Design! - Pro Helvetia

passages
Design? Design!
The Forms of Our Lives Lyrical in Leukerbad: Translating the Music of Language
On the Move in Cairo: Choreographic Research Along the Nile
Illuminated in Delhi: Jonathan O’Hear’s Lamps and Shadows
THE CU LTU RAL MAG AZI NE O F PR O H E LV E T IA, NO . 6 1 , ISSU E 2 / 2 0 1 3
4 – 31 DOSSIER
32 LOCAL TIME
Cairo: Trance Dance
Two choreographers on a research
tour in the Egyptian capital.
By Dalia Chams
The Forms of Our Lives
New Delhi: The Universal Language
of Light
Geneva-based lighting designer
Jonathan O’Hear shares his craft
in India.
By Elizabeth Kuruvilla
36 REPORTAGE
How to Translate the Music
of Language?
A translation workshop in
six languages tackles a novel
by Arno Camenisch. By Michael Braun (text)
and Jonas Ludwig Walter (photos)
6 Of Pizzas and Laptops
The designer as mediator: a role
worth taking more seriously.
By Volker Albus
22 The Heart of Order
An essay on design and Dasein,
space and experience.
By Siddhartha Chatterjee
8 The Precarious Creative Process
An interview with designer Jörg
Boner and design scholar Claudia
Mareis.
By Meret Ernst
26 On the Shoulders of Giants
On the advantages of design
history for design students.
By Alexandra Midal
12 Design in Global Competition
Designed here, manufactured
elsewhere, sold everywhere: what
does this mean?
By Dominic Sturm
28 Danish Design: A Case Study
On Denmark’s long tradition
of state support for design.
By Hanne Cecilie Gulstad
and Till Briegleb
14 Business Models for the Design
Market
How do designers navigate the
market, and what are their options?
By Meret Ernst and Claudia Acklin
18 Design and Art: A Love Story
On the long relationship between
art and design.
By Tido von Oppeln
About the artist:
Patrick Hari was born in 1977 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He lives and works in Zurich.
C O NT E NT
2
40 PRO HELVETIA NEWSFLASH
Cultural Exchange Along the Rhine
Spotlight for Young Artists
Interactive and Transmedial
New Swiss Orchestral Works
42 PARTNER PROFILE
Folk Culture for the Future
By Ariane von Graffenried
43 CARTE BLANCHE
For a Creolized Switzerland
By Pierre Lepori
44 GALLERY
A Showcase for Artists
Délit de Faciès 1
By Omar Ba
47 IMPRESSUM
Cover image: Patrick Hari, Kulturtransporter. Product Design
Photo page 2: Patrick Hari, Eintauchen und Auftauchen als Methodik für Ort- und Raumfragen. Site / Space
In the design universe: a photo series created for Passages by artist Patrick Hari
takes a look at the work designers do, and reflects on how design shapes our
experience of the world.
Design? Design!
From corporate design to nail design and design hotels, “design” has become the buzzword of our time. It encompasses both the expertise of the
industrial designer and the rough draft that marks the start of any undertaking. It crops up in management theories, glorifies all kinds of creative
follies, and lends a mark of distinction to consumer goods, from sports
equipment to railway timetables. Its impact is as much economic as cultural: we may recall that design once saved the Swiss watchmaking industry, and it has long shaped Switzerland’s image around the world. It is hardly a coincidence that the two most famous Swiss typefaces are called Univers
and Helvetica: design is a medium through which any given society communicates its origins and its goals.
Our opening essay by Volker Albus playfully investigates the vexations
inherent in our relationship with design. But how does an idea become
a sketch, then a prototype, and ultimately a product? An interview with
­designer Jörg Boner and design scholar Claudia Mareis sheds light on a
creative process that cannot be rationalized down to the last detail. As
­Dominic Sturm demonstrates, design has long been a globalized phenomenon; ­today, Swiss designers work together with manufacturers from all
over the world and cater to an increasingly international market. At the
same time, design also cultivates a close relationship with fine art: a fascinating subject explored here by Tido von Oppeln.
The dossier featuring these and other articles appears in connection
with Pro Helvetia’s newly-launched initative to fund and promote design.
We are thus taking the opportunity here to ask what forms support for
design could take, and what the guiding principles should be. Effective
encouragement for young designers must position itself between arts and
culture funding on the one hand, and economic growth initiatives on the
other. And it must take into account the conditions under which today’s
designers work, as described in this issue by Claudia Acklin and Meret
Ernst. Only in this way can we do justice to design’s particular ability to
generate added value in both cultural and economic terms. And, finally, we
take a look beyond Switzerland’s borders with Till Briegleb and Hanne
Cecilie Gulstad, who provide a glimpse into Denmark’s unique funding
system for design.
The dossier for this issue of Passages was guest-edited by Hochparterre,
the Zurich-based magazine for architecture and design.
Andrew Holland
Director, Pro Helvetia
E DIT O R IAL
3
In the Design Universe
Design is everywhere – but what is it really about? This dossier takes a glimpse behind its
seemingly glamorous surface to reveal how designers develop their ideas, and how
design helps shape the way we experience the world. We look at design’s relationship with the
business world on the one hand, and the art world on the other hand. The dossier is
illustrated by Patrick Hari’s photo series, which focuses on model and process, object and
service, space and fantasy: everywhere design can be found.
W. A . R . P.
Virtual Design
Like the arts, design creates possible
worlds. But design must test out
the transformations proposed in its models,
in the real world. Even fictional worlds
like those created in game design depend on
a concrete application in reality:
through the games themselves, and the ways
in which they condition our perceptions,
arouse our desire for play, and sharpen skills
that may change our lives.
Y
ou could hear the newsreader’s disapproval in his negative connotations. That is regrettable, not least because devoice. As he announced on Bavarian radio that Peer sign has long since found its way into all areas of life: every time
Steinbrück, a candidate for German Chancellor, had we go into a supermarket, we are faced with at least as much deappointed “design researcher” Gesche Joost from the sign as we would find in a designer furniture store. From the placeBerlin University of the Arts to his shadow cabinet, his ment of the shelves, the signage, the layout of the products and the
normally practised delivery noticeably faltered. He didn’t stumble choice of music, lighting and temperature to the packaging and
over his words; in fact he enunciated the job title perfectly. But an standardization of “natural” agricultural produce, everything is
almost imperceptible pause and his halting articulation of a term geared to a single design philosophy: form follows function – even
not often heard in the political news betrayed an unmistakeable though the sole function of these goods is to be bought. scepticism: A “designer”? In the shadow cabinet? Maybe even the
Selling the product
cabinet itself, one day? Whatever next?
Like other members of the journalist’s trade, the man from Naturally, this complex arrangement is not exclusively the work
Bavarian radio is less than wholehearted in his appreciation of of designers. Success – as measured in sales figures – is just
the design business. In the eyes of the political class, and the as much down to the marketing and advertising gurus, the
minds of the majority in society, the purpose of Gesche Joost’s ­management experts, the sales psychologists, the workers who
profession is to optimize the
built the shop and, of course,
aesthetics and functionality of
the staff, whose task is to presobjects. It has very little to do
ent the product with a smile.
But when it comes to how the
with politics. Even adding that
the new appointee would be
product looks, especially when
working to address the “needs
it is packaged (and is anything
sold without packaging these
of a networked society” did little
to dispel the fundamental lack
days?), it is the product, packagof belief in the relevance of deing and communication designsign to society as a whole, let
ers who make the decisions.
Design is everywhere, but as a
alone politics.
And now that even sectors
profession it is not held in particularly
as intangible as the financial
high esteem. Yet designers are
Form and function
­industry have started thinking
moderators: mediating between technical
This comes as no surprise. For
in terms of “product” categories,
many, be they traditionalists
design has become a key eleprogress and society’s changing needs,
or enlightened amateurs, even
ment there too. In short, wherand translating them into material
“good” design is, for all its facets,
ever customers are advised and
objects. Volker Albus believes it is time to
at best defined as a quest for
served, wherever something is
take designers seriously.
form dictated by rational considproduced and sold, design is at
erations: whether a device comes
the heart of the action.
with clear instructions and is
Even in areas that resist the
By Volker Albus
easy to use, a chair is stable and
metastatic expansion of comcomfortable, or a lamp is glaremercialism, the tools of design
free and simple to adjust. While our expectations – about these ob- are still put to work. Where would Greenpeace, the Occupy movejects’ importance to us, what they say about us and how sustaina- ment or trade unions be without an identifiable signature? Of
ble they are – have become much more complex, the classic course, the protests in Egypt, Turkey and Greece got themselves
utilitarian and aesthetic parameters still dictate the general per- noticed through their immediate power, despite the lack of logos
ception of what design is for.
and other signifying elements. But whenever protest is part of a
Conversely any kind of design that, whether obviously or dis- mission, whenever the aim is to effectively publicize concerns or
creetly, seeks to undermine that rational approach is viewed as draw attention to an unacceptable state of affairs, every camp is eaself-indulgent, frivolous or even – dare one say it – disreputable. ger to use signs, symbols, performances or costumes specifically
That is the invariable response when advertisers give essentially designed for its campaign. They give the various forms of protest
manual tasks a specious sophistication by tacking on the trendy a distinctive profile. They not only render the opposition compreword “design,” thereby branding them as superficial “lifestyle” hensible and identifiable, but also actively promote it: they help to
products: “hair design,” “nail design” and “food design” are just “sell” it to the public.
some of the more fanciful examples.
So there can be no question that the scope of design has
Such labels make it harder for design to gain acceptance, be- ­expanded. And yet: whereas right up to the 1980s and 1990s it
cause they associate it with things that may well have their place reached out mainly towards the fine arts, the focus now is on the
in a pluralistic and market-oriented society, but whose meaning is market, advertising, service and society. Here, design is viewed
unlikely to extend beyond localized image management, often with as a set of tools that can be used to fine-tune every conceivable
Of Pizzas and
Laptops
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
6
strategy – and not as an opportunity for self-realization. Design’s
core business – classic product and industrial design – is no exception. The difference is that here, a canon has grown up over the
decades that, for all its periodic upheavals, is always in principle
guided by the same parameters of form and function. So it is not
just reasonable but also thoroughly responsible to ask why such
“
designers? Must we become sociologists? Or users, constantly
trying to keep pace with the latest technological innovations?
I believe the answer is: neither in isolation, but both together.
Designers need to precisely diagnose socio-cultural change and be
alert to developments in both people and production. Designers
unquestionably have a vital role to play: as mediators or moderators. They must analyse developments,
weigh up and reconcile the available opWherever customers are advised and served, wherever
tions and the needs that are articulated –
something is produced and sold, design is at the heart of
consciously or unconsciously – by their
the action.
customers, and translate them into products and services that make all our lives
constant renewal is actually needed (given that there is nothing easier; that fit seamlessly, are permanent and, ideally, self-evident
new under the sun anyway). After all, many of humanity’s prob- and inconspicuous. In short, designers must transform possibililems are caused at least partly by its lack of restraint, the surfeit of ties and desires into real things.
goods produced by people and machines. And even designers
If they succeed, then perhaps even the newsreader will rethink
themselves freely admit that design bears its full share of respon- his attitude to their profession.
sibility for the deluge of consumer goods.
”
A state of flux
The only problem is that almost every feature that governs the appearance of these consumer goods is being transformed: manufacturing techniques, materials and construction methods are influencing and altering stability, weight, sustainability, acceptability
and robustness at exponentially increasing speed and on an almost
daily basis. We designers must therefore constantly observe and
analyse these developments and incorporate them into our work.
We must match them against the entire spectrum of attributes of
each and every product, and assess whether this or that novel material is really suited – in terms of price, sustainability and aesthetics – to making something that is new and better, or in other words
cheaper, more stable and easier to recycle.
Such technical and physical turbulence, however, is just one
reason – albeit a central one – for the refinement of existing products and the development of new ones. At least as important is the
constantly changing socio-cultural make-up of society. It is in a
state of permanent flux driven by migration and our own travel experiences, by the influence of the media and technical innovation,
but also by the mobility imposed upon us by our work. It also has
an immense influence on our behaviour. We work and eat on the
move, in the train, on our bike, in the car. We communicate using
miniaturized devices at every hour of the day and night, wherever
we are – in bed, at the dinner table or in meetings. We sleep almost
anywhere: in the office, in airports, on demos or in front of the
­Apple store. Nowadays we take many of these combinations for
granted, even though the two activities – eating and working, eating and communicating, travelling and eating, travelling and communicating – are still far from perfectly attuned, at least when it
comes to the hardware we use. Devouring a pizza with greasy fingers while using a high-tech laptop, riding a bike in traffic while
text messaging on a smartphone: not only do they not go together;
they are mutually exclusive.
These are of course commonplace concerns; yet it is precisely these situations from the mundane reaches of everyday life
that design needs to address. But what does that mean for today’s
Volker Albus (b. 1949) studied architecture at Aachen University.
He has been working as a designer and exhibition architect
since 1984, and has published numerous books, articles and
exhibition catalogues. He has been Professor of Product Design
at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe since 1994.
Translated from the German by Geoffrey Spearing
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
7
C
reating prototypes for serial production is a skill that
any designer must master on the path to success. But
what happens during the evolution from draft outline, to model, to finished product? Jörg Boner, an
award-winning designer, and Claudia Mareis, a design
professor and scholar, share their thoughts on a conceptual and
creative process that cannot be rationalized down to the last detail.
Boner: In product design, there is an even greater difference between the prototype and the end product. In designing the model,
we must take the production parameters into account, so that the
final product doesn’t look like we had to compromise in any way.
I always aim for a finished product that does not seem to have been
determined by limiting factors.
When you say that the model is not supposed to seem like a
There is this image of the designer who, after having accepted a compromise, it sounds like you are comparing it with an origi­
commission, is sitting in front of a blank piece of paper, pencil nal vision you had. How do you come up with the idea that leads
in hand, and sketching. Is that just a romantic cliché?
to the model?
