The 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial is launching an open call to expand the conversation on “ARE WE HUMAN?” to the widest networks of creative minds and bring their ideas into its heart. The biennial is inviting designers, architects, artists, graphic designers, industrial designers, animators, data visualizers, filmmakers, groups, associations, non for profits, laboratories, and other agents from all disciplines to submit a 2-minute video-film in response to the theme of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial:
“ARE WE HUMAN?
THE DESIGN OF THE SPECIES
2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 years, 200.000 years”
Each submitted video-film should address this overall question or focus on one or more of the eight interlinked propositions that were presented in the official announcement of the biennial:
DESIGN IS ALWAYS DESIGN OF THE HUMAN
THE HUMAN IS THE DESIGNING ANIMAL
OUR SPECIES IS COMPLETELY SUSPENDED
IN ENDLESS LAYERS OF DESIGN
DESIGN RADICALLY EXPANDS HUMAN CAPABILITY
DESIGN ROUTINELY CONSTRUCTS RADICAL INEQUALITIES
DESIGN IS EVEN THE DESIGN OF NEGLECT
“GOOD DESIGN” IS AN ANESTHETIC
DESIGN WITHOUT ANESTHETIC ASKS URGENT QUESTIONS ABOUT OUR HUMANITY
All of the submitted videos fulfilling the requirements of the Open Call will be made available online on the website of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial and also in a dedicated section within the exhibition itself, which opens on October 22, 2016. An international and interdisciplinary jury will evaluate all eligible submissions and select three videos to be highlighted in the main exhibition and catalog. The curatorial team of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial will work in collaboration with the selected filmmakers to ensure that their works will be presented appropriately (sound, subtitling etc.) and given exposure and credit as full participants in the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial. The deadline for submissions is 20th May.
“The 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial explores the intimate relationship between the concepts of ‘design’ and ‘human’. Design always presents itself as serving the human but its real ambition is to redesign the human. The history of design is therefore a history of evolving conceptions of the human. To talk about design is to talk about the state of our species. Humans have always been radically reshaped by the designs they produce and the world of design keeps expanding. We live in a time when everything is designed, from our carefully crafted individual looks and online identities, to the surrounding galaxies of personal devices, new materials, interfaces, networks, systems, infrastructures, data, chemicals, organisms, and genetic codes. The average day involves the experience of thousands of layers of design that reach to outer space but also reach deep into our bodies and brains. We literally live inside design, like the spider lives inside the web constructed from inside its own body. But unlike the spider, we have spawned countless overlapping and interacting webs. Even the planet itself has been completely encrusted by design as a geological layer. There is no longer an outside to the world of design. Design has become the world.”
