During a two-month stay in Berlin I was meeting eleven leading figures from of the open scene talking about copyright, networks and the beginnings of a new economy in design. The outcome of these interviews is a booklet that should be an introduction to Open Design as well as a stimulation of further discussions.
The exhibition architecture Kunststadt by constructLab tries to answer the quest of cittadellarte for an engaged conscious art that guides society towards its future, by proposing an infrastructure that invites the visitor to become citizen of an imaginary city and to participate in its life through the different activities proposed by the invited artists. The city takes the name of Kunststadt, the german translation of cittadellarte.
Kunststadt is meant to have a life after the exhibition, as constructLab and Kunsthaus Graz encourage citizens and associations to propose their projects and offer 12 km of wood to realize them. Sharing Transformation creates the potential for socially engaged projects in Graz.
The experience of constructLab can be seen as the very first attempt to verify the thesis of cittadellarte in a concrete way, as a microcosm that mirrors a macrocosm of cooperative urban transformation as conceived in its Manifesto.
In preparation for the architecture festival Architekturtage 2012collective ika got inspired by artisan ornaments as seen on the historic facades in the center of Steyr. The resulting pattern reflects the long standing relationship between the towns quay and its correspondent river which has meanwhile transformed into a parking lot.
“Bring the fisherman back”, the sprayed design might say and during the festival the tile-like design shifted the space toward a different appearance. Car-free for two days, pedestrians experienced the potential of this more than 200 meters long stripe of blacktop and the young ones took some pieces of chalk and started coloring their own little piece of public space.
Familie Binder is a family of furniture, originally consisting of a stool, a chair and a lounger but constantly growing through hacking the designs. The conceptual designs are publicly accessible and can be copied and further developed. The furniture is conceptualized for home assembly. Once cut, polished and drilled, the wooden parts are simply put together using a cable tie. Familie Binder is happy to keep growing. If you design new offspring, please send us photos for addition to the family album to office (at) creativeregion (dot) org.
Familie Binder is licenced under a Creative Commons / CC BY SA 2.0 licence. Read here what it means: German / English.
r o c k i n g s e a h o r s e
Venezia, 2012
As a hybrid creature, rocking seahorse is constructed of wood, a bike gear and simple plastic bottles as floating device.
When parts of the Italian government tried to pass water into private hands, ReBiennale decided to take water as a common property as its annual topic of 2011. Therefore we as well tried to bring this into our focus, as much as this is still necessary in Venice. The result was rocking seahorse and days full of fun.
Every serious project starts with a serious investigation of the surroundings. Therefore we built a rather large periscope. Touring around the neighborhood this device gave us insights we otherwise wouldn’t have got.
The periscope was also used by people passing by, locals as well as visitors. Shifting ones perspective in such a literal way is not only fun but also changes perceptions, which after all was our aim.
As opposed to former experiences of the Morion‘s neighbors in Castello, Venice the cinema paradiso was not loud, quite the contrary it showed silent movies. We started with a small screen in the back alley. As the people got to know this new attraction and grew in numbers we built larger and larger screens. In the end we used a clothes line stretched across the street were we put two bed sheets.
Our resume: It is easy to create a silent movie cinema in public space as long as you figure out how to unscrew the bulbs of the street lights.
Magdalena Reiter works as an artist in interdisciplinary, collective structures.
She thinks a lot about real or virtual possibilities of participation and is editor of MAKE DESIGN OPEN.
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