RAMP + AUTO-LIGHTER-THAN-A-HUMAN

L'APLQL'H est présentée à la Biennale du design de Saint-Étienne 2013
Demain c'est aujourd-hui 
du 14 mars au 2 juin 2013
Cité du Design

SILK, FINGERS & CAR

DESIGN POVERTY FICTION

GRAND HORNU - BELGIQUE

22-23 MARS 2013

 DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION is a festival filled with guests, scientific communications, encounters, films, a bar, design experiences and a party. Practitioners and theoreticians, activists, designers and artists will consider poverty as a raw material and will examine the fictionalization of poverty. They will exchange views on the question of fundamental human needs, hidden wealth and new forms of exploitation of workers… The festival is deriving from a reflection between practitioners and theoreticians and its shape is offered to Master students of 3 European school of art and design. They are proposing the display, the artistic part and the festive programming. 

DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION makes the hypothesis that design is a (very sophisticated) weapon to maintain order, a practice that plays with its own transparency without knowing it, like a clever illusionist.

DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION wishes to provoke this state of mind, and the contemporary aesthetics linked to it, by confronting them with an existential quest, that could be contradictory, provocative, or lead to take the question from another point of view. The target is to bump into the materialist worlds imaginary.

DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION makes the cynical assessment that, in our hyper organized occidental societies, the way back to poverty is a design object. Poverty is designed. 

Design has frequently been described as a slave to the material society, a tool of the society of spectacle, of the endless entertainment. The race towards abundance leads to excessive consumption and the ever-increasing desire to satisfy “false” needs.

In a too simple opposition, it is often proposed nostalgia of the time before materialism, a quest for poverty, morality… According to us, this subservience to frugality and asceticism make design the ideal bard to maintain poverty.

How could we avoid this simplistic dualism? What could come after materialism? Could there be different choices, different projects beyond the way back to a survival economy or below the hedonistic, overexploited, exponential materialism? What spaces could be left for thoughts, for imagination?

 DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION est un festival, qui associe des communications scientifiques , des rencontres, des projections de films, un bar, des expériences de design et des propositions festives. Des théoriciens et des praticiens dialoguent sur la question des besoins humains fondamentaux, des richesses cachées, des formes d’exploitation du travail à interroger. Il est issu d’une réflexion entre designers et théoriciens et la forme à construire est offerte aux étudiants de 4ème et 5ème année et de Master de trois écoles d’art et design en Europe, qui en proposent le display, la part artistique et la programmation festive.

Mechanical Turk, néo-primitivisme, culture punk, hard discount, vie dans le désert, potlatch, discours contradictoires de l’aide humanitaire, salariat vs. aides sociales…

DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION pose l’hypothèse que le design est une arme de maintien de l’ordre (très perfectionnée), une pratique se jouant sans cesse de sa transparence, illusionniste savante, sans le savoir.

DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION souhaite provoquer cette morale et ces esthétiques contemporaines en les confrontant à différentes quêtes existentielles parfois contradictoires, provocantes, voire à rebours. Objectif : un monde matérialiste à bousculer dans son imaginaire même.

DESIGN, POVERTY, FICTION part du constat cynique que, dans les sociétés occidentales hautement organisées, le retour de la pauvreté est un objet de design. La pauvreté se dessine, se conçoit. Serait-elle esthétique, serait-elle volontaire ? Le nec plus ultra de l’être bobo serait-il d’être hobo ?

INFOS + PDF PROGRAMME