwin Brinkers (Experimental Jetset), Zak Kyes e Mark Owens.
Nel loro insieme, il progetto dello Iaspis Forum e The Reader ci mostrano un approccio basato sull’indagine (inquiry), che si pone come occasione di porre domande, senza la pretesa di verificare ipotesi o tesi precostituite, né di definire posizioni.
A questo proposito fra i testi di The Reader è particolarmente interessante l’intervista al collettivo Metahaven, che parla del termine inquiry in relazione a quello di ricerca, caratterizzante del loro approccio:
«The word “inquiry” in Forms of Inquiry [...] leads to the same question; what are we inquiring about? Research, like inquiry, means that you ask questions. It presumes more of a method for verifying the results. Inquiry presumes an immediate and practical interest more of a curiosity. Design as a tool to ask questions is useful in other areas than immediate problem-solving; it is useful to bring design to new tasks once the stylistic tools and known approaches have worn out. Increasingly design will be used to formulate potential scenarios and to speculate on the future; design as a tool for prototyping rather than implementing stable solutions».
La forma della conversazione, che permette l’emergere di differenti punti di vista, sembra essere una delle possibili strade per la discussione critica su una professione che, come scrive uno dei curatori di The Reader Magnus Ericson, appare essere in transizione e in cerca di nuovi modelli.
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The Reader
Curato da/Ed. by Magnus Ericson, Martin Frostner, Zak Kyes, Sara Telman, Jonas Williasmsson
Iaspis Forum, Sternberg Press, 2009
Eng., 448 p.
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In recent years the critical discourse about graphic design and its role seems to advance increasingly in the form of collective or participatory initiatives. One example is the series of different projects that have been curated by the Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice between 2007 and 2009: an exhibition, a seminar and a publication, which prove how the critical thinking on graphic design is developing more and more in the very heart of the practice, through the direct engagement of designers themselves, using the different instruments and forms of graphic design, and linking them together to build projects that grow over time.
In the case of the Iaspis Forum, the very first aim has been to shift the focus of attention beyond the designer-client relationship, and to explore how design can be a critical tool to investigate and discuss the world, while also considering its relations with other disciplines.
The starting point of the project has been the travelling exhibition Forms of Inquiry, which we have already discussed in a previous post. As Zak Kyes, the curator of the event explains:
«Forms of Inquiry [...] involves work that is motivated by a shared impulse to reframe the circumstances surrounding contemporary graphic practice by using intuitive modes of investigation to probe the boundaries of the discipline and to explore the mutual exchange and shared lineage between graphic design and architecture».
The same interest in the relationships and the possible exchange between critical design, architecture and art, has then offered the basis to the seminar that was held in Stockholm in 2008, on the occasion of the exhibition, to provide a platform for designers themselves to meet and discuss, together with critics and editors in related fields.
The book, The Reader, published in 2009, aims at being an “extended version” of the seminar, broadening and deepening its contents at different levels.
The Reader consists of four conversations between graphic designers (some of them represented in the exhibition) who discuss their approaches and visions of design, while other interviews and texts provides different points of view on similar topics.
Among the designers included in the publication: Åbäke, David Reinfurt and Stuart Baley (Dexter Sinister), Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velde and Gon Zifroni (Metahaven), Marieke Stolk, Danny van den Dungen and Erwin Brinkers (Experimental Jetset), Zak Kyes and Mark Owens.
Taken together, the Iaspis Forum and The Reader seem to actually reflect the inquiry-based approach that they want to illuminate for design: that is the willingness to ask questions, without trying to formulate and verify any hypotheses and theses.
In this sense, among other texts from The Reader, the interview with the collective Metahaven offers really interesting considerations; for instance there where Metahaven discusses the word “inquiry” in relation to the word “research” that is at the core of their approach:
«The word “inquiry” in Forms of Inquiry [...] leads to the same question; what are we inquiring about? Research, like inquiry, means that you ask questions. It presumes more of a method for verifying the results. Inquiry presumes an immediate and practical interest more of a curiosity. Design as a tool to ask questions is useful in other areas than immediate problem-solving; it is useful to bring design to new tasks once the stylistic tools and known approaches have worn out. Increasingly design will be used to formulate potential scenarios and to speculate on the future; design as a tool for prototyping rather than implementing stable solutions».
It is noteworthy to add that the form of conversation, that characterises the Iaspis Forum’s initiatives, by allowing different points of view to come together, seems to be one of the most effective paths for critical discussion on a profession like graphic design that appears to be “in transition” and in search for new models, as Magnus Ericson, one of the editors of The Reader, points out.
