BNA at Camberwell College of Arts
From the organisers: “Please have your minds open for a very different way of looking into design practice.” Thanks Joana and Paul.
Off
After 6 weeks, the actual ‘physical’ part of the project is over and the second floor of the Stevens Building at the RCA is empty again. We’ll continue working back in our studios on the different elements which should permit the discussions which emerged in and around 21 to continue also in the future: a publication with a critical review and a proposal for a future interdisciplinary space at the college, an installation for the final shows, a symposium to happen in the same occasion and different possible future reincarnations of the initiative. 21 set different wheels in motion so check the blog 
from time to time for updates.
More Department 21
Department 21 , the project we’re currently spending all our time and energies on, will be running for 2 more weeks. There will be less events and more time to do work, interact and collaborate. We also thought about reconfiguring the space for the time left. We started putting together some thoughts for the publication which will result from the experiment. Working on this might end up absorbing the few months we still have left at the RCA.
File Under presents public works and Ursula Biemann
Apologies for not posting this before the actual events took place. Anyway, just for the record, here the posters for 2 more File Under events we recently organised. As the other ones, they were designed by Mark El-Khatib and Ray O’Meara.
Qualche giorno dopo Natale siamo partiti per L’Aquila.
A few days after Christmas we left for L’Aquila. For now, we wrote a post in Italian and German about our experience. Pretty soon also the English version of it should be ready.
Dept.21 roundtable discussion today
Join us today, Friday the 4th of December 2009 at 1pm for a roundtable discussion about interdisciplinary practice led by Andreas Lang from public works with guests Celine Condorelli (London-based architect and author of support structures ), Sarah Teasley (design historian and tutor at History of Design, RCA) and Richard Wentworth (Head of Sculpture, RCA)
The roundtable discussion will look at the nature of initiatives originating from within institutional settings and the potential of interdisciplinary collaborations within educational institutions such as the RCA.
The event will run from 1pm this Friday the 4th of December 2009 in Lecture Theater 2 at the RCA. Visitors to the RCA can enter from the main entrance, which looks onto the Royal Albert Hall and follow the signs guiding visitors to Lecture Theater 2.
File Under presents Markus Rathgeb, Rick Poynor and Robin Kinross
FILE UNDER:
Design monographs
Otl Aicher
Jan van Toorn
Anthony Froshaug
MARKUS RATHGEB
RICK POYNOR
ROBIN KINROSS
Wednesday, 2 December 2009
Performing Arts Lab
Stevens Building – 1st floor
3.30pm
Poster by Ray O’Meara and Mark El-khatib.
Decode Jerusalem news
A few days ago we canceled the webspace for decodejerusalem.net. The domain is still active but all its content is now living on our main webspace.
According to the data transfer volume, in 2 years about 1800 copies of the pdf guide have been downloaded.
Department 21 – an experimental interdisciplinary workspace at the Royal College of Art
Department 21 will be a temporary, physical space established by students as an experiment in interdisciplinary practice. In January 2010 – once Painting has moved to Howie Street – Department 21 will salvage Floor 2 of the Stevens Building. Department 21 seeks to explore whether this territory, freed by the departure of one department and the anticipation of another, can become a new kind of conceptual and social space as well as physical one.
For one month only, students from all departments of the College are invited to use Department 21 to develop independent work and cultivate collaborative projects in a multi-purpose environment. Students interested in fully inhabiting Department 21 will have the opportunity to generate and take advantage of a truly multi-disciplinary creative hub. Whilst continuing to develop independent projects, students will be able to share thoughts in cross-disciplinary crits, bring in tutors for open tutorials, participate in workshops, invite outside lecturers, join informal events and explore how their practice evolves in an open and discursive environment.
File Under presents Felix Janssens
FILE UNDER:
consensus or confrontation
consensus in confrontation
conflicting realities / common we
identity allergy
in the gaze of the other we know who we are
FELIX JANSSENS
18-11-09
Performing Arts Lab
Stevens Building / RCA
2.30pm
Felix Janssens is a Dutch graphic designer, who in 1992 founded the Sober Thinking Society. In 1999 he founded the design office TEAM TCHM, which has been operative until 2008 as an interdisciplinary network of designers, architects, writers and philosophers. In 2008 he became creative director at Total Identity. Furthermore he is an advising expert at No Academy.
Poster by Ray O’Meara and Mark El-khatib.
File Under discussion series
We are currently involved in the organisation of a lecture & discussion series around visual communication and with a focus on critical practice as part of the File Under series happening every Wednesday at the RCA. As a first guest, we invited Rick Poynor.
Ray O’Meara and Mark El-khatib are taking care of the communication of the series and designed the posters above.
Poster for Atti Democratici: Freiraum
Our democratic act consists in the creation of a neutral space in the city. As designers, this time we consciously resist the temptation to send more pre-packed images and slogans into the public space – for the mental wellbeing of the citizens. The sum of all these posters in Bozen/Bolzano generates a liberated public space of about 700 square meters.
setting up for the stop. swap
After handing in our dissertations, we’re spending the weekend setting up the Hockney Gallery for the Skills Workshop’s sequel: stop. swap, a week of cross-departmental workshops and talks at the RCA in collaboration with our friend Ana Viegas. stop. swap represents an attempt to temporarily lower the barriers that at the moment separate the 20 departments of the college one from another. Together with Iain Howlett, George Fereday and Kieren Jones from Design Products, today and tomorrow we’ll be building exquisite furniture recycling some of the wood used for last RCA Summer Show.
