May is starting out with a big bang this month is jumping with loads of of art and design fairs and festivals all over NYC. The second week in May 8-19th starts off with a bang—it’s NYCX DESIGN loads of events taking place in Industrial City in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Next up is WantedDesignNY and ICFF both take place from May 15th-19th, and luckily you can walk between the two venues. Since WantedDesign is happening in two locations they visitors can take the shuttle bus running between both locations.
Did I mention Art Fairs happening this weekend too, for the time ART FLUX in Harlem opens at the newly renovated Corn exchange Building on 125th Street. And if you love eating make sure to check out HARLEM EATUP both are surely to attracts loads of hungry people all eager to experience art and chow down at the best restaurants in the neighborhood.
Inside Out. Polish Graphic Design in the Making: From a pencil sketch to the final click – graphic design and illustrations in the making organized Culture.pl will present a extraordinary exhibition of works by Polish designers and illustrators during WantedDesign festival from 15th to 18th May, 2015 in New York. The curators of this stand out exhibition focus not just on the final product: a poster, a book, a dress, a plate or a package, but also on the process of the product’s development.
Spare Beats is back with loads of fun happenings in a city near you somewhere on this planet. It’s always fun to trove my city streets, plumb the web, twitter, FB or nag friends for what’s happening in design, fashion, art, urbanism, product design or makers tinkering with technology, or anything that holds my fleeting busy eyes.
The Austrian Pop-Up Store opens this Wednesday, October 5, running through October 19 at the Openhouse Gallery, 201 Mulberry Street in NYC. While browsing around looking at the stunning art and architecture, and listening to classical music and if you’re crazed for sweets stop by the Austrian Delicatessen section for some tasty treats from the Vienna Cookie Company. Oh did I mention Vienna Cookie Company is owned my good friend Heidi Riegler. For listing of more pop-up events from book reading,films or wine tastings check out: Austria Pop-Up
Double ExhibitionNick Cave/ Ever-After, newest body of work now showing at the Jack Shainman Gallery, and “For Now” features his Soundsuits is showing concurrently at the Mary Boone Gallery. Francesca Granata wrote an insightful review on Nick Cave’s show, which opened during Fashion Week in NYC. Granata boasted Nick Cave’s new show were more interesting than Fashion Week. I tend to agree with Francesca Granata , but perhaps I’m just a little bias. Both shows run until November 22, so check them out I guarantee you’ll walk away smiling. For more read FashionProjects.org.
FILMS: Museum of Art and Design: SION Sono: The New Poet Japanese Film series is happening this month.
Sono makes his mark by mining the much overlooked cultural artifacts if his time. This film series is running from October 7th through November 11th, MAD is proud to present the first American survey of this complex international voice that continues to break down the marginalization of genre filmmaking to poetically reveal the human heart beating underneath. Click here for the full list of Film Events: MAD Films
GLIDE’12 rev’s up planning for the next symposium promises to surely be loaded with stellar presenters and topics. If you are interested in receiving information just leave me a comment, I’ll add you to our contact database. For now you’ll just have to settle for reading advisory board member Gloria Gomez’s review on GLIDE’10. The compelling and exciting work that was presented at GLIDE’10 can make designers feel proud of the powerful design contributions we can make to society on a global scale. The presentations mainly represented work on the facilitation, consequences, and challenges of cross-cultural collaboration in indigenous and underserved communities, and the effect of such on human/user experience. This review summarizes the conference facts, the conference schedule as well as discusses the presentations, blogging comments, and the virtual conference format. The review ends with concluding remarks and a summary of each presentation, photographs, and a hyperlink to the video recording published on YouTube –http://www.youtube.com/user/glideconference.
Table 1: Presenters and Topic Descriptions of GLIDE’10
CONFERENCE FACTS
GLIDE biennial virtual conferences disseminate cutting-edge research on global interaction in design. The virtual format bridges cultural and geographic divides in an eco-friendly manner. Truly interdisciplinary, GLIDE’s review committee invite submissions from design and design-related disciplines including: art, architecture, human-computer interaction, communication, information technology, computer science, and STEM disciplines. The first GLIDE’08 conference was held on October 22, 2008 and details can be found at http://www.glide08.org/.
