Hasta La Ideas

Positioning itself as an alternative to the London Design Festival, the Anti-Design Festival comes to east London on 18 September. Initiated by Neville Brody, it’s aim is to promote work that challenges perceived stereotypes of contemporary design. And the organisers want your contributions for an exhibition…

The festival’s raison d’être is the support of work that is “uncommercial, dangerous and anti-establishment” and to form part of an exhibition the organisers are looking for submissions. Selected artwork will be displayed in a group show alongside pieces by designers and artists including Jonathan Barnbrook, Stuart Semple and Stefan Sagmeister.

The ADF are seeking out, they say, “creative work that pushes the boundaries of conventional art and design. This is the chance to show previous work that has failed with clients or instructors, or to produce completely new work without the imposition of market restrictions. Because this festival is completely non-profit in orientation, we cannot pay for contributions. However, this is an opportunity for your work to engage a wide audience in a context that will challenge and provoke the public to rethink the role of art and design in contemporary culture.”

Submissions can take any form but the organisers stress that “the work should be cheaply made and reproducible so that visitors can take it and use it however they want. Most probably, you would send us PDFs of work that are up to A3 in size (black and white or colour) that we can reproduce for you, or digital files to be shown on computers.”

The ADF has also suggested the following formats: objects/ephemera already produced; PDFs of graphics to be photocopied onto A4 Sheets; posters; images or motion graphics to be displayed out of monitors; sound to be played into headphones.

Those interested in contributing should email their intent to andy@researchstudios.com by Monday 19 July. The final due date for all submissions is Friday 13 August. More information at antidesignfestival.com where you can also view the ADF manifesto.

Below, for your inspirational pleasure, is a list of creative prompts that the ADF has put together. “Feel free to use them as you’d wish,” they say.

‘I preferred a more mechanical method’

‘The alternative English garden wall’

‘Fasten the secret nails through the tongues’

‘Peculiar personal sufferings and distresses’

‘The scene I witnessed was a repetition’

‘I don’t think it’s possible for me to get home now without a guide’

‘They were dressed half for battle and half for tennis’

‘Rules are good. Break them’

‘Little tots being nasty to each other’

‘Content, form devoid of function, and commerce’

‘Abandoned the commune, hitchhiked back’

‘You did not arrest me’

‘Put away perversity from your mouth’

‘The Earth will give birth to her dead’

‘People say “Now, now, what’s wrong?”‘

‘The leading maker of LSD’

‘Like a seductive fairy tale’

‘Incisions sutured under moderate tension’

The Anti-Design Festival will take place in and around Redchurch Street in Shoreditch, east London during 18-26 September.