Making Meaning
Familiar criticisms are easy to level against today’s culture of overproduction: low quality goods manufactured in unacceptable working conditions have driven down quality in favour of volume. Far harder to come by are clear solutions. Consumer apathy, the disparities of global economics and rapidly disappearing knowledge pose formidable barriers to change. But there are inspiring examples of designers and artists succeeding in their rejection of our present models of production. As the American artist Liza Lou recently explained, “The story and the way things are made is very important, it is part of the meaning… I don’t think you can separate the meaning from how things are made… if we do that, then what we do is negate labour, and the people in uk that are part of a process.” This lecture considers practitioners such as Liza Lou, Studio Formafantasma, Meekyoung Shin, Theaster Gates and Hechizoo Studio - who each critique current models of production and investigate inspiring alternatives. Time, as the Swedish artist Emelie Röndahl explains, is often their greatest investment capital.
upcoming lectures:
Monday November 14 @ 2:00pm 10C19 The Old Museum Building, Massey University, Wellington
Thursday November 17 @ 5:30pm held at Colab, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Monday November 21 @ 5:30pm Dunedin School of Art at Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand
Thursday November 24 @ 6:00pm EG02 lecture theatre UNSW Sydney, Australia
(home page image courtesy of Studio Formafantasma / image above courtesy of Toril Johannessen)
Auckland University of Technology radio interview November 17, 2016