Another event I didn't want to miss at Dutch Design Week was the graduation show by the students of the Design Academy Eindhoven. At the entrance, each visitor was given a yellow arrow sticker and invited to vote for their favorite design by placing the sticker on a voting wall at the end of the exhibit.
With so many creative ideas on display, choosing a favorite was tough! Plus I dropped my sticker, so Marlon and I only had one vote between the two of us. Still, even having two stickers to vote with would not have made the choice much easier.
Now, if I had five stickers, that would be have been so much easier. So I'll just pretend I had five stickers, and award them to my five favorite projects right here on my blog. Problem solved!
Check them out after the jump:
1) Forgotten Memory. I was first drawn to Jetske Visser's project by this installation: a mass of soft, translucent crockery made out of some kind of paper-thin, pliable rubber or plastic. Something about their fragility was so arresting, I just had to take a closer look.
Jetske's main project was a film designed to reflect on dementia, a degenerative loss of brain function that affects memory, thinking, language, judgment and behavior. The teapots and teacups were meant to represent the "hazy, fragile and precarious existence" of people suffering from dementia. They may look solid, but fall apart with the lightest touch.
The images in Jetske's short film were so powerful, that it took less than a minute for me to be moved to tears. One of the most heartbreaking images was of a dementia patient asked to draw a clock. Patients suffering from severe dementia are no longer able to perform basic everyday functions and recognize everyday things. With every stroke, you just knew it was wrong, wrong, wrong... and it was heartbreaking that she didn't.
A split-second pause right before the patient penciled in the arrow communicated volumes. She knew there had to be an arrow in a clock. And you just knew, in that moment, it had hit her: she couldn't fathom how the arrow worked or where it went. What is a clock when you no longer know what a clock is?
Such brave and moving work from a student. I don't know if I would have had the courage to spend so much time in such a dark place.
2) The Synergy of Colour. Yannic Alidarso created a bare elm wood cabinet meant to be colored using natural pigments—from leaves, grass or any organic material that the owner collects himself. How cool is that?
I had a chat with the student designer himself and learned that it took two weeks for this six-inch strip of color to be fed into the wood. ("Now do the math for the rest of the cabinet!" he said with a laugh.) I suck at math, but I can imagine how beautiful and unique it would look over the changing of the seasons. Now that's a creative way to bring the outdoors in.
3) House Wine. On a break from school, Sabine Marcelis returned to her native New Zealand, where her family has equipment for making wine at home. After going through the wine-making process, she wondered: "The process is so beautiful. But why does the equipment have to be so ugly?" Which is how she came up with this beautiful installation.
Yes, it really does make wine. However, it's not bulky or ugly; in fact, it's a design object elegant enough to keep in the living room instead of being relegated to the garage. It actually made me want to start making wine at home. And the writer in me loved the name House Wine. Clever!
I would love to see something like this in the Philippines. Don't we need more classy design options for sightseeing? I can totally imagine it floating down the beautiful, pristine Loboc River in Bohol. Class na class!
5) Quasi-Mode. Textile design student Ziv Ben Gal explored the relationship between ugliness and beauty by creating fabrics filled with imperfections. What looks appealing at first turns out to be seriously flawed upon closer inspection.
Why the name Quasi-Mode? The collection is a tribute to the hunchback of Notre Dame. I can't resist cleverness with words, really.
I can't seem to remember ever being this creative or clever when I was a fresh graduate. But I sure do remember being a hell of a lot skinnier.
Wow you did a really awesome write up Deepa! How do you remember all of this? Do you take notes or do you remember everything? Galing! And awesome art! The first one especially moved me because my grandma who raised me now has dementia. And it's sad. I too amazed that the artist was able to stay in such a dark place.
ReplyDeleteThanks dear! Yes, I remembered my lola too.
ReplyDeleteEach student had a thick notepad with descriptions of their work printed on each page. So you could tear off a sheet and read it wherever—no crowding around the designer or squinting at a little placard with microscopic print.
For the projects I liked, I took those sheets home with me. No need to take notes! Design at work = thoughtful!