Design Campus Summer School 2022: Registration for ‘The School of the Untold’ open

Design Campus Summer School 2022: Anmeldung zu „The School of the Untold“ gestartet

Since 2 May 2022, anyone who is interested can register for the second season of the Summer School. The annual Summer School of the Design Campus, founded in 2021 by the Kunstgewerbemuseum (a member of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden [SKD] museum network), is an interdisciplinary and forward-looking think tank focusing on topical subjects. Design and creativity play key roles in addressing current challenges such as digitalisation, the climate crisis and other crises. The programme seeks to question the contemporary role of museums of arts and crafts and to highlight and enhance the influence of design on society, science and commerce in dialogue with one another, with experts, the general public and the museum’s own team.

This year, international design duo Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin), acting as Heads of School, conceived the six-week programme entitled ‘The School of the Untold’, and invite participants to enter into a dialogue with the Kunstgewerbemuseum collection in weekly workshops. Working with the participants, new links between the exhibits and the wider geopolitical contexts will be identified: What materials were used? Where and under which conditions were the resources sourced? What effects did producing an object have on humankind and nature? What can we learn from that for the future? To answer these questions, the participants will interrogate the museum’s rich collection to explore the narratives hiding behind the historical heritage of the artefacts on display.

The workshops, which run from 17 July until 27 August 2022, will be hosted by designers and architects, theorists, performance artists, curators, filmmakers and philosophers. The tutors from around the world will include Johanna Seelemann, Izaskun Chinchilla Moreno, Future Farmers, Irakli Sabekia, Buro Belén and Armature Globale. The programme studies the stories of materials, ideologies and the relationship between tradition and local culture. The artistic and academic discourse will reflect on critical approaches to ecology, colonialism and extractivism (management of near-natural landscapes), considering the relationship between humans and their environment, and the significance of objects as cultural mediators. Based on practical material expertise and techniques, the participants are to be given an opportunity to develop and try out new methods for a resource-friendly way of life – while constantly reflecting critically on the past and present.

For further information on the project, its stakeholders and the detailed workshop programme and registration, visit www.designcampus.org.                                                                                                                                      

The deadline for registration is 10 July 2022. Participation is open to anyone with an inquisitive mind and a burning desire to change the world through design. Early bird tickets are registrations received by 30 May 2022. Diversity and inclusion will be prioritised. English will be the working language. Like last year, the Design Campus is collaborating with the German Design Graduates Alumni Platform to offer scholarships to particularly talented materials science graduates. In a public vote, three candidates have already been selected to participate in the 27th Design Biennale in Ljubljana (26 May – 29 September 2022 with their final theses as ambassadors for the Design Campus Summer School by invitation of the Goethe Institute.

Thomas A. Geisler, Director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum: “With the Design Campus, the Kunstgewerbemuseum is returning to its roots as a teaching and educational collection almost 150 years after its establishment in 1876. A reaction to the upheaval of industrialisation at the time, we are revitalising it for the 21st century against the backdrop of a transformation of society by digitalization and climate change – as a venue and school for utopias.”

About Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin, Heads of School): Formafantasma is a research-based design studio from Milan that focuses on the ecological, historical, political and social forces dominating the contemporary field of design. Among other roles, Trimarchi and Farresin head up the GEO - Design department at the Design Academy Eindhoven. There, they study the social, economic, territorial and geopolitical forces that shape design today.