DECLARATIONS of [inter]dependence
and the im[media]cy of design

ATELIERS
October 22 - 25, 2001

In the week prior to the Symposium we have organised three four-day workshops for students and symposium participants. Creative work generated in the workshops will be exhibited in the VAV Gallery at Concordia University. The workshops will provide an intensive learning laboratory setting for the students, in which the exchange and acquisition of knowledge through the creative process develops in response to the needs defined by the participants. Fundamental to the project is the principle that faculty, workshop leaders and students interact collectively to develop research through direct dialogue and experience during project creation.

We Interrupt the Programme
Ian Noble (UK)
London College of Printing
Russell Bestley (UK)
London College of Printing

Who Needs a Manifesto?: WD + RU Speaks Out
Teal Triggs (UK)
Kingston University
Women's Design + Research Unit
Siân Cook (UK)
Freelance Designer
Women's Design + Research Unit

Design is Not Enough
Tony Credland (UK)
Cactus Networks
Brian Holmes (FR)
Ne Pas Plier
Sandy Kaltenborn (GER)
Bildwechsel

Atelier Collaborators:
'floss' - the Van Eyck Research Team (NL)

We Interrupt the Programme
Ian Noble and Russell Bestley - London College of Printing (UK)

We Interrupt the Programme is an attempt to explore the nature of graphic design as a direct component of the communication process. The project investigates the use of the medium in a more democratic, open fashion, where all participants have a genuine investment in the experience of a message. By challenging the determinist model of communication, the project attempts to set up and further develop the conditions by which the formulation of a partnership in the construction of meaning (between primary and secondary makers & readers) may be further considered. The index of possibilities is determined not by a monologue, but in the acceptance that interventions made by design can act as a mediating influence and are part of a larger reflexive process. The potential for graphic design/ers to intervene in the delivery of a message allows the process by which assumed unified meanings’ are constructed and transmitted to be revealed to all participants. This method of questioning and subverting accepted codes within the discipline can empower both designer and user, and adopts a strategy of exposing the hierarchical structures at work in mass visual communication.
:: top ::

Who Needs a [Man]ifesto?: WD+RU Speaks Out
Teal Triggs and Siân Cook - Women's Design + Research Unit (UK)

The Women's Design + Research Unit was established in 1994 operating originally under a manifesto which aimed to highlight the role of women in design and in particular, their relationship to new technology, and to condemn traditional male power structures in design. Since then, WD+RU has expanded its position to embrace a more humanist approach, which is all-inclusive (welcoming men and their contributions). WD+RU's mandate is the exploration of new ways of raising awareness from printed works to lectures and videos to screensavers and to the web. As design activists and educators, members of WD+RU provide educational platforms from which they act as facilitators for change. One such recent project is "deskwithdrawers.org" - a website which asks participants to address the question "what is design responsibility?" The site itself provides a forum for responses from both students and designers but also provides links with other specialist websites, addressing issues such as social, environmental and professional responsibility.

The intent of this atelier is to analyse the role of a "manifesto" and unpack its relevance in relationship to the needs of the design community and society at large. While manifestos embrace social, cultural and political "rebel yells", they also promote a "deliberate manipulation of the public view." Participants will have  an opportunity to analyse a range of manifestos from Futurism to Feminism, but also to engage in the development of a manifesto relevant to their own interests and concerns. For example, participants could take the Futurist manifesto and update it to fit into the current state of technology addressing the gender issues which may surround this. The atelier will also encourage the development of appropriate visual outcomes - including the role of typo/graphic forms and the environment in which they operate as forms of communication.

WD+RU will draw upon its past experiences by reviewing some of its self-initiated and non-profit projects as well as exploring a range of other effective case studies.
:: top ::

Design is Not Enough
Tony Credland (UK), Brian Holmes (FR) and Sandy Kaltenborn (GER)

Cactus Networks, Bildwechsel, and Ne Pas Plier (NPP) are activist groups distributing, socially engaged images, aiming to get them out on the 'street' to unfold their meanings in public confrontations with the idea that art is political not only in its frame but also in its distribution.

From its inception, Cactus Network experimented in the use of image and politics, dissemination and networks, involving around 1,000 people over a period of 12 years. The role of politics in visual communication continues to be the central theme. The network branched into various projects namely: 'Cactus Magazine', 'Feeding Squirrels to the nuts' and 'Debate'.

Ne Pas Plier (Do Not Bend) brings social workers, visual artists, intellectuals and concerned people into collaborations that address urgent situations, without forgetting about the longer term. Specific capacities of conception, organization and production make the association into a meeting point, a place where ideas and emotions and visions can condense into visual signs, then go out again to stimulate more ideas, visions and emotions. It is an association for the production and above all the distribution of political images.

The atelier will bring the experience of these groups to participants involved in giving expression to local issues, while connecting them to similar issues in a much wider global context, to integrate the local with the global, the short term with the long term. The atelier will consider questions such as: How to create new forms of expression, exchange, debate and form? How to maintain them over time, and how, where and at what scale to take and institute new spheres of popular sovereignty? How to link those spheres together in the society? How to take concrete steps in this direction, in the present time with all its gaps and contradictions, on a necessarily small scale to offer a different model of visual communication that conveys not just a message, but also processes of cooperative organization and continuing self-education?

:: top ::