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.
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.
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:
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.
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 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:
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.
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.
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.