Jörg Boner: (laughs) Yes, it’s a myth. We have Philippe Starck to Boner: There is no one big idea. There is a sum of propositions that
thank for that.
arise while working. I start with the proposition that something
Claudia Mareis: Every project draft has its limitations. It starts with might seem interesting at a certain moment. It has to at least
our own limited ability to visualize the end product. Then there convince me on the computer screen: that is the first hurdle. Then
are the limitations imposed by
we draw digital 3D models, print
the materials and the production
them out like paper cut-out pattechnologies. And that holds
terns, and use them to build an
true not only for product design,
exact model out of cardboard.
We are already aware of the
but also for graphic design. Not
problems, but we want to see
everything that looks great on the
computer screen can be successwhether the proposition, in the
preliminary form of the model,
fully printed. The idea of an outis viable.
line with no constraints is utopian, given the constraints of
What is the function of the
production. Just as the metaphor
cardboard model within the
of the blank piece of paper idealizes the process. The real quesdesign process?
tion is: how do these limitations
Boner: It is a useful tool at a cerinfluence the project planning in
tain stage. The cardboard model
How do designers develop their ideas?
the first place?
is a phantom, an intimation of
Boner: In design, the model must
the finished product. The model
An interview with designer Jörg Boner and
also be optimized for serial proallows us to see its character,
design scholar Claudia Mareis.
duction. That is the big difference
which is more or less impossible
compared to architecture. Archion the computer. Either we conInterview by Meret Ernst
tects have an image in mind, and
tinue to develop the model – or
we go back one step.
the builders are forced to adapt
Mareis: It’s a process of distillatheir work to that image. I, on the
other hand, am always happy when the engineers tell me that a tion. Until the moment when the right balance is achieved.
sketch of mine was very cleverly designed because it took their pro- Boner: It’s extremely important to seize that moment. Like a
duction conditions into account.
painter, I need to know when to stop.
Mareis: Product designers tend to be more restricted by technical
parameters, and by the capabilities of industrial production. In And how do you seize the right moment?
graphic design, the process is more fluid, developing almost seam- Boner: That is probably the only part of the design process that’s
lessly from the sketch to the prototype and the final poster. It is not a myth. I can’t explain it. Recognizing the right moment is
less marked by the gap between the original design and the fin- based on the sum total of my experience, which includes knowing
ished product.
that I’ve sometimes stopped at the wrong places in the past.
The
­Precarious
Creative
­Process
What exactly is a graphic design prototype?
Mareis: As a graphic designer, I always had to explain to my clients
that what I showed them during our meetings was only a working
model. Digital display formats and printing techniques can be misleading: the model may look perfect, but it’s still a work in progress.
As long as it’s not the definitive printed product or the final material object, it’s still a prototype.
When designers reflect on their own creative process, are there
blind spots?
Mareis: One thing that is rarely taken into consideration is the fact
that designers do a large part of their work on the computer. The
keyboard and the mouse are key tools in design. And yet, there is
a normative discourse about tools: people prefer to talk about
sketches rather than digital technology.
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
8
Does the move from 3D drawing to cardboard model create a
link between digital and analogue tools?
Boner: On the computer screen, the design sketch remains isolated. The model, on the other hand, immediately interacts with
the space around it, and changes as a result. One time, we carried
a model for a street lamp onto the street and attached it to a road
sign. Then we went right back inside, had a coffee, and started over
from the beginning. The model was much too small.
Claudia Mareis, you trained as a graphic designer, but today you
do design research. Has your perspective changed as a result?
Mareis: For me, it was not a big change. I’m still the same person,
asking the same questions, but now I do so by other means, and
“
And yet, there is still such a thing as practical skill. Is that the
basis?
Mareis: Designers must learn to master their profession, and not
be mastered by it. One of the most important qualities for a designer is the ability to question everything and to think differently.
The worst thing to say is: “That can’t be done, it’s impossible.”
That’s what engineers say…
Mareis: Designers can be nay-sayers too. But if they want to be successful, they must take up a position that seems eccentric or a little crazy – like an inventor. If they are able to create something new
and innovative, they are held in high regard. But placing oneself
outside the norm can also lead to failure. Designing and inventing
are precarious processes.
One of the most important qualities for a designer is the
ability to question everything and to think differently.
with other consequences. As a result of my scholarly work on design and culture, I have come to realize how little I know about
my own profession – and, at the same time, how much. As a designer, I always believed I had a very highly developed ability to
use and understand images. It wasn’t until I began working with
theories of visual culture that I realized that, although designers
do have a certain practical ability to deal with images, that ability
is limited. Designers rarely look at images as images: they tend
to think of them as something they might potentially use. They
are not very good at describing what they see, and they lack visual
literacy.
What kind of knowledge is involved in design?
Mareis: There are a variety of forms of knowledge. For instance,
craftsmanship or technical know-how. But there is also an implicit
knowledge that is based on experience with materials, techniques
and design methods, and there is aesthetic expertise. However, although all these forms of practical knowledge are crucial, design
education rarely covers them explicitly, and discussing design
methods is still taboo.
How can students be taught to develop their own design abi­
lities?
Boner: I teach them to observe closely, and to distance themselves
from the flood of media images. And I try to make them aware of
the personal aspect of the design process. Because the only interesting thing about this profession is the pleasure you derive from
it. If you lose that, you’ve lost everything.
Mareis: In my opinion, it’s a question of education. Design is an attitude, a way of facing the world. Discussing methods and imposing strict design rules can only play a small part in developing that
attitude. For students, it is more important to have the time to get
an education and develop their skills.
Boner: That’s true. Becoming a designer involves a lot more than
just being able to accurately render an object. Method is a good
framework, but nothing more. Design is ultimately about culture
and cultivation.
”
Isn’t it also a myth that creators must
overstep the boundaries to capture the
new? Why is that considered better than
perfecting something that already exists?
Boner: I don’t make that assumption. What’s innovative is not necessarily good. Creating something that generates a good ambiance
is just as valuable.
Mareis: People appreciate different things in design: the exceptional or the typical; hard work and stamina, or eccentricity. These
changing value judgments reflect our relationship with the material world. But we tend to talk only about exceptional designs and
processes, and not about everyday design. As far back as the 1970s,
anyone who could improve an existing situation was considered a
designer, including doctors, geneticists, and engineers. Nevertheless, the normative discourse about who is or is not a designer has
persisted to this day. Hair design or nail design don’t count. But
why not?
Boner: Amateur design still functions according to the design myth
we just deconstructed: as pure self-expression, which shuts off any
discussion before it can happen. But the more design acquires cultural added-value, the more complex it will become.
Different design styles also reveal different attitudes toward au­
thorship. In the art world, a signature style is essential. Is that
also true for design?
Mareis: Appreciating authorial style is always about connoisseurship. Recognizing a signature style requires expert knowledge on
the part of the beholder, which is connected to education, and depends on being able to situate a work and to understand its context.
Boner: I think it’s more important to recognize the manufacturer
or the product line, rather than the designer’s signature. That’s
why it’s critical for us as designers to choose those manufacturers
who do not demonstrate obvious deficits. Also, they are the ones
who will see to it that our designs find their place in the market,
and are noticed and sold. We must always ask ourselves for whom
we are putting in the work. Design is not an economic factor in
and of itself. It becomes one only when it finds the right niche and
is properly cultivated.
Mareis: It’s not just the designer’s signature style: the products
themselves tell us a lot about certain ways of working. About how
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
9
materials are used or, for example, how a clasp works. We can learn
all that from the objects themselves, without knowing who created them.
Boner: As a designer, you are necessarily a dilettante. In other
words, I learn from existing objects. Before I developed that street
lamp, I hardly ever looked at one. A light engineer explained to me
that the way light is diffused is of central importance. The glow of
a lamp extends 20m in breadth, but only 8m in depth. I had never
realized that before.
Designers must reflect on that kind of knowledge, in order to
make use of it in future projects. We consumers, on the other
hand, tend to use things without thinking about them. What
does that say to you?
Mareis: The question is: where does design end? When we use
something differently than the purpose for which it was intended,
the creative process continues with our use. That raises the question of co-design, of non-intentional or participatory design, and
their possibilities.
Boner: It’s a wonderful moment when people use something I
made in a way I hadn’t imagined.
Prof. Dr. Claudia Mareis (b. 1974 in Zermatt) is both a designer
and a scholar of design and culture. She is Professor of Design
Theory and Research at the Basel School of Design, and director
of the Institute for Research in Art and Design (IDK).
Jörg Boner (b. 1968 in Uster) studied Product Design in Basel.
He is a member of the N2 design group, runs his own design
studio in Zurich, and teaches at the ECAL in Lausanne. He was
the 2011 winner of the Swiss Federal Office of Culture’s Design
Grand Prix.
Meret Ernst is Culture and Design Editor at Hochparterre.
Translated from the German by Marcy Goldberg
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
10
THE
C AT H E D R A L
OF
WEIL AM RHEIN
Site / Space
Improving one’s status
with a noble pedigree:
the houses we live
in have long become
spaces in which to
stage our own personal
fantasies. They are
the only places we are
free to shape as we
wish. “I am my interior
design” is a formula
we have internalized –
to the benefit of
the home furnishings
industry.
Cited image:
Hisao Suzuki,
El Croquis
I
n Switzerland, which was spared the horrors of two World willing to dig deep into their pockets to buy a product manufacWars, industrial consumer goods long continued to be de- tured in the world’s “most expensive country.” For the Zurich designed in the same place where they were manufactured. signers, this contradictory approach makes sense. After all, really
Until the late 1960s, companies like Turmix, Zyliss, Rolex, good products always require a customized solution for design,
Schindler, Hilti, Geberit, Jura or Bernina helped create a manufacture and distribution.
The Flink design agency based in Chur is always on the lookrich Swiss design and product culture with a prestigious inter­
national reputation. But “Swiss design” has long since ceased to out for ideal production sites. Designer Remo Frei, engineer
be necessarily synonymous with “Swiss made.” Globalization, and Curdegn Bandli and the Taiwanese economist Frances Lee travel
especially the digital revolution at the turn of the millennium, sim- regularly between the Alpine town and the megacity Taipei, the
plified and speeded up the exchange of ideas and the division of Taiwanese capital. They take responsibility for product develop­labour. It has become increasingly easy to separate the design and ment and sourcing, i.e. the organization of outsourced production
manufacture of industrial products: digital designs can be dis- for their clients. “We not only work as designers for our clients
cussed across continents in real
but also as producers. Ideally, we
take charge of the whole process
time, manipulated on the screen,
– from the first sketch to the finand immediately given material
form, using techniques such as
ished mass-produced article,” is
rapid prototyping, to enable them
how Remo Frei explains the busito be handled physically. But it
ness model. Depending on the
would be too simplistic to contype of product, design, quantity
made, target market, quality and
clude from this that agencies and
designers work on one side of the
manufacturing method, the comworld while production now only
pany seeks out suitable manu­
takes place on the other. Examinfacturers all over the world –
ing Switzerland as a site for design
and they can also be found in
and production shows how designSwitzerland. Small and mediumDesigned here, manufactured
ers respond to the challenges of
sized enterprises in particular
elsewhere, sold everywhere: designers have
benefit from this cooperation.
global structural change.
to find the right solution for every
They often lack the necessary
The ideal production site
product. An industrial designer explains
contacts and resources to operate
Five years ago, the Zurich industheir own production systems
what this entails.
abroad. Remo Frei believes that
trial designers Christian Kaegi and
Fabrice Aeberhard of Aekae took
outsourcing production to counBy Dominic Sturm
the bold step of moving to China –
tries with emerging economies is
not as designers, but as entreprenot just a matter of cost savings
neurs behind the bag label Qwson the manufacturing side: it also
tion and the eyewear brand Sire. A bold venture indeed for a small calls for the right know-how. The fact is that a great deal of mancompany, as they readily admit. One reason for the move was their ufacturing knowledge and experience have been lost in Europe,
aim of achieving uncompromising product design. “In our dual precisely because of this outsourcing. Nowadays, they are to be
role as designers and entrepreneurs, we do not just control the de- found primarily in the emerging production sites in Asia.
sign and production process; we also take care of marketing and
distribution. That is how we are able to put our vision of a good Swiss made
product into practice,” Christian Kaegi explains. For them, good However, mass consumer goods are still being made in Switzermeans that all the resources deployed must be appropriate for the land for the global market. A recent example from my own design
intended purpose – and not just in design terms. They should also practice confirms this. Lamprecht, the manufacturer of baby prodsatisfy the demands of manufacturing and material technology, ucts, now makes the newly-designed soother under its own Bibi
entrepreneurial and ecological criteria. The two designers regard brand in quantities running into tens of millions in Regensdorf,
themselves as typical representatives of a Swiss design and prod- near Zurich. When the product was developed over a period of sevuct tradition. Working pragmatically and with high standards of eral years, the task on the design side was to integrate the product
quality, they endeavour to unite function, form and emotion in a seamlessly into the brand’s global communication, which is built
on the company’s seventy-five-year history as well as on Switzersingle product.
Qwstion bags are manufactured in China. They are shipped land’s reputation for quality. In addition, the different needs of the
to Europe, and also to nearby Japan and South Korea. On the other babies and their parents had to be reconciled with the fully autohand, Sire horn-rimmed spectacles are made by the Swisshorn mated and high-tech mass production of an article that is both
eyewear manufacturer in Aargau and are sold in Switzerland. They emotionally charged and ergonomically challenging. “Switzerland
also appeal to Far Eastern buyers who are interested in design and is still the perfect place for complex mass production processes
Design in
Global
­Competition
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
12
that do not require manual intervention,” confirms engineer
Curdegn Bandli.
Like Aekae, the people at Flink have a product brand of their
own in their portfolio: the Rotauf mountain sports label. They
found the right manufacturer for their avalanche rescue device in
Taiwan. On the other hand, the winter sports garments sold under
this label are sewn in Switzerland. Direct distribution via the internet enables the company to sell its garments at prices rivalling
the global competition, despite the high cost of manufacturing.
