Current Edition

Utrecht Manifest, 3rd Biennial for Social Design
Opening events: 4–18 October 2009

The third edition of Utrecht Manifest, the biennial for social design, will take a closer look at the utopian potential of Modernism, which has left explicit physical and mental traces in Utrecht thanks to De Stijl. After an intensive research period, Utrecht Manifest is the occasion for several projects, meetings and exhibitions on various locations in Utrecht. The programme and its implementation are a group effort resulting from the various contributions of curators, designers, producers and experts in specific fields.

This edition is a result of the question of how the social component – rather than the stylistic component – of Modernism could be fleshed out today. Does a desire of that kind still find expression in a typology of architecture or design? Which strategies are relevant for designers, artists, architects, activists, politicians, principals and above all users in this connection? How might education, for example, be organised as an extension of this?

Utrecht Manifest has not opted for an overarching perspective, for example in the form of a choice of theme, but sees a biennial itself primarily as a social event and thus as a social construction with a possible potential all of its own. By giving priority to this perspective within each part of Utrecht Manifest, the question is raised each time of how the social, or rather how the specific form of the social, is produced.

The opening of UM 2009 took place on Sunday, 4 October 2009 at 2 pm at
the Nicolaïkerk, Nicolaaskerkhof 8, Utrecht. Abram de Swaan, Emer. University Prof. social sciences, UvA, Guus Beumer, artistic director UM 2009, Pieter Hooimeijer, Utrecht Biennial Foundation, and opening by Floris de Gelder, Alderman Municipality Utrecht. Music by flutist Eleonore Pameijer.