Sehr gespannt auf den Input im HKW am 18./19. September!

Kann Gestaltung Gesellschaft verändern? Wie können wir in die sich stets fortschreitende Modernisierung emanzipative Ideen einschreiben? Hat sich der Anspruch des Bauhauses und der klassischen Avantgarden, durch Gestaltung Gesellschaft positiv zu verändern, eingelöst? Wie können wir uns heute in neuer Weise vorstellen, Wandel und Zukunft zu gestalten? Was sind gezielte, aber doch ergebnisoffene Arbeitsformen? Welche Rolle spielt Co-Produktion? Wie kann man sein eigenes Dasein gestalten? Welche Rolle kommt dem Gestalter zu? Oder hätte heute eher die Abwesenheit von Gestaltung ein befreiendes Moment?

As the title already assumes there where three topics and their speakers of which for the the third part, discipline, was the most interesting. I was surprised how intensely theoreticised the talks were that dealt mostly with product semantics and the research tradition of the HfG Offenbach, where it was developed. My favourite talk however was given by Gui Bonsiepe, who questioned the efforts of design to step into the traditional academic approach towards becoming a discipline and reminded the auditorium that already in times of the first methodology conferences back at HfG Ulm they had come to the conclusion that design has to be practical.

>>RE/SET

It was a pleasure to see the projects of my MA&MAID class “RE_Hybrids & Identity” all nicely presented on the Dessau campus amongst the main semester project “Fear” by my colleague Prof. Susanna Hertrich and the expertise posters about bionics by Prof. Dieter Raffler. In the main building of the design department a colorful and manifoldly show of 2D, 3D and 4D projects as well as some results of the design theory classes were displayed. I very much enjoyed my collaboration with the new professor for design theory in Dessau, Prof. Michael Hohl. We composed a very interesting and critical collection of texts for our class “ethics & aesthetics in design”.  I am very much looking forward to the next semester where I will teach another design theory class and substitute Prof. Katja Thoring in the 2D/3D foundation course during her research semester.

>> glimpses of the Design Show 

>> Hybrids & Identity Blog

After one year of writing, translation, editing and great layout the collaborative book was finally published. I am very grateful to having been asked to contribute. My essay “digital culture: from open design to creating your own future” is one of 47 texts by contemporary artists and designers active in the digital world.

I am very happy to have received the offer to teach the class “Ethics & Aesthetics in Design” in the design department of the University of Applied Sciences Dessau. It is a great chance to plant good seeds in the minds of the designers of the future. “Designers are dangerous” Otl Aicher says in his book “the world as a design”. Because they are critical, they want to improve things and they investigate, research, dig to the ground. I hope to make them even more dangerous in terms of a critical approach to the world of production and cosumption as it is and to make them understand the responsibility they have in shaping a future we all want to live in.