Remo Frei points out the advantages: “Designed and produced here
“
understood. “Everyone is involved in the global design competition,” Chris Harbeke says. All the designers who were asked agree
that design competition from Asia must be taken seriously.
Strategic thinking
For Christian Kaegi, however, there is no reason to fear this competition from Asia. “There will always be a demand for intelligent
design thinking, i.e. understanding complex styling and entre­
preneurial problems.” Peter Wirz also sees the ability to think and
design strategically as a small but important advantage in the globalized design competition. In this view,
products are not considered in isolation but
“Swiss design” has long ceased to be synonymous with
always as part of the solution of a strategic
“Swiss made.”
problem. Industrial designers in particular
have recognized that, with the shift to an
for the local market. In our view, that is a reasonable proposition information and service society, product design now also encomfor a brand like Rotauf.” The niche brand appeals to mountaineers passes the design of services, spheres of influence, forms of organwho prefer locally made products designed to last, over mass-pro- ization and behaviour. Here, high standards of training and pracduced goods manufactured in Asia.
tical experience are called for. But are young designers sufficiently
The examples of Bibi, Rotauf, Sire or Qwstion show that man- well prepared for the increasingly complex design process? Expeufacturing costs are no longer the only key factor behind the choice rienced designers Chris Harbeke and Peter Wirz have their doubts.
of a production site. Alongside the manufacturing technology and They see shortcomings, especially in entrepreneurial thinking,
logistical parameters, account must be taken more than ever be- technical expertise and maturity – qualities nearly impossible to
fore of “soft” design and brand strategy factors.
achieve after just three years of study to take a bachelor’s degree
with no practical experience. But they do recognize great potenGlobal business with local roots
tial for small and medium-sized businesses in Switzerland as a
“All business is local” is how designer Chris Harbeke of the Nose centre for design, work and knowledge – on the condition that the
design and brand agency answers the question as to the impact of manufacturers do not merely use “Swissness” as an empty slogan.
globalization on the design business. He goes on to point out that A comprehensive design approach is not a waste of time or money,
good industrial design necessarily occurs in the place where a but holds the key to success in today’s globalized and increasingly
product is effectively developed: because the complex business de- fragmented market.
pends on the client, the target market, the knowledge hub with its
research and training centres, and the workplace. Its origins are
always local – anywhere in the world. That is why the Zurich designers charged with the interior styling of the Dutch railway trains
built by the Stadler Railway Company in Thurgau take their Dutch
counterparts on board: to get to know the tastes of the trains’ future passengers.
Peter Wirz, co-owner and founder of the Process design
agency with offices in Lucerne, Zurich, Shanghai and Taipei comments: “Today, there is no such thing as local design, only good or
bad design – all over the world.” However, he believes that good
design requires products and brands to be firmly embedded in a
local context. That is as self-evident for designers today as their colour concepts, ergonomic studies or foam models. The “Swissness”
fashion concept simply stands for one contextualization strategy
among many to create identity. Its aim is to secure local and global
recognition for brands, products or services. Asian interest in the
luxury “Handmade in Switzerland” eyewear by Aekae shows that
a new market is being created. It is attractive for inventive entrepreneurs and designers who know how to embody this universally Dominic Sturm (b. 1973 in Berne) has worked as
a product designer in Switzerland since 2002. In 2009,
recognizable design language in a particular brand. Flink and he completed post-graduate studies at the FHNW
­Process help both domestic and, increasingly, also Asian compa- University of Art and Design in Basel. He runs his own
nies to gain access to the vast Asian market for “Swiss design.” The practice, Bureau Sturm Design, in Zurich.
fact that this involves design-specific knowledge transfer is fully Translated from the German by Jaja Hargreaves
”
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
13
S
ome artistic careers depend on grant money for years. trade and industry initiatives. And yet, they have made little use of
From the point of view of arts funding policy this makes them so far. What is the reason? On the one hand, these schemes
sense, because an international breakthrough can also are explicitly addressed to businesses demonstrating technologibe achieved at an older age. In design, however, it is un- cal and scientific innovation. Start-ups in fields like biochemistry,
thinkable. Whoever wants to make it as a designer has or IT and communications technologies, are preferred. On the
to become economically independent sooner or later – or else other hand, young designers are not aware of the business-oriented
change jobs.
support tools available. What a business plan is, how it is used, the
Designers work in a variety of professional relationships general principles of business administration: none of this is part
and business models. They are either self-employed or employed. of their professional training.
At the same time, the business coaches and consultants lack
Some are commissioned by clients, while others license their designs or establish a brand. Many of them combine various models. knowledge of the conditions under which designers work: learnYet all designers who want to become self-employed need entre- ing on the job and acquiring skills as they are needed. This in-depth
preneurial skills. In the three years of study leading to a Bachelor’s knowledge often extends beyond managerial know-how. Thus, supdegree in design, they concenport schemes based on coaching
trate on the core business of
sessions that focus on a specific
project are more promising, belearning how to design, which is
complex enough as it is. They
cause they create a situation in
develop into entrepreneurs only
which the necessary knowledge
in the years after their training.
is picked up in a context-related
How can public funding for
and solution-oriented way.
design make a contribution to
Integrated support
this development? Up until now,
government support for design
Designers wishing to position
in Switzerland has been under
themselves as self-employed enthe umbrella of cultural funding.
trepreneurs need a type of supThe funding instruments have
port that provides them with the
How do designers navigate the market?
been conceived accordingly: as
necessary tools – taking it as a
For newcomers, making the
non-repayable work and project
given that entrepreneurship will
transition from training to professional
grants, as awards and, more
rarely be a means to an end for
practice can be a challenge.
rarely, as training and studio
them. Designers define success
scholarships or internships. Are
not only in business terms, but
entrepreneurial skills strengthalso according to the degree of
By Meret Ernst
autonomy in their professional
ened this way? Yes, if an award is
received at the right time and
activites, their degree of connectleads to further instructive commissions. Yes, if an internship edness, and the possibility of playing several design-related roles
helps a designer decide which professional role he or she wants to at the same time. Or they measure success by the recognition of
adopt in the future. But only to a limited extent in terms of learn- their authorship within the design scene. Designers are constantly
ing to behave like an entrepreneur. In order to further these skills, changing their field from the inside. They specialize in thinking of
additional promotional instruments are needed: like the ones that which does not yet exist: their success is based on this skill.
­currently being discussed and tested under the term “cultural en- However, this does not always correspond to the objectives of clastrepreneurship” – and modelled after strategies used in trade and sical trade and industry support measures, where the definition of
industry, and to promote local business.
success is, amongst other things, a micro-business gradually developing into a small or even medium-sized business and becomEncouraging entrepreneurship
ing a good taxpayer. However, managing a growing company deUnlike state funding for the arts, the model under which design is mands sacrifices in the time spent on designing and in the creative
supported in Switzerland, trade and industry support does not gen- autonomy designers strive for.
erally take the form of direct financial assistance. Instead, the canThe two sides would do well to converge. Entrepreneurial
tons may provide help in the form of attractively-priced building thinking should be incorporated into the educational process, acplots, or tax breaks during a start-up phase or a planned business cording to the “cultural entrepreneurship” model. At the same
expansion. The federal government, on the other hand, aims to time, trade initiatives to support local business must adapt to the
provide a favourable economic framework, including support for needs of the design sector and the creative industries.
administrative processes and for the communication between enMeret Ernst holds a doctorate in art history. She has been
trepreneurs and local authorities and offices.
Culture and Design Editor at Hochparterre since 2003.
Of course designers can also take part in the entrepreneurial the
She is currently the vice-president of the Swiss Design
start-up courses and coaching opportunities offered as part of ­local Association (SDA) and sits on a variety of design juries.
Reaching
Market
Maturity
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
14
U
pon graduating with the three-year Bachelor’s degree own brand means more entrepreneurial control, but it is the most
offered by one of the seven Swiss design universities, challenging business model of the four. A creative entrepreneur’s
young designers must decide how to launch their ca- career starts with the search for producers and the calculation of
reers. Nowadays, they usually choose one of four busi- purchase prices and margins. Production and marketing investness models to establish themselves on the market, ments are often necessary too. And yet, there is significant intereither as an employee or a freelancer. Some of these options are est in this model today. The growing opportunities for handling
more established than others, but ultimately all of them present sales and marketing via the internet encourage young designers
initial hurdles as well as advantages and disadvantages. This be- to experiment with so-called micro-brands.
comes obvious by taking a closer look at the four business models.
Model one: designers start working in a design agency, often A series of decisions
as trainees, later as junior designers – or they eventually start their So where does this leave a designer? There is no universally valid
own design business. This is logical because designers are service path to bliss. Each designer must develop an individual strategy
providers. With their services, agencies contribute to product de- based on personality, life situation, openness to risk, and knowlvelopment, innovation, to a comedge. But designers do have a depany’s image or its customer excisive advantage: surviving in the
perience. It is a highly competitive
market is similar to the design
market, despite the fact that the
process, involving an iterative sedesign sector has been growing in
ries of decisions toward the best
recent years in Switzerland, with
possible solution. And they have
been taught how to do that.
designers often convincing their
customers that design is a strategic long-term responsibility for
any company. This is why small
agencies bear a concentration of
risk: they often work for only a
handful of customers. If they lose
Every emerging designer must choose a
just one client, the situation besuitable working model. There are at least
comes critical. According to some
four paths to professional bliss.
studies, larger agencies fare better because they can acquire cusBy Claudia Acklin
tomers collaboratively and continuously.
Model two: designers work as
employees in a company with its own design department. Switzerland is known to be a country of small and medium-sized businesses – and these can rarely afford to maintain an in-house design
department. On the contrary: many companies are not really aware
of the added value of design, or are prejudiced against the work of
designers. These days there are some large companies in Switzerland that value design thinking and design-driven innovation processes. However, this trend also has its drawbacks for designers,
because a growing number of non-designers are now setting up as
consultants to obtain new solutions using client-oriented processes borrowed from the design field.
Business
­Models
for Designers
Creative control
Model three: designers can license their products to an agent or to
an intermediary. Many designers are happy to delegate the tedious
product marketing process to an agent or an intermediary. But
royalties are low, and rarely cover the costs linked to product development. They therefore provide a supplement to earned income
rather than a livelihood. Designers choosing this model have to
obtain cross-financing.
Or they develop, according to model four, their own small
brand, and market their products themselves. The creation of one’s
Dr. Claudia Acklin is the director of Creative Hub,
a platform for the promotion of Switzerland’s
design business.
www.creativehub.ch
Translated from the German by Clarissa Hull
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
15
REFLECTIVE
R E L AT I O N S H I P S
Industrial Design
We adjust our behaviour in order to
maintain clear and meaningful
relationships with the artifacts that surround us. They determine what we
can or cannot do. They teach us how to use
them, and their form indicates
their categories. In short: we are involved
in intense relationships with the
devices that make up our surroundings.
I
n 1987 the French artist Ange Leccia presented the latest design objects that invited the audience to participate in art. Artmodel of the Mercedes 300 CE as a work entitled La Séduc- ists deployed this strategy to renew and expand a concept of art
tion. It stood in the Orangerie close to the Stadtschloss in that had come to be seen as old hat. From now on, art was not
Kassel as part of documenta VIII. The “seduction,” it sug- merely to be looked at: it was also to be experienced. In 1998 the
gested, was the car itself – or rather its character as a com- French curator Nicolas Bourriaud identified this as a genre that
modity and the form of its presentation. The vehicle revolved he termed esthétique relationelle, according to which the striving
slowly on a gleaming platform erected by a car dealership, before for immediate relevance to everyday life can also find expression
the admiring gaze of its spectators. The dark blue metallic body- in the fact that “designed” objects from our lives find their way into
work appeared cool and understated, the clean lines seemed a per- the exhibition context. Yet the aspiration of autonomous art to infect fit for this cathedral of art. In fact, the work broke with estab- filtrate people’s lives was not invented during that decade. It was a
lished conventions of presentation, and must surely have been seen feature of the classical avant-garde as far back as the early twentias a provocation even for the art market, accustomed as it is to eth century. One might even go further and say that the avant-­
treating works of art as tradable commodities. Leccia’s work high- gardes saw design as the realization of an aspiration for art itself.
For design – in the form of styled
lighted a paradigm shift in the significance of design in the exhibiproducts – is already at work in
tion context. Two years before the
the lives and everyday experiences
opening of the Vitra Design Muof human beings. And that, ultiseum in Weil am Rhein and the
mately, was what the avant-gardes
Design Museum in London, docuwanted art to be.
menta VIII was the first exhibition
In design as in art, however,
to present applied art as every bit
we experience alienation – at least
the equal of fine art, making no
if we follow Karl Marx, that perdistinction between them either in
ceptive analyst of the industrial
age. For Marx, the factories give
the exhibition layout or in the catalogue.
the product the character of a
Artistic director Manfred
commodity and render industrial
Art and design have long been
­Schneckenburger readily acknow­
labour an exchangeable, tradeable
in a r­ elationship – but which is the
ledged the difference between the
good, alienated from life. This alseducer and which the seduced?
two disciplines, but for the purienation also extends to the comDespite their different functions, each
poses of his exhibition he saw no
modities themselves, which are
fundamental divide in terms of
transmuted into an unapproachdiscipline profits from the
their visual and conceptual quality.
able antithesis to life. Removed
other’s ­presentation and reception.
Design was presented not merely
from the context of their manufacas an application of art but as a disture, their presence discloses neiBy Tido von Oppeln
cipline in its own right. It was a
ther their production process nor
theme that ran right through dochow the material has been transumenta VIII. The installations of
formed. This purity renders them
established designers such as Alessandro Mendini, Andrea Branzi desirable, alien objects, bereft of origin or history. The character
and Andreas Brandolini stood side by side with those of their of the commodity is based neither on its use nor on the satisfacyounger counterpart Jasper Morrison. A strikingly large number tion of everyday needs, but on the market alone.
of artistic positions also addressed the aesthetics of commodities.
