Beyond (Design) Frontiers

Despite their different locations, these European institutions share a strong emphasis on design in an expanded field—as part of a wider social, cultural, ecological and planetary infrastructure. This expansiveness, however, suggests the limits that designers may face in developing their practice—thus finding and blurring media, conceptual and contextual boundaries through design thinking became an overarching theme of this exhibition. We encounter boundaries everywhere, even though they may sometimes appear invisible—we are used to transgressing or teetering on the edge of them seamlessly. At other times, on the other hand, we encounter boundaries that are insurmountable. We often neglect their ubiquity—whether we think of boundaries literally or in abstract terms.

The original text of the open call eventually crystallized into a heterogeneous organism, from which the curator of the exhibition identified three main tendencies reflecting some of the key themes reflected in contemporary work. The weight of ecological problems and the need to find sustainable alternatives and materials that do not pollute the planet represent the first thematic strand. Here the artists experiment with the use of mycelium, speculate on possible futures for building materials, but also comment on climate disasters caused by human activity, such as the melting of glaciers or the planting of monocultures. The second strand shifts from environmentally motivated works to explore the social mission of design, specifically listening to marginalized voices and making silenced stories visible. The selected works thus challenge the boundaries of social constructs and principles of exclusion set by dominant social groups. For example, women and their experiences in a patriarchal society, non-white races, the elderly and children with special needs are symbolically given a voice. On a conceptual level, these works are motivated by a desire for emancipatory and decolonizing tendencies or a social turn in design.

The third imaginary thread, which connects the first two, is the realization that many of the works in Beyond (Design) Frontiers deal with processes of loss, disappearance or invisibility - whether they are perceived in connection with social or ecological themes. The curator Agáta Hošnová wanted to give space to at least some of those, which may not be sufficiently addressed in today's design practice, and at the same time to draw attention to the environmentally and socially fragile atmosphere we live in, where it is necessary to protect disappearing animal and plant species and to try to find alternatives not only in design, but also in holistic everyday thinking that goes beyond ourselves.