Coming in March Black Studies in Art & Design Education Conference at the The New School
March 26th-27th 2011. Two Day Conference on interdisciplinary conference on Black Studies in Art and Design Education, featuring speakers from art, fashion. architecture, urban planning, art and design history and theory. Organised by Coco Fusco and Yvonne Watkins, Parsons The New School for Design, New York. Presenters include: Craig Wilkins, University of Michigan; Mabel Wilson, Columbia University; Noel Mayo, Ohio State; Carol Tulloch, Chelsea College of Art and Design; Jennifer Gonzales, North Carolina State University; Michele Y. Washington, School of Visual Arts; Kim Piner, School of the Arts Institute of Chicago; Noliwe Rooks, Princeton University; Clyde Johnson MICA are amongst the list of designers, cultural and design critics, and educators presenters.
The conference is intended to be a forum for reflection on the troubling gap between the notable significance of Black creativity in global culture and its lack of presence in art and design education. The goal of the conference is to elaborate and assess strategies of reform that would diversify curricular offerings and thus improve education for all art and design students while simultaneously generating a more supportive environment for Black students and faculty.
Scholars and practitioners in Fine Arts, Industrial Design, Fashion Design, Architecture, Urban Planning and Art and Design History and Theory will engage in an interdisciplinary discussion about the challenges involved in rethinking curriculum, engaging with historically disenfranchised communities, and recruiting and retaining Black students and faculty. The conference will also feature two keynote speeches by prominent members of the fields under figures whose efforts have been central to diversifying the many fields that comprise art and design studies. Panels will address the following topics: rethinking art and design theory and history courses in light of the global influence of cultures of the African diaspora; curricular reform in practical courses of art and design; strategies of engagement with black communities; Black student experiences in art and design schools; and the specific challenges of recruiting and retaining Black students and faculty in school of art and design.
FOODAM is a meeting point between the world of Art, Food and Design.
It lives in the whole city who becomes a place of exploration, exposure and debate on the future and innovation of food, its imaginary and its apparatus.
Send us your idea about the future of food. It could be a product or a prototype, a book or a infographic, a website or a process, a taste or a scenario, a restaurant or a recipie. Food talks about our life. Its future will change our world.
This coming spring make sure to check-out another spectacular symposium by the photographer/Historian Debra Willis, chair of the Photography department of New York University, she’s planned another informative two-day symposium. How she does I’ll never know, but I’m grateful for Debra Willis’s non-stop commitment in keeping the dialog of black visual culture in the forefront. The Beauty and Fashion: The Portrait Symposiumwill take place at New York University/Tisch School of the Arts in 02-03, April 2011. Presenters include a stellar group of black scholars, artist, cultural critics, curators and writers all in one setting to discuss what is sure to be an intellectually stimulating conversation on race, sex, gender and the body. And best of all it’s free.
For more information contact: POSINGBEAUTY2011@GMAIL.COM
After following these writers since my college days, I can’t wait to see this conversational duo, Fran Lebowitz and Toni Morrison, featured Monday, 22 November on HBO, in ‘Public Speaking,’ directed by Martin Scorsese.
There aren’t a whole lot of job openings these days for philosophers, public wits and raconteurs. Fran Lebowitz pretty much has the monopoly to herself.
As recorded by no less than director Martin Scorsese in his new HBO documentary ‘Public Speaking’ (which debuts Nov. 22), Lebowitz is the last of a breed that once included such sparkling conversationalists as Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Oscar Levant, Jack Paar, Truman Capote, William F. Buckley, James Baldwin and others who could dine out on their witticisms and pontifications. read more on TVSQUAD.com
by Michele Y. Washington Click to hear Ron Eglash’s presentation.
Our final keynote speaker brilliantly closed out GLIDE10 on his continuous investigation on Culture and Science in the sphere of indigenous and vernacular cultures existing within the United States ethnic communities such as Asian, Latin American and African American. Ron gives an in-depth explanation of global indigenous cultures to dispel numerous myths that exist of such groups as being backwards, primitive and illiterate. This raises several fundamental issues of cultural sensitivity, and he provides specific examples from one project featured on his website on the process of mapping out Native American asymmetrical and symmetrical beading systems. For another project you can sample an example of African Architectural typology replicated through the application of African Fractals, an organic branching structure referencing nature.