The fact that Ange Leccia’s work was put together by a Mercedes The designer as author
dealer transformed the presentation of the commodity into an ex- As with art, so with design: it is this alienation of the commodity
hibition of itself, a kind of confrontation between art and design. from its purpose and its producer that engenders the desire for auAt the same time, Leccia invited audiences to view the design ob- thenticity and rootedness. Just as autonomous art became a comject afresh: as an object with its own autonomous meaning.
modity on the art market of the nineteenth century, the industrially manufactured product lost its link to life and became an
Art and the everyday
autonomous commodity too. But in the world of design, the kind
Because design is always linked to concrete functions, milieus or of artistic self-criticism formulated by the avant-gardes did not
target audiences, it has long been a way of challenging the com- emerge until the 1970s. In Italy especially, designers countered
placency of l’art pour l’art. This was a consistent theme in the functionalist design, which slipped without demur into economic
1990s. Visiting a museum back then, it was by no means unusual circulation, with a conception that asked to be considered as “emoto find oneself called upon to read, discuss, listen to music or even tional” and “radical.” The classic modern design of Marcel Breuer,
cook, in art installations designed to resemble bars or lounges. Wilhelm Wagenfeld, Max Bill and Dieter Rams emphasized funcThese spaces were configured using furniture, everyday items and tion, whereas Radical Design, as this movement came to be known,
Design
and Art:
A Love Story
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
18
The obvious question, then, is whether one discipline is merging
with the other. Though many have postulated such a development,
the twin fields of art and design have retained their distinctive
identities. Indeed, what we are talking about here is not so much
a synthesis of design and art as a changed concept of the work
within design. Even designers such as Jurgen Bey, Jerszy S
­ eymour
and Martino Gamper, whose objects can be interpreted as “fusions,” or artists such as Martin Boyce and Tobias Rehberger, have
no problem locating themselves and their work in their respective
environments. Instead, what we are seeing is a tendency for each
discipline to avail itself of the other’s creative repertoire. Design is adopting the
One might even go further and say that the avant-gardes
working methods of art, and artists are borsaw design as the realization of an aspiration for art itself.
rowing the themes and strategies of design.
Works and ways of working have thus beor perhaps because of it – their avant-garde aspirations became come more similar. In some cases, design objects are as difficult to
a central topic of discussion for cultural commentators. Most of distinguish formally from works of art as works of art are from dethese designs were produced only in small numbers, but there were sign objects. Design has now given rise to a self-reflective creative
a few exceptions, one being Alessi’s three-legged Juicy Salif citrus praxis and found ways of engaging critically with itself as a discisqueezer, designed in 1987 by Philippe Starck. Starck’s response pline. To those who wonder whether design objects might actually
to the functionalist criticism that the squeezer was not practical be art, we respond that while they may aspire to be autonomous
was to produce a gold-plated anniversary version. In this product, works, they nevertheless remain located within their discipline.
the incompatibility of citric acid and gold is an unambiguous hint The only remaining question, therefore, is whether the time has
at its essence. The squeezer comes with the following instructions: come to start talking about “works of design.”
“Use with citric acid can be poisonous. Can also cause discoloration and erosion of gold plating.” When it was pointed out to him
that the object is manifestly unsuited for its intended purpose,
Stark is reputed to have said: “My juicer is not meant to squeeze
lemons; it is meant to start conversations.”
This represented a significant expansion of the attitudes that
both designers and users can legitimately adopt towards utilitarian objects. In the 1960s this kind of auteur design, with its refusal
to be guided solely by what outsiders expected it to do, was only
ever discussed in small and often exclusive circles, but that
changed in the 1990s. Now, auteur design is collected and traded
in such quantities that galleries have stepped in to meet the demand. Today, Design Miami / Basel – the collectors’ fair for design
galleries – is held not only at the same time but also in the same
place as Art Basel, as if to demonstrate the close ties between the
two disciplines from which both profit: art, in that design establishes the link to everyday life; and design, in that art offers the possibility for self-reflection.
set out to integrate social and political factors, humorous and lighthearted motifs and emotional moods into the creative process. Yet
their concern was not so much to emphasize the aesthetic as to
stress the role of the designer as author. Their approach highlighted a resignification of commercial goods: the objects’ form no
longer claimed to have a purely functional basis.
Indeed the products that came onto the market as a result of
this design practice polarized the design scene. They defied all the
rules of functional design, disregarding principles such as the congruence of purpose and materials or practicality. In spite of this –
“
”
A changed concept of the work
In installations, individual pieces and strictly limited editions, design now seeks not so much proximity to art as the opportunity
for a distanced, reflective observation and appraisal of its own
work. In so doing, design is developing a discourse about itself as
a discipline and offering a critical counterpoint to the unquestioning faith in progress that still characterized modernism. “Critical
design I guess is about using design to ask questions rather than
provide answers,” was how Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby put it,
formulating a programme that, today, is not seduced by art but
can instead be seen as an aesthetic praxis and a commentary by
designers on design.
Tido von Oppeln (b. 1974) studied culture, philosophy and
museum education at the Humboldt University of Berlin.
As an author and curator, he has been involved with design,
art and architecture since 2005. He has been teaching
design history and theory in Potsdam, Lucerne and Zurich
since 2010.
Translated from the German by Geoffrey Spearing
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
19
R E N AT O B AT O ,
B O AT B U I L D E R
Product Design
Everyone is a designer: planning,
sketching, making. “All that we do,
almost all the time, is design,
for design is basic to all human activity,”
wrote the US-based designer Victor
Papanek in 1972, the same year that saw
the publication of the Club of Rome
report The Limits to Growth. It was a
critique directed at all designers
and architects whose work contributes
to the problem of overabundance.
S
omewhere near the nerve centre of high modernism,
Switzerland remains identified with a high order of precision, aesthetic and otherwise. As people, objects and
media become increasingly mobile and intertwined,
what is happening in “the heart of order?” This short
piece will cut a personal cross-section from the vast, indissociable
order of design and Dasein, things and being(s). For me, here and
now in Basel in the summer of 2013, what may link the enjoyment
of this promotional poster, these pixel displays, that piece of public art and those concrete city blocks? With an eye to the material
poetics associated with the grid, I’ll confront just a few contemporary objects and situations, as well as some ideas about space and
experience. The grid and its associated material culture form key
objects with which I begin this
poetical research excursion.
strongly persistent influence. It’s merely a starting point. In keeping with the modernist belief in technological progress and scientific rationality, I’ll proceed with the assumption that grid systems
have proven practical for some purposes, as well as rigidly deterministic or tedious for other problems and practices. Grids clearly
have some desirable visual qualities and ‘infrastructural’ benefits.
The question is not whether they work, but how they work, and
what experiential effects they have on people.
Façade or Armour?
Walking down the streets of Basel, I am reminded of grid systems
by other visible fragments of urban life, such as the transferable
glazed alikeness of gym interiors (and bodies, to some extent!).
Or landmark buildings such as
the Ramada Plaza tower at Basel’s exhibition square, MesseOf Grids and Signs
platz – quite similar to buildTo an outsider in an atmospheric
ings in many other cities that
city like Basel, there is immediate
share the model global typoloevidence of grids at the scale of
gies of apartments, stadiums
everyday things. Like the arrays
and malls. W
­ alter Benjamin’s arof electronic signboards, the letchetypal
arcades
come to mind,
The Delhi-based design expert
terbox stacks (of equally boxy
of course: vaults of steel and
Siddhartha Chatterjee spent
apartment buildings), tile- and
glass that p
­ refigured new, amthe summer of 2013 as a research fellow
pixel-based art, the ubiquitous
bivalent reconfigurations of the
in Switzerland, supported by Pro Helvetia
flags, a few public sculptures and
interior and exterior spaces of
even some graffiti. In many, the
home, shop, street and world beand hosted by iaab, the International
articulation of a grid emerges
yond. Benjamin’s Parisian “Pas­Exchange and Studio Program Basel. In this
from the assembly of repeating
sages” revealed facets of a modplayful personal essay, he shares some
prefab or mass-produced units.
ern ex­hibitionary order coming
early impressions of Basel, with
Once whole, in working order,
to enclose the street within itthe object may convey proself, in order to draw in a new
insights drawn from his ongoing design-­
grammed patterns and content at
consumer citizen. We could apculture project “The Art of Order.”
resolutions addressed to a viewer
proach contemporary exemplars
at some distance (clock, elecof this sort of thing, selectively,
By Siddhartha Chatterjee
tronic scroll, typeface, mosaic
under the optically flatter cateart). Other forms may offer viewgory of façades.
ers an experience of a (sub)culTake the exhibition square. Its
tural expression – in a range from sanctioned investments in civil many recursive scales are dramatized in the massive floor pattern
aesthetics and orderly urban services, to provocative acts of self-­ that overlays the surface of the entire square, the façade-spanning
affirmation (sculpture, fountains, crests, flags, graffiti). Some may clock at the north-east corner, and the architectural skin of the
be used by able-bodied persons as manual-mechanical systems new Messe Hall. Herzog and de Meuron’s freshly-minted exhibiof sorting, storage and retrieval (postboxes, wall-cabinets, bank tion building shimmers and hovers along the south face of the
vaults, all the way up to apartments, housing estates and urban square. Strips of silver-grey panels make up its rectilinear surface
precincts). It’s very obvious that grid principles have been useful construction. Yet each scale-like unit has a slight curvature, fabin enabling similar entities to be packed close: to be tessellated like ricated to generate areas of graded perforation. As I approach,
mosaics, imbricated like roof tiles, or otherwise overlapped in or- these appear to ripple like waves and unfold across the surface.
der to stay apart together, like unknown neighbours. Grids are also Where you might see daylight views of Basel from within, through
applied to generate a host structure for disparate entities: a lattice these corrugations in the shimmering outer skin I can glimpse
for plants, or a demographic registry to track gender and ethnic- only a dark opacity of inner surfaces and structural members. The
ity. In graphic design, a grid may allow elements to be assembled, massive, diagonally-offset volumes of its stacked exhibition halls
aligned and assessed with relative speed and iteratively modified dwarf the multi-storied façades of the old Kleinbasel buildings facto achieve some desirable balance of clarity, cost and style.
ing it. Despite this monumental scale, the porous surface develI can’t generalize that the grid systems of the International opment of the new Messe Hall seems to me to lend the whole beStyle of modernist architecture or of Swiss graphic design have a hemoth an almost delicate touch in its interaction with the
The Heart
of Order
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
22
A well-known anthropological intuition feels close to a founding
axiom for the applied arts and design: “things we make then make
us.” In general terms, this calls for close attention to the ways
structures are set up in order to serve as sets of guidelines by which
producers and people create a range of live variations. As a trained
user and abuser of grids in graphics, exhibitions and installations,
it remains a relief that grids cover just one order of possible design
responses. Instead, I hope to approach future acts of design as
working constructively in the wide-open zone between physics and
metaphysics, biology and philosophy – inspired also by the accidental, and by our
The grid and its associated material culture form key
precarious state of being.
environment. The matte reflectiveness of the aluminum-composite façade picks up the colours of the sky and merges them with
the earth tones of an adjacent brick building. It diffuses the harsh
summer light, rather than mirroring it, like glass façades tend to.
Besides animal scales and wind across water, for me this almost
woven surface also evokes armour: woven chainmail. Whom might
it be protecting?
The light dims as the tram pulls under it and brightens again
as we come to a stop in the diffuse illumination from a massive
“
objects with which I begin this poetical research excursion.
circular skylight. This opening curves up from the underside of
the building, like the inside of a doughnut or torus, almost cold
in its computer-aided-design and manufacturing precision, yet
again somehow subtle, superficially organic. I enjoy the way it
makes the daylight swirl in, and the sharp-edged way it reflects
arcs of sunlight. Almost like a sundial or clock, mechanically
­exacting but with a simpler textural and volumetric magic that
recalls cupolas and seed patterns. Waiting below, I enjoy the way
it frames the sky.
”
Communicative Tools
Out in the plaza, my attention is also drawn repeatedly to the glass
clock – this über-sign of precision mechanics – rendered transparent and built at a scale that is more often seen atop clock towers.
Here it is surprisingly installed at mezzanine level. Huge, low, seethrough, reflecting its glazed surroundings, this public clock is
visible only from within the square, and conversely as a fragmented
silhouette from within the glass building. Rather than a public service, this clock face seems to convey a more immediate public face
for its builder – a communicative tool commissioned by project
consortiums for events such as Basel’s international watch, jewelry and art fairs. Like the ubiquitous “+” of the Swiss flag or Hilfiker’s beautifully minimalist clock for the Swiss Railways, the clock
façade appropriates a recognizably shared visual symbolism, and
distinguishes itself by its play of materials and location. In a way,
it powerfully condenses the twin ascendance of the nationalist and
capitalist orders. At once banal and beautiful.
Walking on the edges of the square I became aware that these
patterns would appear as MESSE BASEL from the buildings above.
For a moment, this gave me the disorienting feeling of being
within an architectural scale model, a tiny figure in a simulation.
The modernist “machines for living” that Le Corbusier theorized
have always allowed their cohabitants more agency. The graffiti
scrawled in odd corners and cul-de-sacs of this brand new space
suggests something along these lines: design can control and enable, yet its experience can also be remade by marginal acts of
self-expression, re-creation and change, in time percolating up into
mainstream practices. It makes one wonder to what extent the
functional grid-based design of all aging modernist things influenced the actual functioning of the dynamic design-cultural spaces
flowing through them, around them, despite them.
Siddhartha Chatterjee is an arts and design practitioner.
He trained in museum design at India’s National
Institute of Design, and in anthropology at SOAS in
London. From Delhi and Bangalore he co-directs the
communication arts firm seechange.
[email protected]
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
23
JUST GET IT!
