The grand opening of the BelgradeDesign Week 2014 on October 7th at 19h will include the inauguration
of the exhibition "Out of the Box – Design made in Israel” at the old Staklopan factory in Belgrade (Stahinjića Bana Street 7 – 9, Dorćol). The exhibition
shines a new light on Israeli creativity, examining the nature of Israeli
design and asking if such a thing even exists in such a culturally diverse
nation.
The exhibition, designed by the Design Museum in Holon, presents a
group of artists who, each in their own way, express a thinking process that is
innovative and ground-breaking, clearly “out the box”. The Israeli artists chosen to participate
in this exhibition express innovative thinking either through the field of
technology or by turning the mirror towards the audience and users of the
presented technology and art, making visitors observe themselves in new ways.
The “Out of the Box” exhibition,
which includes 150 common objects, explains how the Israeli designers operate, what drives them, and how may we learn from them about the
thinking processes and innovations that are the hallmark of design in Israel.
The special guest of the BDW 2014 will be Galit Gaon, the Chief Curator of the Design Museum.
Galit Gaon, the Chief Curator of the Design Museum, about the exhibition
“We
are not known for our famous cathedrals, or our material culture”, write Amos
Oz and Fania Oz-Salzberger in their new book Jews and Words, “Jewish
continuity has always hinged on the uttered and written word, on an expanding
maze of interpretation, debates, and disagreements, love and casted doubt. It
seems that the link between the creative process, human innovation and a
thousand years old textual transition, has never been so well articulated.
The
innovation process in design enfolds within itself the wonderful ability to take
apart a cultural syntagm as an object, to reduce it to its elements, examine
it, change the weight of its parts and components, and re-assemble it so that
it would move the trajectory of the world ahead on the evolutionary,
professional axis.
Thinking
outside the box would be the shortest way to say the same. It is the ability to
observe the course of events, materials, technology, structure and form, and the
user and creator, in a way that would relate to the obvious differently, while
illuminating the links, ideas, insights, and new application. In a world filled
to the brim with both important and redundant objects, innovation seems like
one of the working, not to mention professional, survival tools that designers
from all over the world need to master.
“The
best kept secret” – this is what Prod. Mel Byars called Israeli design approximately
a decade ago, when he wrote the first extensive book to survey the fields of
Israeli design between the nineties and the beginning of the 21st
century. Bayars paints a clear picture of an external observer surveying our
work in Israe, as he describes processes of breaking through conventions,
experimentation, flexible thinking, and three-dimensional humor. Does Israeli
design exist? The general answer would be – no. Not Israeli, rather a design
made in Israel; made in this emotionally stressful environment, in an
amalgamation of cultural, familial humanism, and mainly the passion to create
ex-nihilo. Our presence here does not express a geographical, national, design
state of mind, but a fascinating cultural gamut that is inherently linked to
the textual search, with the a constant examination of the acceptable, known,
and familiar. Mainly, it is linked with the possibility to re-write the
sentence with word, material, colors, technology, shaper – or in other
words—with design.
We
are leaving the box—talking design.
In the exhibition taking place at the design week in
Barcelona, we have chosen to present a group of artists who, each in his own
way, express a thinking process taking place outside the box. Some express, in
their work, an innovative technological thinking, some do it through forms or
material, and others through a re-reading of us, the users. We asked all of
them about the profession they have chosen, which sometimes seems like a bit of
everything, but when brought together they make possible a creation that is
larger than the sum of its parts.
The designer, who is a cultural generalist, a polymath, is
rewarded by his ability to observe and question, listen and doubt, feel and
wonder – is there not a better, more interesting, or smarter way to do this
next time.