Slovenia: OLOOP - Tjaša Bavcon, Katja Burger i Jasmina Ferček - "Flying Slippers", co-operation: Tanja Zorn Grželj, producer OLOOP, 2005
Experimental design and industrial production - the two radically different faces of design presented at the Real-World Laboratory exhibition - two designer attitudes that complement, support and enrich one another. Conceptual design, which is an intellectual field of experimentation, a source of new ideas; and industrial production, which economically justifies the designer's work, have here been brought into dialogue. A presentation of this sort demonstrates the eternal drive toward synthesis that lurks in the applied arts and in design - disciplines combining art and technology, beauty with functionality, and craftsmanship with innovation.
Real-World Laboratory presents designs from six Central European countries: Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. These countries- with the exception of Austria - continue to be perceived as places where industry is insufficiently developed, and where design is backward compared with highly-developed countries.
The Platform for Central European Culture hasfacilitated co-operation which bore fruit in this exhibition, causing an increasingly perceptible need for these countries' images to change, and in particular for opinions on their design to be brought up to date. The exhibit thus links the six above-mentioned countries into one "body", but we ought not to look for common attributes of the exhibitions or designers.
This presentation avoids comparisons and emphasizes facets that are strong and characteristic for each region. Each country presents objects of a selected type: forAustria - furniture, Slovakia - transportation, Czech Republic - glass and porcelain, Slovenia - footwear, Hungary - building materials, and Poland, the projectcoordinator - lighting.
Magda Kochanowska, curator of the exhibition, explains:
"Our goal was not to present the best developing branches of industry, but rather to display a characteristic phenomena. Not everyone knows, for example, that Poland is one of the world's largest furniture producers, and yet we have chosen to present lighting - a field in which we find an innovative approach that does a good job of representing our country - a certain kindof "coping with" adversity. In the porcelain designs we see the typical "Czech sense of humor", in the Austrian furniture a sense of calm and self-assurance, inthe Hungarian designs an affinity for material and a search for new technological solutions etc.
The selected exhibits speak volumes about their countries of origin, and also about their approaches to design, particularly the varying understandings of experiment and innovation we observe in the designs in question.On the basis of this exhibit, no one should find common attributes in the design of the countries of Central Europe. And this is how it should be. They all show whatis exceptional about them, what they can be proud of. There is no sense in forcing analogies, because in spite of their geographical proximity, each of these nations has gone through a more or less stormy history, and represents a slightly different economic and cultural state.
A common Europe makes equal opportunities, butshould not tempt us to erase cultural boundaries. Design helps us to transfer intellectual values to everyday material culture, and the more diversity we maintain inthis era of globalization, the richer our future world will be."
Curators: Czesława Freljich and Magda Kochanowska.
Organizers: Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Fundacja Rzecz Piękna, Platform for Central European Culture.
Exhibition will be opened until April 6, 2009.
Source: press release