Product Design
Design is about making plans. Often
enough, a project’s outcome can
be uncertain. Ideas can easily break down
during the production process,
with the transformation from sketch
to model to prototype to series and
end product. A failed blueprint is usually
considered worthless from the user’s
point of view. But designers know this is
not true. These failures testify to
the designer’s ability to conceive of
something new.
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
25
S
ome designers attempt to liberate themselves from correct, if we approach design exclusively from the point of view
the theory and history of their discipline by acting as if of industrialization’s boom era.
their work were sui generis. Others have done their
However, there are just as many competing accounts of the
homework and studied design history – thinking and emergence of design beyond the functionalist approach. Andrea
re-thinking, digesting and sublimating it – and thus Branzi, and before him Reyner Banham, re-read the Italian Futurderiving from it an undeniable freedom. We might think, for in- ist movement in order to place design history in a new perspecstance, of Achille Castiglioni’s ready-mades, Gio Ponti’s re-designs, tive. In November and December 1976, Franco Raggi and Sonja
or the position taken up by Andrea Branzi.
Gunther organized the exhibition Il Werkbund – 1907 alle origini
But which history of design are we talking about here? The del design at the Venice Architecture Biennale. They wished to
development of the field seems more closely connected to tech- demonstrate that the birth of design could be traced back to the
nical parameters than to the expansion of popular culture and the founding of the German Werkbund (Association of Craftsmen)
media. The term “design” was coined by Richard Redgrave and rather than to William Morris’s nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts
Sir Henry Cole who, in 1849, founded the Journal of Design & movement.
Manufactures; the fact that it emerged within the context of
The very multiplicity of the accounts of design’s genesis makes
post-Gutenberg mechanical reproduction points to the funda- one thing clear: a designer’s understanding of history will shape
mental link between design and
his or her own work, and make it
standardization.
possible to develop a distinctive
position while avoiding readyBut the functionalist aspect
of design partakes of an even
made formulas, trends and commore complex history. It can be
monplace solutions.
traced back to the publication of
From Ruskin to the Fab Labs
two key works: Nikolaus Pevsner’s
Pioneers of the Modern MoveWho today has not heard of the
ment (1936) and Sigfried GiediFab Labs? These alternative proon’s Mechanization Takes Comduction units make use of Rapid
mand (1948). Although these
Prototyping and Open Source
two works, published twelve
technologies. They are presented
years apart, share a common faith
as new forms of the self-design
Only designers familiar with the
in technical progress, they make
industries 2.0, while drawing on
history of their field can develop
opposite arguments about the
­
ideas developed in nineteenth-­
their own positions, argues a design
­origin and definition of design.
century England. Beyond the
scholar and professor.
While Giedion situates design
promise of customized standardwithin technological culture,
ization and in-house production,
­Pevsner writes a functionalist histhe Fab Lab revives ideals of colBy Alexandra Midal
tory focused on individual piolectivity and communality put
neers. The co-existence of such
forth by John Ruskin. The signifdivergent accounts of the history of design raises the question of icance of turning to Ruskin today in order to develop a new concept
whether it is possible to write such a history altogether, let alone a of design should not be underestimated. Ruskin, who was also Wildefinitive one.
liam Morris’s teacher, was a fierce critic of the British economy of
Modernism championed functionalist values, as if they were his time, pointing out the connections between economics and aesdesign’s only travelling companions. It is important to note, how- thetics, and between the manufacture of goods and the resulting
ever, that the paths have been multiple. Many historians credit living conditions. A visionary critic, he was one of the first to im­Peter Behrens with the dissemination of design: he was the first agine a welfare state guaranteeing both existential and cultural
industrial designer to align himself with a company, the German well-being for all. Labelled a heretic for his views, he was dismissed
AEG (Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft), for which he devel- from the Cornhill Magazine, and eventually withdrew from inteloped a consistent corporate identity between 1907 and 1914. An lectual life to become the head of a utopian artisanal community
even larger number of historians, however, trace the birth of de- modelled after the medieval guilds. The current revival of his prosign back to the 1919 Manifesto written by the Bauhaus’s found- ject by the Fab Lab communities of engineers and designers demoning director, the architect Walter Gropius, who, flying in the face strates that returning to historical notions does not necessarily
of the facts, associated design with the laws of functionalism. Nor mean retreating to the dusty shelves of design history: it may inshould we forget the important role played by Gebrüder Thonet, stead be a source of new and daring practices.
the German manufacturer of bentwood furniture, or by the Ford
The Master in Design at the HEAD (University of Art and
auto factories in the USA. Both are often cited as originators of ­Design) in Geneva is based on this double mode of (re)uniting the­design, and they demonstrate the influence exerted on its devel- ory and practice on a daily basis. Here, design is taught in a unique
opment by the entrepreneurial spirit. All of these accounts are way: by insisting on the absolute necessity of an autonomous the-
On the
Shoulders of
Giants
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
26
ory for the discipline. At the forefront of this educational model
is the goal of acquainting students with historical figures, thus
­allowing them to develop and perfect a contemporary approach to
their own work. In the current climate of uncertainty, our design
school undoubtedly provides a a unique space in which to experiment for a young generation looking for alternatives to the spoonfed knowledge and pre-digested trends offered elsewhere.
“
project. In this case, it took the form of an installation of 120 square
meters built by the students under the supervision of Nitzan C
­ ohen
and Dominic Robson. On 12-meter angled screens hung on both
sides of the space, two films are projected simultaneously, thus
making it impossible to watch both at the same time. With the
­accompaniment of a musician composing a live instrumental performance each evening, the audience is plunged into a multi-sensory space. This modest homage to the multiple talents of Charles
An instructive homage
et Ray Eames takes on new forms, generating a public space conThe example of Re-Think the Eames demonstrates the relevance structed according to a total design concept.
of our approach. This homage to Charles and Ray Eames, the twenThis is just one of many examples that allow us to set the
tieth century’s most famous design couple, was presented by the counters back to zero and thus to contest, at least partly, the modernist claim that creativity and innovation
are only possible after a tabula rasa. But of
Returning to historical notions does not necessarily mean
course, the modernists who made that
retreating to the dusty shelves of design history.
claim knew their history. Breaking with the
past can be helpful, but never at the price of
Master in Design programme at the Milan Furniture Fair in 2013. sacrificing knowledge. Re-Think the Eames also demonstrates that
Although their furniture, still manufactured today by Herman our relationship with our own history can lead to creative teachMiller and by Vitra, and the Case Study House they designed in ing strategies far removed from nostalgia: because they restore dePacific Palisades, are well-known, it is often forgotten that the pair sign’s ability to reinvent itself, with a freedom and an open-mindwere also prolific photographers who left behind an archive of edness that defy the strict – and oft-caricatured – functionalist
more than 750,000 negatives. That collection is more than mere framework.
documentation of their work: it is an exceptional opus in its own
In this way, design history emerges from the libraries to be reright, and a source of inspiration for future designers. By immers- newed. If I have insisted on the double nature of design, “at once”
ing my students in the powerful universe of the Eames’s complete practical and theoretical, it is because only an approach that takes
works, I am able to offer them an unparalleled adventure in both into account the relationships between these multiple dimensions
design and learning.
will allow us to train mature designers: ones who are fully conCharles and Ray Eames liked to say that a chair was first and scious of their discipline’s complex origins, and capable of honourforemost a concept arising out of a holistic vision. This was also ing them even while re-appropriating or bypassing them. By takthe case for their Think Theater, presented at the 1964 World’s Fair ing up this position, I would like to prevent students from splitting
in New York City and designed for the IBM pavilion. In Eero Saari- design into two distinct halves – one that privileges the technical,
nen’s massive egg-shaped theatre, they created an immersive view- and one that privileges the theoretical – so that they do not fall into
ing space equipped with synchronized 35mm projectors to create the trap of simplistic dualism. Combining both halves testifies to
a performance replicating the way the brain solves both complex the designer’s ambition to engage in dialogue, however compliand simple problems.
cated that might turn out to be. At a time when there is much conThis popular-science project is based on immersing the senses fusion between the disciplines, design is embedded in a historical
in a marvellously-staged environment. The performance – for so continuity that easily permits re-examination. One whose eleit must be called – is accompanied by live commentary from a ments can be understood not only in terms of their mutual reso­tuxedoed ringmaster. The show begins even before the spectators nance, but above all according to an autonomous and individual
take their places in the tiered rows of seats. They watch a rhyth- perspective: that of design.
mic, uninterrupted series of photos and film images projected onto
twenty-two screens of different sizes and geometric shapes, while
receiving a cascade of explanations on the brain’s capacity for abstraction. In addition, the Eameses emphasized the importance of
the spectacle by using movable seats. The seating tiers, attached to
hydraulic pistons, raised the viewers to a height of 90 feet, giving
them the same dizzying sensation as an amusement park ride. The
promise of entertainment is suddenly disrupted by the need to pay
attention. While the show was about the democratization of knowledge, it ended up being much more, transforming mere learning
Alexandra Midal is a design scholar and historian, and
into an unprecedental mental experience.
a freelance curator. She was Dan Graham’s assistant,
Based on previously-unseen images, the film we made for and is currently a professor at the HEAD (University of Art
­Re-Think the Eames restages the limits of the brain’s ability to and Design) in Geneva.
­visualize and comprehend, as first explored in the Eames’s 1964 Translated from the French by Marcy Goldberg
”
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
27
I
n a globalized world, it can be hard to tell where design
pieces come from. Despite this expanding international
style, there is still something distinctive about Danish design – not least because the Danish state dares to play a
strong role in society. The Nordic countries of Europe are
known for their generous government support of arts and design.
In the 1950s, Scandinavian design pieces went on tour as part of
a state-financed travelling exhibition with stops in North America
and Europe. In his 2006 book Da danske møbler blev moderne
(“When Danish furniture became modern”), Per H. Hansen, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School, argues that it was basically this marketing that created the myth of Scandinavian design around the world. An updated show called “Scandinavian
Design Beyond the Myth” was
exhibited throughout Europe
between 2003 and 2006. But beyond the branding, Denmark,
like all the Nordic countries,
also provides continuous support for the design sector.
are: talent, and the quality of the artistic production. This may
include conceptuality and aesthetic quality, but also professionalism and environmentalism. The latter is of particular importance for industrial design, as the committee favours projects
that demonstrate a consciousness of their environmental and social consequences.
The classics of the future
How have recent grant recipients benefitted from this support?
This year, Christin Johansson received a three-year work grant for
her ceramics. Among other things, her solo exhibition Her Alter
Ego Universe at Copenhagen Ceramics (2012) had appealed to the
committee. In it, she had explored and challenged ceramics as an
artistic medium, in combination with theater and fine art.
This is not the first time Johansson received support from
the Danish Arts Council. “The
grants enable me to cooperate
with other craftspeople and to
finish projects that I would not
Sums that make a difference
have had the opportunity to do
otherwise,” she says.
In Denmark, public funding for
the arts on the national level is
Signe Schjøth, also a cemanaged by the Statens Kunst­
ramic artist, has received a
fond, the Danish Arts Foundatravel grant, a work grant, and
Denmark may be a small country,
tion. Its Expert Committee for
support for exhibitions from
but it looms large in the world of design.
Crafts and Design consists of
the Danish Arts Council – all
One key factor in its success
three members who are chosen
of which, by her own account,
is a long tradition of state support.
for a limited term only: two
have helped her realize the
­projects she wanted. She has
nominated by the Foundation’s
Council, and one by the Minister
participated in national and inBy Hanne Cecilie Gulstad
of Culture. Currently, it consists
ternational exhibitions and in
of a ceramic artist, a graphic de2009 won the Anni and Otto Josigner and a jeweler. “The artists
hannes Detlefs Award for young
who sit on the committees know what happens in the art field. They experimental ceramic artists. Schjøth believes that the long tradicontribute to the continuous development of the fund so that it re- tion of crafts and design in Denmark stems from its high quality,
sponds to the actual needs of the field,” says Nina Leppänen, senior and financial support from the government has made this possible.
adviser to the Committee for Crafts and Design. The Kunstfond opThe solid Danish tradition of crafts and design represents both
erates on an arm’s-length principle, guaranteeing the absence of advantages and disadvantages for new designers, who must comdirect government involvement. Decisions are final and cannot be pete with their well-established predecessors. Nina Leppänen, for
overruled by appealing to another administrative or political body. one, thinks her organization should support designers who want
In 2013, the Foundation’s funding budget for crafts and de- to move away from that tradition. “We know that Danish consumsign was 13 million DKK (about 2.15 million CHF). Artists receive ers are quite conservative. They buy classic chairs from designers
support mainly through work grants and travel grants. Designers like Arne Jacobsen. But the younger designers are working hard.
and craftspeople who apply may receive work grants lasting up to We will support them, so they can continue to work and make the
three years and meant to cover basic living costs. The smallest best sketches. Maybe they will give us the classics of the future.”
grant is a one-time sum of approximately DKK 50,000 (CHF 8300).
“The fund does not distribute lower amounts, because they only
want to hand out sums large enough to make a real difference to
the recipient,” says Leppänen. As of January 2014, the Kunstfond
will merge with Danish Crafts, another body funded by the Dan- Hanne Cecilie Gulstad is an art critic based in Copenhagen.
ish Ministry of Culture. The arts foundation will then have more She has a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)
funds at its disposal both to support crafts and design, and for in Trondheim, and a Master of Arts in Modern Culture from
inter­national promotion. The most important criteria for funding the University of Copenhagen.
Beyond the
Myth of
­Danish Design
DES IG N? DE SIG N!
