Political Design
Over the last few years, political upheavals and system changes have assumed a new position right at the heart of the culture of historical remembrance. »Magical« historical dates such as 1989 offer an opportunity at regular intervals to comment on what has happened from the perspective of those who survived, often with a slight sense of »history as written by the victors«. The memoirs of politicians and those who have gained from the new system often pay scant attention to what has proved in everyday life to be a tough, slow process of transition (with an uncertain outcome).
To date the role played such system changes by a particular type of »political design« has all too often been overlooked; it includes logos, posters and brochures, not to mention banners or flags, printed works and a range of other media. It is high time to move this segment of graphic quotidian culture into the centre of active remembrance in order to fill an important gap in the critical-materialist history of such sea changes. Taking the transformations that have occurred in Eastern Europe in the last 30 years as the starting point, this edition seeks to sketch out the relevance and range of »political design«. In addition to Eastern Europe, the focus extends to encompass South and South-East Asia, always concentrating above all on the type of active support and involvement that a specific design idiom can engender for political movements, including those that have emerged more recently.
The idea of this thematic focus originally came from Keiko Sei, whose conceptual and networking activities, coupled with her work as a writer and curator, have played a key part in shaping this edition, as well as serving as a trigger for an exhibition series, which extends exploration of the topic into the realm of practice. »Re-Designing the East«, the title of the exhibition series, stems from a cooperation project between the Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart, the Trafó Gallery in Budapest, the WYSPA Institute of Art in Gdansk and the Total Museum in Seoul. From autumn 2010 on all these institutions will be showing work that explores further aspects of the facets and paradigms around the topic that are explored in this issue.
In her introductory essay Keiko Sei takes as her point of departure the question of the type of political, social and cultural situation that leads to designers suddenly seeing themselves as political and, conversely, how their work contributes to transforming the political situations around them. She casts a broad net, extending from the famous Solidarność logo, which is recognised around the globe and was created in the context of the Gdansk shipyards in 1980, to encompass the current situation in Thailand, South Korea and parts of India, where critical design practice has also become part of radical democratic citizens’ movements.
Other authors (who are also the curators of »Re-Designing the East«) pick up on the diverse meridians of Sei’s wide-reaching cartography and turn their attention to the pertinent hotspots in the realm of politics and design. Maks Bochenek and Aneta Szyłak discuss the turbulent history of the aforementioned Solidarność logo, which, 30 years on, in addition to being deployed for a plethora of commercial purposes but has also become an object coveted by art collectors. In his essay Tomas Pospiszyl reviews the career of Czech graphic designer and artist Joska Skalník, who played an important role in the 1989 Velvet Revolution but is now confronted with allegations that he worked as an agent for the police.
In contrast, the three contributions from Asia take a comparatively uncompromising stance: with its »Creative Resistance« initiative, the Indian design and critics collective Design & People places an emphasis on independent social, humanitarian, ecological and educational projects. In the essay for this edition, Sethu Das, the initiative’s co-founder, addresses the colonial appropriations in Montblanc fountain pen designs. Thai critic and designer Pracha Suveeranont offers us an introduction In the form of a comic to the theory of »Vernacular Thai« – this popular Thai design style for everyday objects sparks off a number of smouldering conflicts related to tradition, modernity and the power to define the present. The South Korean design group Activism of Graphic Imagination (A.G.I.) offers examples of activist campaigns that address the progressive gentrification and urban marketing of a metropolis like Seoul, whilst also exploring the local ramifications of the economic crisis.
Complemented by additional case studies, addressing, for example, the design of symbols of the state and the independence movement in the Ukraine, the central topic of political design reveals symptomatic interfaces: showing how artistic design overlaps with social policy agendas, as well as shedding light on the ways in which design projects into the political present, and indeed the political future, in an often surprising fashion.