Milan-based curator Maria Cristina Didero fleshes out her distinct perspective — “design is about people, not chairs”— in “The Conversation Show,” opening May 28th
Italian design curator Maria Cristina Didero, known affectionately in her circles as “MC,” is less interested in art than she is human behavior. In “The Conversation Show,” her second exhibit at Design Museum Holon, Didero, a strong proponent of the 1960s Italian Radical Design movement, which combined art, architecture and technology to drive utopian agendas, is “trying, through design, to find a common language that can unify everybody.” “Understanding each other, especially understanding those who think differently from you, making that extra effort to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, is the way to achieve harmony in the world,” Didero explained in an interview outside the five-installation exhibit, which opens to the public on May 28th.
“If everyone would be a bit more generous, a bit more understanding that we are all different, but we are all human, we could avoid disappointment – we could avoid wars – it would be good for everybody.”
The Conversation Show
Through an eclectic, impressive roster of designers and styles, Didero’s latest show investigates the conversations held between designers themselves. Each design studio was asked to answer the questions: How do you communicate? And how does this interaction yield art? “Not surprisingly, they all responded in a variety of languages,” Didero said. “These languages, these dialects, enrich the human experience.”
The Amsterdam-based BCXSY studio, run by the Israeli-Japanese duo Boaz Cohen and Sayaka Yamamoto, offered an answer through child’s play: a simple seesaw overwritten with projected digital media, which grows more intricate and elaborate as passengers engage in “back and forth dialogue.” “It may be a simple object, but nothing works on its own,” explained Cohen. “The seesaw is also very intuitive – just as much is often communicated without words.”
Katharina Mischler and Thomas Traxler’s mischer’traxler, based in Vienna, expressed their creative “ping-pong process” in the form of a large pendulum device, swinging, with camera assistance, in the direction of anyone passing by. “They turn technology into poetry and vice versa,” Didero said of the artists’ “Coalesque” presentation.
Mischertraxler © Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek
Reddish, a design studio based in Jaffa, responded to the challenge through mobile installations. “Balance is a key issue of getting along, of putting the right ingredients in the system, so we thought mobiles, made from different materials, would be a good canvass for a variety of ideas,” said Reddish co-owner Naama Steinbock. “Most of the objects in ‘Balancing Act’ are made of simple, cheap materials but they gain importance, like our concepts, when they are put on stage,” added Reddish co-owner designer Idan Friedman.
Reddish © Sagit Friedman Hallel
Venice-based studio Zaven found layers to be the answer to the question of creative communication. “Glass is an interesting material, because it has its origins in sand, which flows and moves, like communication,” said studio co-owner Marco Zavagno. In “Dune,” he and his partner Enrica Cavarzan melted several slabs of glass over a single light bulb in a striking homage to intellectual exchange.
Zaven © Claudia Zalla
Snarkitecture, Daniel Arsham, Alex Mustonen and Benjamin Porto’s New York-based design practice, interpreted the question of communication through a collective lens. Their monochromatic white installation, “Hall of Mirrors,” surreally pocketed with holes and mirrors in the walls, themselves unexpectedly soft to the touch, reflect that “in dialogue, you never what to expect and you never know how much of what you communicated is actually absorbed,” said Didero. The blindingly white room renders the people passing through it the only injection of color, “the only active component,” said Porto.
Snarkitecture © Noah Kalina
The Conversation Show, May 28 - October 26, 2019. Design Museum Holon