28
A
nyone who has even a passing familiarity with design Denmark’s young designers have nevertheless come to terms
knows what Danish design looks like: the egg chair, with their frustrating heritage. Government subsidies have certhe swan, artichoke-shaped lamps; Arne Jacobsen, tainly been a help. More important may have been the call to kill
Poul Kjaerholm, Verner Panton. Lots of wood, beau- their design fathers, as it were. The many design professionals
tiful fabrics, cheerful colours. But this vivid image has supplied by the government with educational grants and jobs proone drawback: it’s as old as the hills, at least when measured in claimed design to be an approach to life that includes ecological
terms of the chronology of design. The golden age of Danish fur- and social problem-solving. Once the intellectual field had been
niture design was the 1950s and 1960s. As Gitte Just, the director expanded, the old icons of post-war modernism no longer got in
of the Danish Design Association, explains, this overwhelming tra- ­anybody’s way.
dition has become a “frustrating heritage” for young designers.
She has had to fight against the curse of the country’s brand-name. New freedoms
While the reputation of Danish design guarantees good turnover The new freedom of thought inspired a whole generation to re-exfor some producers, for decades now the brand has exerted an amine the world on the large and the small scale. Danish archi­inhibiting influence on the development of style and content – tectural firms that have made an all-inclusive design concept
a problem that has been recogtheir own – like BIG or 3XN –
nized by the Danish governare counted internationally
ment as well. As early as 1997,
among the most original iniDenmark launched a national
tiators of ideas when it comes
design campaign with a budget
to projects that are ecological
of 10 million Danish crowns,
and social, yet still perceived
around 1.65 million Swiss
as “cool.” Fashion designers
francs. A government report
such as Henrik Vibskov, Baum
from the year 2007 nevertheless
and Pferdgarten, or Lene and
came to a sobering conclusion:
Sören Sand, convey extrava“Danish design has fundamengance rather than stereotypitally failed to adapt to the new
cal Scandinavian cosiness. And
trends in design, compared to
although new Danish design
Government support for Danish design is
the leading design countries:
firms such as Hay or Muuto
considered exemplary. But how can
the United States, Japan, Gerconsider themselves phoenixes
young designers overcome the influence
many, England and Holland.”
rising from the ashes of their
of their country’s design heroes?
The goal of the government’s indesign fathers, they now disitiative was thus to bring Dentance themselves more and
more from earlier design
mark back into the “internaBy Till Briegleb
tional design elite.”
dogma in favour of their own
experiments with glamour and
Looking for opportunities
humour.
The politicians’ unusually strong interest in supporting creative Denmark seems ready, in other words, to develop a contemporary
enterprise arose not only out of the national malaise that Denmark attitude out of its own social tradition of design. This was also the
was no longer the famous “design country” of old. Peter J. Lassen, theme of the 2013 Index Awards: to approach the great challenges
the founder of the furniture line Montana, explains the high level of the world with creative means. Meanwhile, the D
­ anish governof state sponsorship quite simply: “We are a small country that ment has just published a third growth plan for the creative indusoriginally lived from farming. We have to use what is at hand. And try. At last, its diagnosis is once again: “Denmark is especally strong
that is not much.” With design, Denmark is thus in search of its in architecture, fashion and design.”
place in the world market.
That is why a second, more broadly-based catalogue of subsidies was developed in 2007, complete with scholarships, easier
terms of credit, and international exchange programmes, and with
a budget of 23 million Danish crowns, at the time worth slightly
more than 5 million Swiss francs. To underline its ambition to be
the world’s leading design country, the government had already Till Briegleb (b. 1962 in Munich) is a journalist and
created the world’s most lucrative design prize in 2005. Every two writer. He studied political science and German literature
in Hamburg, and was a musician before becoming a
years a member of the Danish royal family hands out five Index cultural correspondent for various German newspapers,
Design Awards, each worth 100,000 Euros – although in 2007, the including the taz and the Süddeutsche Zeitung. His areas
of specialization are: architecture, art and theatre.
year the government released its devastating assessment, not a
Translated from the German by Bruce Lawder
­single Dane was among the winners.
Denmark’s
Young
­Iconoclasts
DE SIG N? DE SIG N!
29
THE SYSTEM
OF THE GAZE:
SIMPLE
ACCESSOIRES
Object Design
In an uncertain
pro­cess, designers
create possible
future worlds that
they imagine,
test and build. The
crucial skill is their
ability to see the
world as it could be,
not only as it is.
COMING
EVEN CLOSER
TO YOU
Service Design
Providing a service
is also part of
design, because it
includes both the
ability to create and the
goal of commu­nicating. Even if it is
seldom considered
“design,” the service
economy would be
unthinkable without
these skills.
L O CA L T I M E
SAN FRANCISCO NEW YORK PARIS ROME WARSAW CAIRO JOHANNESBURG NEW DELHI SHANGHAI VENICE
Pro Helvetia, the Swiss Arts Council, maintains a global network of branch offices, which serve cultural
exchange with Switzerland and support worldwide cultural contact.
Trance Dance
CAIRO
French-Swiss choreographers Laurence Yadi and Nicolas Cantillon taking a break
on one of their exploratory strolls through Cairo.
LO CAL T IM E
32
By Dalia Chams – On the night of 3 June
2013, Laurence Yadi and Nicolas Cantillon
arrive in Cairo. The Egyptian metropolis
welcomes them with a demonstration organized by the judges in protest against
the Muslim Brotherhood. In another part
of the city centre is the artist r­esidence
where the pair will be living for the next
two weeks. The two dancer-­choreographers
are on a Pro Helvetia-­sponsored research
Photos: Randa Chaath
In the summer of 2013,
Laurence Yadi and
Nicolas Cantillon
of Compagnie 7273 visited
Cairo on a research
tour for their latest dance
piece Tarab, which
they premiered in Geneva
in October. The Egyptian
journalist Dalia Chams
met the pair during their
visit, which coincided
with the start of the
uprisings against the Morsi
government.
trip to Cairo to prepare a new show, Tarab,
meaning “musical trance” in Arabic. Yadi
and Cantillon, who live and work in both
France and Switzerland, hope to find inspiration for their upcoming dance piece in
the pulsating energy of the capital city.
The next day, the two stroll through
the city, taking in the frenzied rhythms of
the densely populated streets and locating
their own landmarks: here a place to eat
falafel (made Egyptian-style with beans),
there a pastry and ice cream vendor with
the same name as Laurence Yadi’s Algerian
father. All along the way, the French-Swiss
couple make new friends by greeting everyone with a smile and a quick “salaam alaikum.” What impresses them the most is
the total lack of aggressiveness with which
the local people weave in and out of the
crowds. How, they wonder, can one make
one’s way through the hurly-burly of traffic without bumping into anyone? People’s
movements seem to flow into a continuous
unrepeating stream. Quite by chance, Laurence and Nicolas are rediscovering the
FUITTFUITT style they created in 2006 in
order to lend an ornamental dimension to
their dance and give free rein to their sensibilities. “It’s the music that makes our
bodies move, and that’s what is then transmitted to the audience. It’s not an intellectual process,” explains Nicolas Cantillon.
Fluid and contemporary
Cantillon and Yadi have been married
for six months and are celebrating the
tenth anniversary of their dance company,
­Compagnie 7273, named after their re­
spective birthdates (Nicolas’s in 1972 and
­Laurence’s in 1973, both in France). Hence
they have decided to create a work for ten
dancers, and have ordered two rings engraved with the name Tarab from a local
silversmith. Their previous show Nile, winner of the 2011 Swiss Dance and Choreography Award, beautifully conveys the flow
of the long African river. There is something fluid, akin to the waters of the Nile,
about the piece: its ethereal ripples, devoid
of the slightest jolts, bring to mind the
FUITTFUITT style. “With Nile, we wanted
to create a contemporary ballet inspired by
Middle Eastern music, without resorting
to the usual clichés. That’s why we chose
the Nile and Egypt, the cradle that brought
forth the great stars of Arabic musical culture like Umm Kulthum and ­Mohammed
Abdel Wahab,” explains
Nicolas, as if to justify
their visit to Cairo.
­Laurence Yadi adds a few
details about their way
of working: “We started
dancing and Richard
Bishop set about composing, while watching us.
We had given him a
rhythm based on a Syrian
pop song over a Sufi beat.
For Tarab, our new project, we are working along
the same lines.”
Hypnotic States
The word tarab keeps
coming up, like a leitmotif.
It means an indefinable
state of collective trance,
ecstasy and rejoicing invoked by certain pieces of
music, best incarnated by
the singer Umm Kulthum.
“In this kind of music,
the rapport that exists
between the performers
Dance moves inspired by the shapes of Arabic calligraphy.
means that it is not the
notes themselves that
count, but what lies between the notes. curves of Arabic calligraphy and the araThe tarab goes right to your heart: it is besques in the Cairo mosques they visited.
gut-wrenching. We want to create a style of Nonetheless, they remain within the regmovement capable of producing that kind isters of contemporary Western dance. “In
of hypnotic effect,” says Nicolas Cantillon.
Geneva, we are going to continue this
“Nile premiered in January 2011 in work with other dancers and with Richard
­Geneva. We were supposed to perform it Bishop, who will be staying in Switzerone month later in Egypt, at the Library of land for a seven-month residency,” says
Alexandria, but the show was cancelled due ­Laurence. The electric guitar sound of
to political unrest,” recalls Laurence Yadi. the American musician, whose mother is
This time, they have arrived just two weeks ­Lebanese, has enveloped and enchanted
before the start of the second wave of polit- them so thoroughly that it has become a
ical uprisings. Street vendors are crowding part of them. They discovered Sir Richard
into the city’s main arteries, and business Bishop’s music in 2010 thanks to his CD
is flourishing for the flag sellers.
The Freak of Araby, which they spotted at
At the Emad El-Din studio, also lo- a Cairo sidewalk stall.
cated in the city centre, Laurence and
Nicolas are introducing their style to the Unravelling the secrets of the tarab
Egyptian dancers. The dancers are aver- Mornings are spent in the studio; afterage at best, but they show plenty of enthu- noons are reserved for meetings and consiasm. All together, they rehearse a cho- certs in order to better unravel the secrets
reographic phrase from Tarab. Then the of the tarab. They have gone on a guided
couple proceeds with research into the tour of the Umm Kulthum museum. There
melodies of the Egyptian guitarist Omar are also visits to Mohammad Ali Street,
Khorshid and his arrangements of some where musicians and dancers are to be
Umm Kulthum songs. The bodies undu- found and where Nicolas is learning to play
late, their movements inspired by the the oud, the Arabian lute. “I already play
LO CAL T IM E
33
Note: This text was written in July 2013,
shortly after the pair’s research trip to Cairo.
Dalia Chams is an Egyptian journalist
based in Cairo. She writes about culture,
media and society.
Translated from the French by Margie Mounier
The Universal
Language of Light
NEW DELHI
This past June, the Geneva-based lighting designer Jonathan
O’Hear met with performance professionals in Delhi and
Bangalore to share his ideas about lighting as an artistic medium.
Jonathan O’Hear explores the many faces of lighting design with workshop
participants in Delhi und Bangalore.
By Elizabeth Kuruvilla – Jonathan O’Hear
had just a few hours left in India. In the
few weeks he’d spent there, he had been
fully immersed in choreography rehearsals and lighting workshops in Delhi and
Bangalore. Now, before flying back home
to his wife and children in Switzerland, he
was finally making time to visit New Delhi’s National Gallery of Modern Art. Paintings, Jonathan explained, are often the
best teachers of the use of light and shadows. “There’s a universal primal way of
understanding light,” he said later. “We
are all born from darkness into light, and
return to darkness.” For Jonathan, light is
nothing short of a language, signifying
hope with its appearance, or despair and
fear as it descends to create darkness.
O’Hear, born in 1971 in Rugby, England, studied literature in London, and
LO CAL T IM E
34
film and video in Vancouver. Never having
been much of a theatre-goer, his shift to
lighting design for performance art happened rather organically. “I thought I
would do it for a couple of years and then
move on. But I never did,” he says. The real
shift in his thinking occurred when he
started working with the eccentric Swiss
choreographer Foofwa d’lmobilité. In their
collaboration, innovation and the need to
create meaning through visual design, became paramount. For Au Contraire, a choreography by Foofwa inspired by filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, Jonathan spent
many hours thinking of ways to portray
cinema in theatre. “I realized that cinema
is just the illusion of movement, where the
brain fills in gaps created by still images.”
To recreate a similarly strong psychological impact, Jonathan decided to flash red,
Photo: Rahul Giri (90ml Photography)
the guitar. About three months ago, I
bought a bouzouki in Turkey. And now it’s
time for the oud. Playing music enables
you to perform differently with your body,”
says Nicolas, who was already a musician
before becoming a dancer.
The two choreographers have been
immersing themselves in Arabic musical
improvisation, going from one concert to
the next. A score by Ahmed Al-Maghrabi
reveals the logical and illogical aspects of
the tarab. Al-Maghrabi is the owner of the
Makan Centre for ethnomusicology, where
the dancers attend a zar (exorcism) session
transformed into a performance. The two
note that “between zar musicians there is
a singular style of listening very different
from jazz musicians’ codes.” The concept
of tarab comes up again at a popular celebration in honour of a saint, in mystical circles where the names of God are chanted.
From time to time, the political context has made itself felt. One evening, a
performance by a group of whirling dervishes is cancelled, power outages having
become all too frequent during the unrest.
Laurence and Nicolas decide instead to
visit the swanky Zamalek district, where
the intellectuals’ sit-in strike is taking
place in front of the Ministry of Culture.
Dance, music and politics are intertwined
in the streets: yet another rebellious facet
of a city that never sleeps.
green and blue lights in quick succession
so that the viewer’s mind began to register
them as white.
Photo: Soumita Bhattacharya
Sculpting spaces with light
For Jonathan, illuminating a stage is
never just that; it involves finding his own
­meaning in a performer’s piece. The first
time he came to India in 2010 to mentor
participants of the Gati Summer Dance
­Residency, he designed the lighting for a
­performance by Lokesh Bhardwaj called
Rememory. “This piece on memory provided a lot of room to project my own personal experiment and explain what it did
to me.” To represent memory visually, he
hung bulbs at different heights to resemble a network of neural activity in the
brain’s cortex.
