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Utrecht Manifest 2009, 3rd biennial for social design

UM 2009 will be held in Utrecht 4-18 October 2009. This biennial is intended to draw attention to the question of how and where the social is produced today.

Not thematically, but by approaching the cultural models of which biennials are usually composed, such as the museum exhibition, the educational project, the model of the real intervention, and even the communication trajectory, primarily as social models that each raise the question of what the need and urgency of social design is. The result of this method is that each part of the programme is specific instead of being illustrative, so that the perspective on the social emerges from the model itself. This makes it interesting for visitors to visit the whole biennial. Instead of only seeing one part, in each part they are offered a completely separate answer to a specific question and can thus experience the complexity and even the contradictions of social design. Each section has a parallel programme of its own consisting of films and videos, temporary and improvised presentations, meetings in the form of dinners or teas, and more regular lectures and debates.

Unresolved Matters: Social Utopias Revisited
What contribution can design make to the future of our society? In the context of current discussions of social design, it seems appropriate to take a look at the past. Already in the transition from the 19th to the 20th century, Germany and the Netherlands in particular were the site of a growing number of attempts to critically review everyday culture, industrial culture, and even the totality of life ‘from sofa cushion to urban design’ (Herman Muthesius). With regard to this fundamental questioning of traditional styles of life and living, there is a resemblance between the fins-de-siècle of 1900 and 2000. The retrospective perspective on which the exhibition Unresolved Matters is based is not, however, intended as a simplistic ‘learning from history’. Instead, it follows on from the question of to what extent a society can discover its potential, evolve, and reflect on it.
Three books – Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898); Siegfried Giedion, Befreites Wohnen (1929); Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World (1971) – provide a structure for three visual areas: Social Greenery, Social Transparency, Social Sculpture. Chair designs from Thonet to Castiglioni, glass from A.D. Copier to Wilhelm Wagenfeld, fashion from Henry van de Velde via Johannes Itten to paper clothing, multiples by Joseph Beuys, utopian designs by Haus-Rucker-Co or Archigram, Earth Cloths by El Anatsui, conceptual works of Stephen Willats, will all represent the various layers and facets of social design since 1900.
Unresolved Matters: Social Utopias Revisited
04.10.2009-14.02.2010
Centraal Museum, Nicolaaskerkhof 10, Utrecht
www.centraalmuseum.nl
Open: Tuesday-Sunday 11 am-5 pm