GEO—DESIGN: COVID19. Travelling without moving.

☼ GEO—DESIGN: COVID‬‬-19. Travelling without moving

D A Design Academy E Eindhoven

Part of GEO—DESIGN Exhibition Series

Launch: 13.10.2020 covid.geodesign.online

Launching on October 13, 2020 at covid.geodesign.online, the online exhibition GEO—DESIGN: COVID-19. Travelling without moving presents a digital journey through the complex manifestations of a global pandemic in the context of late-capitalist society. Entirely conceived and produced for the digital realm, the online exhibition collects and interlinks eight original projects developed from June to September 2020 by alumni of Design Academy Eindhoven.

The world is currently bearing witness to a virus with unique conditions of contagion that created a pandemic of unexpected scale, ubiquity, and duration.

The fragilities of global supply chains were suddenly exposed at their breaking points; the relationships of bodies and spaces drastically changed; perspectives on working arrangements have evolved as digital control systems have become more visible.

GEO—DESIGN: COVID-19. Travelling without moving—a chain of original readings that open up an unexpectedly immediate reality marked by acceleration, deceleration and creativity.

D A Design Academy E Eindhoven

Participants

Colette Aliman (MA Contextual Design, 2019) and Lauriane Heim (MA Social Design, 2019) produced a future scenario for the project ‘Mutated Industry’ which explores a Eurocentric approach to the redevelopment of the French paracetamol supply chain.

In her video essay ‘PEPP¥’, Noemi Biasetton (MA Information Design, 2018) uses audio-visual material collected online between March and May 2020 to point towards the crucial role online users play in the creation of today’s political culture. The project analyses two trends in the Italian communication scenario on COVID-19: “argutainment” and usergenerated content.

In his project ‘Crisis\Utopia’, Colin Keays (MA Contextual Design, 2019) examines the utopian imaginaries that are finally being realised globally as responses to the pandemic. In a series of four visual narratives created in collaboration with Divya Patel, case studies are woven together to explore how the realities of this crisis might help accelerate towards more just societies.

Felicity Morris (MA Social Design, 2019) uses evidence-based research and a digital anthropological approach within the project ’The World Through A Webcam’, which critically explores the rise to success of the telecommunications application Zoom during the pandemic.

Tamara Orjola (BA Well-being, 2016) and The Anderen aka Karin Fischnaller and Mar Ginot Blanco (MA Information Design, 2018) unveil a paradox of fragility of interdependent supply chains with “Why Are the Shelves Empty?”, while their explorative approach becomes a core to the structure of the project.

Clara Ormières (BA Man and Communication, 2018) and Mathilde Philipponnat (BA Man and Activity, 2019) explore speculative worlds in ‘Distanced Bodies’ depicting possible future realities transforming social distancing images into computer generated narratives.

Vincent Thornhill (MA Information Design, 2015) reappropriates the optimistic and opportunistic language of technological ‘solutions’ through the chatbot ‘Ava’; an investigation into the increasingly dominant role that digital technologies play in addressing societal and global issues.

The collaborative practice between Jasper Zehetgruber (BA Public Private, 2019) and Marvin Unger focuses on a transdisciplinary future perspective that embraces research and Design. Their project “Membranes” permeates biology, space and society and explores processes of transformation.

Curator

Martina Muzi is a designer and curator, based between Italy and The Netherlands. Her multidisciplinary practice extends between the private and the public, the physical and the virtual, the informal and the institutional, investigating how different social systems shape future scenarios of design and creative work. Through field research, she develops situated perspectives that are fully designed and materialised as films, archives, exhibitions and clothing collections. After receiving her master’s degree in Social Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2013, she began an independent research practice as well as collective studio practice at Space Caviar (2014-2018) using design as a lens to investigate the social, material, technological, and geopolitical conditions characterising the present.

Editor

Jeannette Petrik is an independent writer and cultural producer interested in socio-cultural phenomena at the cultural fringes and social peripheries, dedicated to the facilitation of events of doubt in dialogue with her surrounding environment. After graduating from the BA (Hons) Product Design at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design in London, UK, she pursued a MDes in Contextual Design at the Design Academy Eindhoven, NL and is engaged in an independent creative practice that includes writing, community organising and experimental sound production.

Graphic Design and Coding

Domitille Debret and Giacomo Nanni are information designers and web developers who both graduated from the Master’s program at the Design Academy Eindhoven in 2019, majoring in Information Design. Their practice focuses on how web structures and features can be used to make sense of cultural data. They work with databases, digital collections and archives, trying to find relevant formats to display the specific content of each. Their work explores the intersection of programming, visualisations and internet geographies.

GEO— DESIGN Exhibition Platform

The GEO—DESIGN exhibition platform explores the social, economic, territorial, and geopolitical forces shaping design today. It generates original research into complex contemporary systems in the form of design explorations and investigations. It has transformed the annual exhibition of the Academy’s alumni work – produced in collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum of modern art in Eindhoven – to create an ongoing exhibition series that provides an urgently needed space for showcasing experimental approaches to design research. Launched in 2018 by the Creative Director of Design Academy Eindhoven Joseph Grima, the GEO—DESIGN exhibition platform is curated by Martina Muzi. In 2020 Design Academy Eindhoven launched under the same vision the new Master Department Geo-Desgin led by Formafantasma.

The first outcome was GEO—DESIGN: Alibaba. From Here to Your Home, an exhibition produced together with the Van Abbemuseum during Dutch Design Week 2018. Nine DAE alumni were invited to research Alibaba’s operational model and its impact on the design field.

In 2019, GEO—DESIGN: Junk. All That Is Solid Melts into Trash explored global systems of waste production, probing into modern systems of Capitalism and their vast, hidden landscapes of consumed and discarded things - from satellite graveyards to textile waste via the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with eighteen projects produced by DAE alumni.

More info at geodesign.online

D A Design Academy E Eindhoven

Part of GEO—DESIGN Exhibition Series

Launch: 13.10.2020 covid.geodesign.online