ASTRID ANDERSSON
How has your work been affected by the fact that it is to be shown at the Furniture Fair? I don’t usually work with a product as a goal, which I have done here, but I have chosen to keep my Has that awoken an unexpected creativity illustrational aspects present. during your working process? Not more than the usual motivation when having a clear goal. But How do you see the fair phenomenon the goal has not been the evolving over the next ten years? Furniture Fair per se. I’m thinking a bit about the importance the fair has as a meeting place. It is good, and interesting, that it can gather a lot of people from the industry. At the same time, I can see that the exhibition format isn’t always that good at making use of this, or taking advantage of the opportunity for further discussions. Today, the focus is still on just displaying/showing things, sometimes in a more shallow way than our industry deserves. I feel that we are doing ourselves a disservice when we don’t take our own field more seriously. I hope it will What do you want the designer’s role to entail? change and become less I want it to entail a lot. It’s great that it’s a broad profession, but I think static. the designer’s role should be more self aware. It should be better at communicating how competent we are to others outside of our field. I think there are many areas in society where a designer’s Do you see our themes about collectivity thoughts and ways of working could be utilized. and sharing as a critique of the current role of the designer? To some extent, but maybe not so much a critique as a wish or a hope, a hope for something good. Even though I haven’t used any collective methods in practice in my project, the theme’s focus on openness and making use of each other, has felt very inspiring. Do you have any role model whose way of working inspires you? I’m inspired by parts of other peoples’ work, like when a graphic designer goes into a spatial context and the result becomes How does your project relate to something three dimensional… when the theme of collectivity and we allow ourselves to think more widely sharing? around concepts. Overall, designers who The pattern project took its start work in collectives or loose networks in the theme, not the methods. inspire me. Also, in a purely formal The theme has worked as an sense, I think the open, style-mixing of inspiration, with thoughts around techniques is inspiring. the collective subconscious and shared imagery. The pattern is What can you take with you from this involved with how you can see theme to future projects? figurative images from something I will probably take with me the thoughts which is ambiguous from the around openness and transparency. The idea of start, like random images such all of the good that can come through working as the Rorschach Test. I am together with others. During this exchange, interested in images as symbols. something new emerges.
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