Here is the program of the week:
MONDAY 5 / LANGUAGE
9:30 Communal breakfast.
10:30 Jon Ang, Letty Stott and Eiko Azuma from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama share some of the rhythmical patterns they learned in Bali last summer on improvised instruments.
14:00 Meeting Hal Silver , a newborn collective of 9 photography students of the RCA.
16:30 Darragh O’Callaghan talks about Q-Art London , a forum for visual art and visual culture students and graduates from across London’s major art universities.
17:30 Ronan Leyden from BioRegional brings news for product designers from the Olympic Site.
TUESDAY 6 / SPACE
9:30 Breakfast with Tord Boontje , the new Design Products Head of Department.
14:00 Jewelery workshops with Florie Salnot & Billur Turan from Design Products.
16:30 Coffee & Cake.
18:30 Guildhall Musicians come in for a jam. They are looking for people to collaborate with, so come along if you’re interested.
WEDNESDAY 7 / COLOUR
9:30 Communal breakfast.
10:30 Workshops in textile and color with Anaïs Tondeur (Textiles), Marie Paysant-Le Roux (Textiles graduate) and Jrumchai Singalavanij (Textiles).
12:00 Alison Thomson (DI) and Chloë McCormick (Textile Futures, Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design) talk about their collaboration and screen their film about colour.
13:00 Presentation Formal with Maki Suzuki and Kajsa Ståhl from Åbäke (who wants to join in should bring a salad ingredient and a question about their practice).
15:00 Across RCA, previously known as Thinking & Practice Group hold one of their sessions in the gallery. Come along to share some thoughts about what you’re currently working on.
18:00 The Acoustic Images group (CA&D / moving image) screen some of their films from 2009.
THURSDAY 8 / RITUAL
9:30 Breakfast the department administrators Pam Martins (CA&D), Gail Romanes (School of Communications), Brigitte Lelievre (DI) and Amanda Mansell (GSM&J).
10:30 Linda Brothwell (GSM&J graduate) shows recent works in the Lisbon public realm and shares wood inlay techniques she learned there, showing how to apply them to the Performing Arts Lab old wooden bench.
14:00 Jewellery workshop with Josephine Winther (Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery): how to make a brooch from scratch.
16:30 Green RCA comes for tea.
18:00 History of Design screening: La Chinoise by Godard.
FRIDAY 9 / TIME
9:30 Breakfast with rector Paul Thompson .
10:30 Adnan Lalani, Silas Money, Callum Cooper and Mike Please from Animation hold different workshops with different techniques: praxinoscopes, drawing on film, pixelation.
14:00 Continuing the morning workshops; Animation Attack with Callum Cooper and friends; Presentation of 3d image facilities at Design London.
16:30 2nd year Animation students show their 1st year films.
+ Celebration of the end of the week at the Art Bar.
Hotel Oush Grab in Istanbul
An overview of Decolonizing Architecture is being exhibited at the 11th Istanbul Biennial . Our contribution to it, Hotel Oush Grab, is included in the Book of Activism.
Atti Democratici
Our friends Angelika and Daniele from Lungomare invited us to participate with a poster in the event Atti Democratici , whose third part is being co-organised and hosted by Lungomare in Bozen/Bolzano from the 16th to the 30th of October.
Atti Democratici is an applied research on the relationship between Art and Democracy, developed in a network of artists, curators and theorists.
Zeitkapsula 2009-2041
From the 27th to the 31st of July we run one of the four “Summer Labs”, which every year are organised by the Museion – Museum of modern and contemporary art of Bozen-Bolzano .
DESIGN KÄMP! 2009
Last week we finally gathered with a group of young designers in Fabio’s small summer house in the Italian Alps to reflect and discuss about the figure of the designer in contemporary society.
The week was intense and inspiring and being out in nature the whole time made our days really special.
And While London Burns by PLATFORM
Yesterday, together with our friend Serena we ‘performed’ the operatic audio walk And While London Burns , written by John Jordan and James Marriott and produced by PLATFORM as part of their ongoing project Unraveling the Carbon Web. In our opinion, this project is brilliant from many points of view and it represents well what we mean with “communication design”: by listening on our mp3 players to an incredibly well conceived and highly informative audio piece, we were guided through the streets and buildings of The City, and thus we discovered the relation between the oil economy and London, where the biggest and most powerful companies connected with this sector have their offices. We’re glad we were shown in such a powerful way this important part of the ‘carbon web’. We highly recommend everyone to do this walk, as it is quite hard to put into words the experience we had.
Perceptive Safari I exhibition at the Purfleet Heritage Centre
From the 7th to the 25th of June the exhibition collecting the works produced by the participants in the first Perceptive Safari was on show at the amazing Purfleet Heritage Centre , which we visited during the Safari in March. We were given a nice space next to the Dracula-section. We would like to thank Alan and Susan Gosling and all the other members of the Centre for welcoming the exhibition so warmly.
Before that, on the 10th of May we returned to the places of the Safari with our friends Ana and Matthias for a revisitation.