It seems not many practitioners in
India use light as an artistic medium, the
way Jonathan does. “In India, the way we
function, light is a last-minute addition,
­decided about three hours before the show
and based on what looks pretty,” says
­Mandeep Raikhy, a contemporary dancer
and programme director for the Gati Dance
Forum in Delhi. A Male Ant Has Straight
Antennae is Raikhy’s second full-length
choreography, on the themes of masculinity and touch. It opened to a packed
house on June 13. In a country where alternate sexuality is still largely taboo,
where the un-macho man is the target of
mockery and the pressure to conform is
high, ­Mandeep Raikhy’s p­ erformance was
brave and hard-hitting. Yet, before O’Hear
arrived, Mandeep and his ensemble of
dancers had a collection of episodes on
masculinity, but no sure way of making
a connection between them. Mandeep
­acknowledges Jonathan’s central role in
shaping the piece: “The choreography
shifted dramatically after he came into
the picture.”
In the beginning of the piece, the
dancers, six men and a woman, stood waiting in their undergarments on the stage
for the audience to enter the auditorium
and settle down. And through the per­
formance, they never left the stage. Dancers at rest would look on from the darker
side of the bamboo scaffolding built by
­Jonathan, thus becoming a metaphor for
society itself. Elements like these, introduced at Jonathan’s suggestion, testify to
what Mandeep calls the lighting designer’s
“great eye for meaning-making.” He adds:
“I’m used to going away into the wings. It’s
a different relationship with the audience
when you meet them in short bursts.
­Jonathan really helped me break that wall.”
A breath of fresh air
The light installation emphasized the
piece’s theme of contrasting private desires and public postures of masculinity.
For Gyandev Singh, a graduate in stage
­design from the National School of Drama
who assisted Jonathan in this performance, the lighting designer’s interaction
with the performers came as a breath of
fresh air. “We didn’t try to hide anything,”
he says – from the scaffolding on the stage,
to the lights hung in full view, thus creating different spaces through the play of
shadows.
While in India, Jonathan held non-­
technical workshops attended in droves by
designers, photographers, even event managers. So successful were these events that
Jayachandran Palazhy, artistic director of
the Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts,
plans to invite Jonathan back next year to
hold a series of advanced workshops. “He
has a painterly approach to light. Like Vermeer’s paintings, he makes light become a
character,” says Palazhy. Theatre schools in
India put few resources into lighting design, and Palazhy is aiming to correct that
through workshops like these, on light and
movement.
As for O’Hear, constantly tinkering
with light in his kitchen in Geneva, he is
excited that galleries are now recognizing
light as an artistic medium. He is currently
working on using electrodes to draw out
light, creating an interface that will project
light according to how the brain is impacted by what is in front of the eyes. It is
perhaps one of the most brilliant of his
ideas, encapsulating all that he believes
about the emotions light evokes in us.
Elizabeth Kuruvilla is based in New Delhi.
She is Books and Arts Editor at Open,
an Indian weekly magazine focusing on
current affairs.
The staging of A Male Ant Has Straight Antennae keeps the performers constantly exposed to the audience’s gaze.
LO CAL T IM E
35
R EP OR TAGE
How to Translate
the Music
Of Language?
An international group of translators met in the Valais
­mountains for a workshop devoted to Arno Camenisch’s
best-selling novella Ustrinkata. The consensus: the
book defies literal translation, from the title onwards.
By Michael Braun (text)
and Jonas Ludwig Walter (photos)
How do I get from “what” to “water”?
Which bridge leads from an interrogative
to a similar-sounding noun? Six translators are struggling over the opening of
Arno Camenisch’s wonderful narrative
­Ustrinkata. Gathered together around a
table in a conference room in a small hotel
in the Valaisan mountain village of Leuk,
they feel their way slowly and meticulously
into the idiosyncratic melodies of the text.
Located on a language frontier where
French, German and the local Swiss-German dialect (“Walliserdeutsch”) meet, the
alpine canton of Valais seems the ideal
place for a project devoted to translation
and linguistic crossovers.
The transition from “what” to “water”
is the first great challenge for the participating translators from Ljubljana, Lviv,
Moscow, Göteborg, Glasgow and Lausanne. “Was, Wasser, fragt die Tante am
Stammtisch in der Helvezia…” (“What do
you mean, water, ma aunt asks, looking at
Alexi, at the regulars’ table in the Helvezia…” – from Donal McLaughlin’s work-
in-progress English translation, Ed.) So
begins Camenisch’s text, and the translators, who are here in Leukerbad to examine the surface and deep structures of
­Ustrinkata in a three-day workshop, find
bold and surprising solutions in their own
individual languages. Arno Camenisch’s
Grisons tongue-twister is an experience in
foreignness even to the ears of a Swiss-­
German speaker, and all the more so for
the convening translators from abroad.
They make renewed attempts to approach
the text and, like Alexey Shipulin from
Russia, they speak of “luck” when they
succeed in lending their own translations
a similar rhythm and “a similar pattern of
imagery.” The “melodic reconstruction,”
as Shipulin emphasizes, has priority.
Camenisch affirms this with his account
of how the text of Ustrinkata came into being: he read the individual scenes aloud
some fifty times before he found the appropriate syntactical music for them.
With Ustrinkata the thirty-five-yearold author, who writes in German as well
RE PO R TAG E
36
Author Arno Camenisch’s
polyphonic prose is the
subject of a translators’
workshop in Leuk.
37
Six translators, one author, and a moderator taking a break during the workshop on literary translation.
as in Romansh, has concluded his Grisons
trilogy. The starting point of his story is a
farewell scene. At the Helvezia pub in Surselva, in a Grisons valley, a few villagers are
sitting at the regulars’ table and waiting for
the deluge. It is the last evening before the
place closes for good. To the sounds of the
downpour, the regulars are telling each
other stories of life and survival, of bad luck
and wondrous rescues in their village
world. At the same time they are practising
the fine art of drinking: guzzling mugs of
beer or coffee with a shot of schnapps
(“Caffefertic”) in quantities that help the
talk to flow and mobilize the locals’ spirit
of resistance. The village pub becomes a
universal space for storytelling, and the
storytellers brace themselves against the
menacing demise of their culture with
their own tales. Camenisch’s prose – with
its scenes structured in dialogues that capture the idiosyncracies of Romansh village
life on the brink of extinction – is a masterpiece of polyphonic language that has received overwhelming recognition on the
international scene. Camenisch’s books
have already been translated, wholly or
in the form of excerpts, into twenty languages, including Dutch, Chinese, Hungarian and English. A variety of other
translations are currently in progress.
Spoken-word poetics
Donal McLaughlin, the most experienced
translator at the workshop, who has already
translated Urs Widmer and Pedro Lenz into
English, can take partial credit for the international discovery of Arno Camenisch.
The two met in 2008 and, in order for the
Scottish-Irish McLaughlin to get to know
RE PO R TAG E
38
the Romansh world better, author and
translator set off on a joint expedition to
Camenisch’s remote native village. There
McLaughlin had the opportunity to listen
to, and absorb, the Romansh voices in
order to let the characteristic melodies of
the spoken language flow into his own
translation. A publication in the prestigious
American monthly Harper’s Magazine
paved the way for the astonishing success
that Camenisch has enjoyed since his very
first appearance in print.
This is the eighth time that a translation workshop has taken place as part of the
Leukerbad literature festival. Once again it
received support from Pro Helvetia (as part
of the Moving Words project – see inset
box), the Literary Colloquium Berlin (LCB),
the Center for Literary Translation (CTL) at
the University of Lausanne, and the Palais
Valais; and once again it was conducted by
Jürgen Jakob Becker of the LCB.
During the retreat at Leuk – interrupted only by brief coffee breaks and
evening excursions to experience the local
cuisine – the particularities of the melodic
mix of languages in Ustrinkata were put
under a philological microscope. Each sentence, in its meandering structure, echoes
the oral character of the culture in which
Arno Camenisch grew up. “I have no linguistic axe to grind,” says the author, “I
only work with sounds and tonalities from
Romansh.” Some critics have been misled
by Camenisch’s origins into pigeonholing
him as a curiosity of provincial culture.
The first volume of the Grisons trilogy, Sez
Ner – his virtuoso description of life on the
Stavonas alp – does feature the Romansh
version in Sursilvan printed side-by-side
with the German text. But for Ustrinkata,
Camenisch explains, he consciously chose
German as his literary language, for in
German he has a greater distance to his
material.
The Obstinacy of Translation
While working on Ustrinkata, relates the
Slovenian translator Amalija Macek, she
­experienced a fundamental uncertainty:
the unbelievably “sealed off” text initially
gave her the feeling of no longer understanding a word of German. Camenisch’s
invention of new words continually required unusual solutions in order to render
the text in the target language. The difficulties involved in the “carrying over” of
the text from one language to another are
clearly described by Alexey Shipulin from
Moscow and ­Chrystyna Nazarkevich from
Lviv, who for twenty years have translated
modern ­
classics by Heinrich Böll and
­Bertolt Brecht as well as contemporary
­authors like Ilma R
­ akusa or, indeed, Arno
Camenisch. For the artful sentence constructions in U
­ strinkata, where a character’s first name is mostly preceded by a
definite article (“der Alexi” or “der Luis”),
Shipulin and Nazarkevich had to find creative alternatives, since there are no articles
in the Slavic languages. Here virtuoso auxiliary constructions were necessary, such
as the use of a demonstrative pronoun.
The dialect-inspired curses and madeup words scattered throughout U
­ strinkata
– such as expletives like “Coffertori,”
­“Koffertami,” “Hailandzac” or “Saich” –
Moving Words Special Focus
Comes to an End
During the Solothurn Literary Days in May 2013, Moving Words. Swiss Translation
Programme 2009–2012 officially came to a close with a panel discussion featuring
intern­ational guests on the challenges of translating Robert Walser’s work. This is not,
of course, the end for Pro Helvetia’s support for translation, which will continue in an
optimized form as part of the regular support programme in the Arts Council’s
­Literature and Society division.
During the lifespan of the project, which was extended by one year, the number of
works of Swiss literature translated both at home and abroad rose significantly. In addition, nine Swiss book series were launched with international publishers, including
ones in China, India, the USA, Russia and Norway. Thanks to worldwide collaboration
with publishing houses, translators and translation institutes, Pro Helvetia has developed an established network of experts, which will facilitate, and raise the quality, of
­future work. Moving Words was carried out on a special one-time project budget of 2.4
million Swiss francs.
For more information: www.prohelvetia.ch
also require poetic transpositions impossible without radical linguistic transformations (McLaughlin, in English, has opted
thus far for renderings like “godsmajudge”
or “jesusmaryandjoseph”).
Camille Luscher of Lausanne is this
year’s recipient of the Terra Nova prize
awarded by the Swiss Schiller Foundation
for Literature and Literary Translation.
She has already translated Camenisch’s
first two books into French, and tells of
the difficulties in translating the author’s
literary idiom, studded with Romansh elements of “farmers’ language,” into the
more elegant and formal prose of her own
tongue. The spoken nature of Ustrinkata’s
language demands that translators maintain a fundamental readiness to renounce
literal translation and re-invent the music
of Camenisch’s prose in their own languages.
Translating the book’s title is already
a fraught exercise: the Swiss-German expression “Ustrinkata” (from the German
“Austrinken”) refers to the last evening of
a pub before it closes, when the regulars
come together for a final “bottoms up.”
The most varied solutions were tried out in
which the combined senses of an ending, a
farewell, and the disappearance of a culture
might find their equivalent. The suggestions ranged from “the last round” to “the
R E PO R TAG E
39
last pitcher” (McLaughlin’s current working title in English is Last Last Orders).
In spite of all the difficulties involved
in translating Ustrinkata, one may imagine
that its translators consider themselves
lucky. Although, like shipwrecked seafarers, they have abandoned the seeming security of their home language without being sure of ever reaching the yearned-after
safe haven of the target language, they still
enjoy the good fortune of sailing across linguistic boundaries.
Michael Braun (b. 1958) is a literary critic and
moderator based in Heidelberg. He has edited a
number of anthologies of contemporary
German poetry, and has published extensively
on German literature, most recently with a
book of essays on Hugo Ball.
Jonas Ludwig Walter (b. 1984) studied
photography at the Ostkreuzschule in Berlin.
He is currently studying film directing at
the HFF Konrad Wolf in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
He lives and works in Berlin.
www.jlwalter.de
Translated from the German by Bruce Lawder
PRO H ELV E T I A N E W SF L A SH
Cultural Exchange
Along the Rhine
As of September 2013, cross-border cultural cooperation between Alsace,
Baden Württemberg and Switzerland
has been strengthened thanks to a
new tri-national exchange programme.
With Triptic – Cultural Exchange in
the Upper Rhine Region, cultural institutions from the region will participate
in joint projects. For example, the
Kaserne Basel (CH), Theater Freiburg
(DE) and the two Strasbourg theatres
Le Maillon und Pôle Sud (FR) are
collab­-orating for one season on a joint
dance programme, Dance Trip. The travelling exhibition Grenzgänger / Passefrontières (Border Crossings) is an experiment in new forms of cooperation, as
three curators and three artists work
together on a serial narrative involving
three continuously evolving exhibitions
in three cities in Germany, France
and Switzerland. And the Transborder
project explores border crossings in
literal and metaphorical ways with a
series of acoustic performances.
With Triptic, Pro Helvetia and its twelve
local partners hope to strengthen ties
between artists and cultural institutions
in the region along the Rhine. Last
year, a tri-national jury selected a total
of seventeen bordercrossing projects
drawn from all artistic disciplines, which
audiences will be able to discover
until May 2014.
www.triptic-culture.net
Spotlight for
Young Artists
The future belongs to new talents. And
Pro Helvetia is breaking new ground by
offering them support for presenta­tions at high-profile international art
fairs. For galleries, it is often too great a
risk to exhibit aspiring artists without
additional support. Now, artists aged 35
or younger, who have obtained their
artistic degree within the past five years,
will now be able to take initial steps into
the market and make contact with international professionals and audiences.
