Lecture Days: Design and Protest

This year’s series of lectures of the Department of Design and Communication of FH JOANNEUM brings speakers, among others from Bratislava, Detroit, New York and Portugal, to Graz, to present and discuss different aspects of these trends by showing concrete examples.

For more than one hundred years, creative professionals have been visualising ideas, fostering the commitment on social and political issues and therefore have been becoming involved in the shaping of the world. Also today, many designers are not satisfied anymore with serving wealthy clients in the course of their search for esthetic differentiation but more and more question their role as creators in the context of the permanently widening gap between rich and poor. They involve in social movements, support basic initiatives and try to easily and calmly contribute to an improvement of the world and a caring society.

Luis Fernandes from Portugal started the “Design & Protest” – FH JOANNEUM Lecture Days with his presentation about
“Other Story, Other Television”. In this lecture, Fernandes discussed some of his projects to explore and understand how collaborations, partnerships and international networks to empower a new generation of creators work.

Luis Fernandes is the Executive Producer of Canal180 (Cannes Lion, 2012), a media platform with focus on culture and creativity that opens a discussion for a community of creators interested in music, design, video, architecture, photography and digital arts. He is also in charge of 180 Creative Camp (Creative Collaborations in Media Arts) and the Head of Partnerships of Canal180. He co-founded the Oporto Laboratory of Architecture and Design in 2010 and curated Get Set Festival – presenting young creators, celebrating creativity – between 2010 and 2015. Luis Fernandes has a Master Degree in Architecture (Oporto, 2009).

Michael Leube from the FH Salzburg was ranting about superficial design examples in a very humorous way to point out what is wrong with our understanding of design in general. He was talking about the flood of meaningless products and the unsustainable use of resources and that it lies in the responsibility of society to change this porblem.

Mirko Ilić showed in various examples of his own work how design can take up a stance on social inequality. He was also talking about his career and how he managed to be successful while always staying true to himself.

Galit Avinoam from Israel presented projects with a focus on the practical use of design to generate awareness for imbalances in society, economics and healthcare. She showed how doing good is also a form of protest and can alter the status quo.

The final lecture day on the topic of „Design & Protest“ took place at Universalmuseum Joanneum at the Joanneumsviertel in the center of Graz.

Klaus Kempenaars explained the branding of protest by giving examples of well known movements such as Greenpeace, Black Lives Matter or Anonymous.

Paul Draus talked about the controversial situation in the city of Detroit, why its people are so good at explaining what happened to it and how to set the focus on making things better in the future. He explained all this in the presentation of a place-making project in the heavily industrialized region of Southwest Detroit he is working on.

Alvaro Rego, founder of the privately managed Mexican Museum of Design, gave a speech on the unfortunate reality of many design projects that usually defer from what was initially promised and how we all should defend our right to live in a well designed city.

The Lecture Days “Design and Protest” took place in the Designmonat Graz with the Creative Industries Styria.