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Newsletter April 24
Dear readers
Have you ever asked yourself what it would be like if objects suddenly turned up in your family that originated from colonial settings?
In the museum in Beeskow, there are numerous objects from Namibia, the former colony called “German South-West Africa”. How did they get there? What does colonialism have to do with us? Students of Visual Communication researched these stories and, with the support of the Association of Museums in Brandenburg and the ethnologist Dr Kerstin Volker-Saad, developed an exhibition concept that encourages people locally to engage with the past and to discuss how to deal with these artefacts in the future.
The exhibition “Signs of the time: fashion drawings from archive to design”, which can be seen in the foyer of the weissensee school of art and design berlin from 15 April, is also seeking to engage with the past in a way that looks to the future too. Furthermore, as is the case every year at the beginning of the summer semester, greenlab is once again extending an open invitation to a symposium at which this time artists, designers, researchers, town planners, ecologists and activists are going to deal with the interplay between nature and culture.
In April, we are offering you both here at the university: cultural dialogue and an idyllic campus garden in bloom in which, with any luck, you will even be able to witness performances by squirrels.
We wish you a sunny and relaxing Easter!
Your weissensee school of art and design berlin
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“colonial-local – we’re lifting the lid”
from 13 April to 31 December 2024, Oder-Spree Museum, Beeskow
The Oder-Spree Museum in Beeskow was founded in 1906 in order to showcase the history of the district Beeskow-Storkow. Today, however, the collection also contains exhibits from the north of Europe, the Pacific and Africa. Most of these non-local exhibits are from Namibia, formerly the colony German South-West Africa. And all of this throws up a lot of questions: How did these objects come to be in the Oder-Spree Museum in Beeskow? Do they constitute looted art? What do they have to do with big game hunting, the disappearance of Sorb place names, a missing explorer of Australia, the denazification process in a small town and the grocery shops in the local villages? And what should be our response if we discover objects like these in our collections? The Oder-Spree Museum is showing this collection of ethnological objects for the first time. The exhibition design by the Department of Visual Communication provides an overview of what could be learned up to now about the origin of these objects and what caused them to find their way to Beeskow. It also shows how global interdependencies can impact on local contexts. The exhibition will be opened on April 13, 2024 at 3 pm at Beeskow Castle. It arose as a cooperative venture between the Oder-Spree Museum, the Association of Museums in Brandenburg and the studio mut.und.anmut. of the weissensee school of at and design berlin.
Read more
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“Signs of the time: fashion drawings from archive to design”
from 15 to 19 April 2024, foyer, weissensee school of art and design berlin
The exhibition shows the results of the project, “Fashion signs and drawings: The education and training for fashion designers at the weissensee school of art and design berlin and their influence on the style of the GDR Institute of Fashion of the late 1970s and the 1980s.” In the summer semester of 2023, students at the Department of Fashion Design explored fashion drawings which were created at the university in the 1980s and of which some have now been digitised and made accessible by the Stadtmuseum Berlin. These drawings then formed the starting point and inspiration for current designs, collages and new drawings as well as for theoretical reflections on the impact of analogue and digital archives on creativity in fashion. The exhibition shows both fashion drawings from the archive and the designs that have been created out of them.
The project was funded by digiS, the Berlin Centre for Research and Competence in Digitisation, and conducted in cooperation with the Stadtmuseum Berlin. The aim of the funding programme is to create lasting access to the digitised, cultural memory of Berlin, to make the digitised data available as far as possible and to ensure the long-term usability of the data and the digitised products.
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METABOLISM
from 9 am to around 6 pm on 18 April 2024, assembly hall, weissensee school of art and design berlin
greenlab is an interdisciplinary research platform that supports and drives sustainable design strategies at the weissensee school of art and design berlin. On 18 April, greenlab is extending an open invitation to a symposium entitled METABOLISM, in which artists, designers, researchers, town planners, ecologists and activists are going to deal with the interplay between nature and culture: with urban green spaces and the networked resources in our cities and their hinterlands. At a time in which cities are confronted with unprecedented challenges in connection with climate change, the loss of bio-diversity and the management of resources, urban green spaces are becoming more and more important. They are not just aesthetically appealing additions to our cityscape; they are, above all, a significant constituent part of resilient, sustainable and liveable cities. In the course of this symposium, participants will be able to enter into interdisciplinary dialogue, to exchange innovative ideas and to develop new collaborations that aim to create a more sustainable and integrated future for the city and the countryside.
Registration und programme
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Lotte Schlör, graduate from the Department of Product Design, has been awarded an Elsa Neumann stipend. Congratulations! With this stipend, she will conduct research on: “Machine, Material and Human: design as process – a consideration of the (design)potential of low-pressure casting and robotic mould-making in the production of ceramics”.
Lotte Schlör: “With the help of the stipend, I would like to bring together my understanding of low-pressure casting machines and robotic arms. In their application, they liberate small studios, artists and researchers, who up to now have not been able to make use of high technology for reasons of cost or know-how. This technology will make it possible in future to create flexible, small batch series with a variety that even exceeds the capacities of industrial production and so empowers designers who are not operating in large manufacturing settings.”
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Ella Einhell, graduate from the Department of Product Design, has also won an Elsa Neumann stipend. Congratulations!
With her Studio Ella Einhell, she works at the interface of material research and product design on transforming waste resources into innovative raw materials. Since 2020, she has focussed on work with waste from the meat industry: specifically, with animal bones. She is researching which raw materials, for example, can be replaced by bone ash and bone meal and, using these products, creates materials like modern bone glass, bone porcelain and bone terracotta. She processes this material using both industrial processes and traditional artisanal skills to create aesthetically innovative and, at the same time, resource-efficient products like vases.
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