As a further initiative, Pro Helvetia
now offers support for curatorial projects
involving aspiring artists, both in
independent gallery spaces and in small
and mid-sized art institutions. Gallery
spaces or freelance curators may apply for
funding grants for single projects, or
for a year-long programme.
L’Ososphère’s travelling exhibition in containers will be shown in Basel, Strasbourg and
Karlsruhe, as part of the Triptic cultural exchange programme.
PRO HELV E T IA NE W SFLASH
40
Photo : Philippe Groslier
www.prohelvetia.ch
Interactive and Transmedial
With Mobile. In Touch with Digital Creation, Pro Helvetia will support over 30 new
media initiatives between 2013 and 2015.
In the 1990s, hardly anyone in Switzerland owned a mobile phone. Today,
more than half the Swiss population has
a smartphone, which ranks the country
sixth worldwide, after Singapore,
Sweden and the USA. The widespread
is enormous. New forms of cultural
expression are developing at a lightning
pace: from interactive books, to games
for tablets and augmented reality apps.
With the new programme Mobile.
In Touch with Digital Creation, Pro
Helvetia promotes digital works by Swiss
artists. The focus is on interaction and
transmedia storytelling. Between
2013 and 2015, the Arts Council will
support over thirty initiatives. These include: a call for transmedia projects,
a new edition of the Swiss Games call for
projects, residencies at the European
Organization for Nuclear Research
(CERN) in Geneva, conferences, exhibitions, and promotional platforms
abroad for Swiss software developers,
game designers and media artists.
www.prohelvetia.ch/mobile
use of mobile devices that make it possible to be online everywhere and at
all times has not only changed the way
we communicate, it has also changed
our society, economy and culture. The
creative potential of the digital age
Photo : Andreas Hidber
New Swiss Orchestral Works
On 12 December 2013 at the Palazzo dei
Congressi in Lugano, the Orchestra
della Svizzera italiana will premiere the
“Vergessene Lieder” (Forgotten Songs)
by the contemporary Ticino composer
Nadir Vassena. This event also marks the
start of the Œuvres Suisse series, with
further premieres already scheduled for
Biel (12 March 2014) and Solothurn
(14 March 2014) and others planned for
Basel, Geneva and Lausanne in June.
Over the next three years, thirtythree new symphonic works by
Swiss composers will premiere under
the Œuvres Suisse label. The result
will be an unprecedentedly broad new
repertoire of contemporary Swiss
works for chamber and symphony
orchestras. The project is the result of a
joint initiative launched by Pro Helvetia
and Orchestra.ch, the Swiss association
of professional orchestras. Eleven
orchestras from all parts of the country
have agreed to host three premieres each
of new works by Swiss composers between 2014 and 2016. In return, during
the entire duration of the project, Pro
Helvetia will support all participating orchestras in their touring and promotional
activities. In this way, Œuvres Suisses
combines support for new music with
enhanced international visibility for the
participating orchestras.
An additional partner for the project
is the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation
(SRG SSR), which will record all of the
PR O H E LV E T IA NE W SFLASH
41
33 new symphonic works will be
performed over the next 3 years.
premiere events. The resulting audio documentation will not only preserve this
important moment of contemporary
musical life in Switzerland for audiences;
it will also lend itself to further pro­
motion of the symphonic works and
their orchestras on an international scale.
PA R T N E R
Folk Culture
for the Future
Good news for flag
throwers, lacemakers and
yodellers: in 2013 a
newly-created fund began
distributing grants to Swiss folk
culture associations.
definitions, as Markus Brülisauer, the
head of the IGVS administrative office, explains. Since folk culture is mostly practised by amateurs, and as there is often no
professional training available, the funding criteria used by Pro Helvetia for other
arts sectors cannot always be applied here.
In addition, Brülisauer points out, not all
branches of folk culture can easily fulfil
the requirement of “advancing folk culture.” It is easier for the folk music associations to speak of “further development”
of their art than it is for, say, the lacemakers’ association, which is dedicated to reconstructing and preserving the craft itself. But Schmid-Kunz adds: “Development
does not necessarily have to be in terms of
content. It can also be in the form of some
kind of cooperation, for example one association joining forces with another and
launching a joint project.”
Schmid-Kunz is convinced that the
new administrative office in Altdorf and
Pro Helvetia’s new fund for folk culture will
provide a breath of fresh air, opening up interesting new possibilities for the associations. He hopes that they will make use of
this opportunity to ensure that traditional
culture in Switzerland remains a vibrant
practice, rather than a monument to be
preserved.
Ariane von Graffenried is a freelance writer and
a spoken word performer. She has a doctorate
in theatre studies from the University of Berne,
and is a member of the writers’ collective
Bern ist überall and the duo Fitzgerald & Rimini.
Translated from the German by Clarissa Hull
first half of 2013, the jury has already approved four applications. One of these projects was for a 2013 “Day of Folk Culture”
jointly showcasing the various folk culture
associations at the OLMA, the Swiss Fair
for Agriculture and Food held each October in St. Gallen. The day included information stands, performances, and interactive opportunities such as crash courses in
folk dancing or workshops on how to play
traditional instruments like the chlefeli, a
Swiss version of castanets.
For the folk culture associations, applying for funding is uncharted territory.
But the fund’s expert jury also has to break
new ground in assessing the applications:
for instance, by establishing a joint list of
PARTNER: IG V O LK SK U LT U R
42
Illustration : Raffinerie
By Ariane von Graffenried – Sandwiched
between gigantic mountains, grand townhouses and buses, a bronze statue of
­William Tell stands on the Altdorf town
square, gazing into the distance. The Haus
der Volksmusik is just around the corner,
lending far-sighted support to traditional
Swiss culture. In 2013, this expert organization on all questions related to Volks­
musik – “folk” or traditional Swiss popular
music – became the new administrative office of the IGVS (Interessengemeinschaft
für Volkskultur Schweiz), an umbrella organization for Swiss folk culture. IGVS has
some 300,000 active members under its
wing, grouped into eleven different associations. Among these are: the Swiss Federal Yodelling Association, the Swiss Brass
Band Music Association, the Swiss Choir
Association and the Swiss National Costume Association. IGVS represents large
and small organizations, and provides a
structure uniting amateur theatre troupes,
fife-and-drum bands, and flag throwers.
Founded in the late 1980s, the IGVS
long lacked infrastructure and professionalism, recalls Johannes Schmid-Kunz, retiring director of the Haus der Volksmusik
and managing director of the Swiss National Costume Association. “Even the
most basic organizational structures were
missing, such as an office or a website with
a joint agenda of events. Each association
did its own thing.” Thanks to the new administrative office in Altdorf, this has all
changed, and should help the IGVS to
greater visibility and effectiveness. Albert
Vitali, a Member of Parliament for the FDP
(Free Democratic Party) from Lucerne,
has been its new president since February
2013. “We must succeed in making the
IGVS shipshape,” stresses Vitali, who is also
an active member of a yodelling club.
This is all the more important as the
IGVS has now entered into a cooperation
agreement with Pro Helvetia. During a
three-year pilot project launched in 2013,
the Arts Council is to make an annual contribution of CHF 100,000 to an IGVS-managed fund. Twice a year, folk culture associations may apply for funding in support
of talent promotion, cultural exchange,
and the advancement of folk culture. The
IGVS has appointed an independent jury of
experts to assess the applications. In the
CA RTE BL A NCHE
For a Creolized
Switzerland
By Pierre Lepori – Every writer should be a
“bastard,” says the great Franco-Algerian
poet Jean Sénac. Or at least a “piccaninny”
who does not “master” his own language,
like the writer Patrick Chamoiseau of Martinique. Switzerland is not Creole – its mix
of languages is territorial, existing side-byside and separately – but the country offers
us the possibility of infringement, of an
act of betrayal of the mother tongue and
the fatherland. To be in exile in one’s own
country, to take a position at the margin of
oneself, delocalizing the identifying fiction
that covers and protects us, in short: to be
at the edge of language “neither in it nor
outside of it, on the unlocatable line of its
slope” (Jacques Derrida). Even in a tamed
and regimented Confederation, writing
has, perhaps, this – residual – power of
braving boundaries, of crushing legacies
with the madness of a Louis Wolfson, that
“student of schizophrenic languages,” who,
in 1970, wrote a novel fleeing his mother’s
language to confront it with “whole words
ideally irreducible, at once liquid and continuous” (Gilles Deleuze).
We have the good fortune to live in a
little patch of Europe where translation is
a necessary practice, a communitarian
respiration, but we must not mistake our
situation: “Opposed to the idea of an equalizing translation – proceeding by carry-overs, by lateral equivalence – stands
the joy of a respiratorial translation, idiotic and descending into the idiotic body,
into the incomprehensible matter of each
language (…). It is the experience of a voyage into the great well of memory and
oblivion” (Valère Novarina).
In my experience – and perhaps in
yours as well – there are several linguistic
strata: echoes of the Marche and the
Veneto, where my maternal grandparents
came from; the dialect of the Ticino valleys
on my father’s side, then the Italian of my
school days and my studies in Florence; in
Berne, later, there was German; and for the
last fifteen years, the French of Lausanne.
It was thus inevitable for me, once I became
a writer, to ask myself the question of language: neither from here nor from elsewhere, not quite a migrant (with the attendant woes), I was able to exile myself more
and more from the certainty of a monolithic language. Thus the need to translate
myself, to betray myself by constantly betraying my origins (in the bastard sonorities of a Francophone with an Italian accent). And to stop trying to opt for one
single language.
Is there a fundamental difference between writing in one’s mother tongue or in
another? Between translating others and
translating yourself? I don’t think so, unless you hold a moralizing idea of translation. The philosopher Arno Renken has devoted an important study to the concept of
“amoral” translation: Happy Babel (Babel
heureuse). His subtle argument: “The experience (of translation) is not a fixation to
cling to, but rather a destabilization to be
embraced. If so much of the discourse
slaves away with all the trappings of necessity and morals to render the translation
indistinguishable from the original, if so
many try so hard to appropriate it with
great strokes of “accuracy,” “fidelity” or
“adequacy,” perhaps it is only to suppress
CAR T E B LANCH E
43
the anxiety that translation inscribes in
the literary and philosophical order.”
To transgress monolingualism is to
affirm the perpetual motion of language,
the freedom that stumbles at each step, at
each word, that spills over to invent stammering worlds. A utopian idea? Yes, but…
Let us not forget that fifty percent of the
world’s population is already, de facto, bilingual or multilingual (as David Bellos
­reminds us). Let us creolize Switzerland,
then, embracing our uncertainties and our
transgressions, and the multiple languages
that criss-cross and weave together the
space we live in.
Pierre Lepori was born in Lugano and lives
in Lausanne, where he works for Swiss public
radio’s French- and Italian-speaking pro­grammes. A novelist and a poet, he translates
himself and others. His most recent book,
Sans peau (Without Skin), is the French version of his first novel, Grisù (Casagrande, 2007).
Illustration: FLAG Aubry / Broquard
Translated from the French by Bruce Lawder
G ALLE R Y
44
GA LLERY
Omar Ba
Délit de Faciès 1, 2013 (detail)
Oil, gouache, ink and pencil on corrugated
cardboard, 210 × 150 cm
The universe conjured up by the Geneva-­
based artist Omar Ba is at once tender and
forbidding. Mysterious creatures, somewhere
between dream and reality, haunt blackpainted cardboard backgrounds. References
to contemporary politics mingle with iconographic beauty; European visual styles are
combined with African symbols. These dark
paintings tell of powerlessness, fear and
hope, and invoke the invisible. With their archaic energy, they are able to move the spectator, while demanding close inspection and
further reflection.
This detail from the painting Délit de
Faciès 1 (“facial discrimination 1”) shows a
figure with closed eyes in the foreground. Is
this a refusal to look at what is happening?
In the background, two further figures are
half-hidden in an ornamental landscape,
­embodying power and violence. Soldiers and
despots are frequent figures in Omar Ba’s
work, which unites the history of the African
continent with the social realities of the present time.
Omar Ba was born in 1977 in Loul Sessène, Senegal. He lives and works in Geneva.
He was the 2011 winner of the Swiss Art
Award. His work has been exhibited throughout Switzerland, most recently in a joint show
with the Swiss artist Claudia Comte at the
Centre PasquArt in Biel. He has also participated in exhibitions in Paris, London, New
York and Miami.
www.bartschi.ch
In each Passages issue, Gallery presents a work by
a Swiss artist.
G ALLE R Y
45
Passages, the magazine of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, reports on Swiss art and culture
and on cultural exchanges between Switzerland and the rest of the world. Passages appears two
times a year in 60 countries – in German, French and English.
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The next issue of Passages will focus
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June 2014.
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Here and There:
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No. 60
Here and There
Art, Society and Migration
Surrealism, Poetry and Acrobatics: Daniele Finzi Pasca in Montreal
Venice Biennale: Valentin Carron at the Swiss Pavilion
Warsaw: Surveillance and the Stage
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Dream Job: Artist
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The Taste of Freedom
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Performance:
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Performance
Body, Time and Space
Dan Bau Meets Schwyzerörgeli: A Swiss-Vietnamese Premiere in Giswil
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IM PR E SSU M
47
Devouring a pizza with greasy
­fingers while using a high-tech laptop,
riding a bike in traffic while text
messaging on a smartphone: not only
do they not go together, they are
­mutually exclusive.
Of Pizzas and Laptops
Volker Albus, p. 6
A comprehensive design approach is not a
waste of time or money, but holds the key
to success in today’s globalized and increasingly
fragmented market.
Design in Global Competition
Dominic Sturm,p. 12
One of the most important qualities for a designer
is the ability to question everything and to think
differently.
The Precarious Creative Process
Claudia Mareis, Interview by Meret Ernst, p. 8
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Pro Helvetia supports and promotes Swiss culture in Switzerland and throughout the world.