This African Fractals project offers clear cut examples of his teaching methods applied in the cultural significance of the ancestral origins of cornrows for Black American students in high schools. His goal was to challenge the students to investigate the issues that surrounded the Black Transatlantic Slave Trade to the Americas and Caribbean, students were able to identify hygiene, resistance, retaining ones culture identity linking their own cornrow hairstyles to its origins. Other examples of paring the musicality of Hip-hop provide a broader sensibility of the connection as to why they wear this hairstyle. He’s developed a computation where he feeds in various iterations of how many plaits are in one braid. According to Ron, such concepts can be applied to other ethnic groups to gain a better understanding of the ancestral heritage. The Cultural expression opens the door to engage students to consider the various modalities of the design patterns replicated by cornrow hairstyles, which blurs the line between indigenous and vernacular design. He also looks at graffiti as a form of vernacular stereotyping. Ends his talk on Puerto Rican youth rooted to challenge the students through mathematical computation of Spanish music through rhythms and beats of the music. Summary of what limits racial intelligence, he states, while no one wants to talk about it, the thoughts loom in the back of many educators and peoples mind.
What part of collective memory fuels some of this iconic bead work, rug design, totems that are also evident in other global cultures such as Africans, Aboriginal, India, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries?
Defeating myths of cultural determinism
Using mathematics to bridge cultural gaps
Making cultural capital more available to its owners (individuals) Educational capital
Looking at new forms of hybridity for learning Peace and social justice efforts Environmental sustainability
Making contributions to mathematics, and inspirations Challenges:
Not all modeling of culture involves translation of indigenous or vernacular knowledge. Ethnomath: provide more evidences of application of knowledge Interesting concept over cultural ownership of whose holds on to authentic cultural heritage for example, Shawnee Native Americans. Alternative methods for kids to go from consumers to producers, makers by apply the discovery as a learning method.
GLIDE10: Fabiola Berdiel + Cynthia Lawson Development through Empowerment, Entrepreneurship, and Design presenters brings us up-to-date on Parsons School of Design ongoing mission of incorporating social responsibility in to learning processes as applied to several design disciplines such as product, architecture and more.
One great aspect of Parsons School of Design program is there hybridity of bringing students together from various disciplines to share information to build stronger coherent knowledge bases. The challenge is instructors function as facilitators, this mode of teaching forces the students to take a more interactive role to immerse themselves fully in there projects, and learn new platforms of studying beyond formal and informal methods of learning. Students also have the opportunity to acquire primary research through traveling to developing/emerging countries and explore various modes of practices while interacting with local people, investigating new materials and methods to enhance new ways of design thinking. This provides the student with practical and hands-on experiences to build a diverse dialog rooted in social and cultural constructs not available by just sitting in a classroom or surfing the internet.
Questions: I’m curious how the outcomes are measured by the students each semester? When the students interact with other cultures through travels, how does this figure into the collaborative process? How do these other ethnic cultures respond to the presences of your students?
I love the concept of students taking on the role of facilitators as a shared experience with this projects. How does this method evolve from semester to semester? Do the students view themselves as real agents of change? If so what are some of the outcomes?
What are the draws backs of the participatory process in this model of learning?
Susana Barreto presents her paper on the recent phenomenon of global design targeted at international markets, and the criticism of these scenarios which can create problems as they take a strong hold in the ethical models of international environments. She is vehement about how graphic designers need to move forward in this area and why designers need to develop new models and methodologies for global design markets, and not replicate methods being used by other design disciplines.
Does the keyword global design bring up issues of buzz words, while ignoring the specificity of cultures they are proposing to develop by lumping people together.
QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER:
What does Global Design mean to you?
Do designers need to apply the same techniques practiced by cultural anthropologists or ethnographer’s?
Susana discussion brings forth numerous questions, why are designers quickly latching onto clients seeking to globally expand into new markets?
Is global design another form of corporate colonization?
Susana discusses, the issues surrounding the existence of Darling toothpaste was once called Darkie toothpaste featuring negative stereotype of blackface minstrels.
Why are such ethnic stereotypes still used to sell products?
Let’s not forget Nikes sneaker design featuring the word “ALLAH,” inscribed on the back of the shoes. While Nike assumed they were being hip by there stylishly rendering of the word “Nike” in reality it was “Allah.”
Can you speak about the early 1990s controversial Benetton campaign created by photographer Oliveri Toscani, such as two young girls portrayal of angel and devil, and how these imaged fashioned to sell clothes tended to addressed negative assumptions of races, gender and sexism. Yet, the big questions arose at the time over commerce and fashion?
