Anti Design Festival opens

The Anti Design Festival, Neville Brody’s outsider/insider, complimentary/ contradictory contribution to the London Design Festival opens tonight

After all the debate, derisory comments and national press coverage we’re still not entirely sure what to expect from the Anti Design Festival which launches in London tonight. Despite its ‘outsider’ status, it’s very much part of the LDF programme, its ‘rebel’ stance sponsored by a property developer and the National Lottery, as The Observer tartly pointed out.

It has an ‘open’ programme but is also curated, is anti-establishment yet of the establishment (contributors include Stefan Sagmeister, LCC’s Sarah Temple and new D&AD President Simon Sankarayya, Brody is now on the D&AD executive committee, up for the Prince Philip Designers Prize and about to take up his role at the RCA), is ‘anti’ design yet all about design.

Perhaps the most generous way to view it is as one of those events whose contribution and value only comes into focus once it has happened. A lot of commenters here and elsewhere have leaped to dismiss it before it has even begun, but anything that seeks to foster debate and that may create the conditions for new ideas to breed is worth giving a chance in our book.

Here’s an (incomplete) rundown of the ten days of events in ten different venues across East London that make up the ADF. More on its website here.

Bazooka
Aubin Gallery, September 17 – October 3
First UK show of the Franch ‘radical’ illustration group with new work produced in collaboration with Brody

Eley Kishomoto: Flashon
Shoreditch Studios, September 17-18
Mark Eley’s two-day event features Flash collaborations between his fashion house and various collaborators

Bare Bones
Maurice Einhardt Neu Gallery, September 18-26
Daily print and poster installation by Harry Malt and the Bare Bones collective planned to act as a record of th event as it unfolds.

Under Collision: Epic Fail
Idea Generation Gallery, September 18-26
‘New artists alongside political image making legends will show works that stretch across film, performance, installation, sculpture, drawing, painting and photography.’ We are promised ‘a collision that embraces failure as a viable way forward’.

Yuri Suzuki: Sound Interjection
KK Outlet, until September 30
Product designer and electronic musician Yuri Suzuki ‘takes an in-depth look at the at the machines and creations he has produced which explore how sound, design and people interact’.

4by4: Every collaboration is the result of a sin
Payne Shurvell, until September 26
Billed as ‘Four curators, four shows, four publications, four weeks. A series of multi-faceted, short, sharp shocks including video, sound, readymades, text, performance, interventions, ceramics, crafts, publications and newsprint’

Microplex – short film season
Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch St E2, until September 26
A five-seat cinema showcasing a programme of experimental short films curated by onedotzero’s Shane Walter, Jon Wozencroft and others.

 

Radlab
Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch St E2, until September 26
The main daytime event space for the ADF which will feature a mix of talks, live events and ‘happenings’. On Friday September 24 it will host a day-long series of round-table talks curated by Brody and Adrian Shaughnessy while there will also be shows from students of the LCC and RCA. Things kick off with Mistakes and Manifestos, curated by Daniel Charny of the RCA, which is described as ‘an open programme of selected exhibits and some scheduled events’. Among these will be performance artist Giles Ripley’s self-help film I’m a Winner (Why Aren’t You!!!) (still shown above) and a manifesto wall, Open Spike, by designer Martino Gamper, which will ‘accumulatively display both commissioned and open submission manifestos’. Tomorrow (Saturday 18) sees a talk by ‘anti designer’ (whatever that is) Jerszy Seymour, whose Workshop Chair is shown, top.

Brody’s Research Studios is running its own event on the final day, Anarchy / Apathy: ‘Are we anarchic? Are we apathetic? What do either of these states mean to us? Research Studios will be exploring the relevance of Anarchy and Apathy in everyday life, through real-time interactive information processing. The space will feature visual outputs, alongside other designers and image makers’ explorations of the subject’.

Salon
Londonewcastle Project Space, 28 Redchurch St E2, until September 26
The ‘Salon space’ will host free evening performances of ‘experimental music, sound, moving image, spoken word, performance and digital practice by some of the most exciting artists working in the UK and beyond’.

For more details and the full programme see here

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