MUNICH.- The exhibition “Politics of Design, Design of Politics” continues the series on contemporary positions in design hosted in the Paternoster Hall which Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum launched in 2015. Each year, international design protagonists (such as Konstantin Grcic, Werner Aisslinger and Hella Jongerius) are invited to contribute and expansive, multipartite installation. In 2016, Friedrich von Borries 2016 programmatically addressed the relationship of design and politics in his literary novel project RLF. Das richtige Leben im falschen” and in his manifesto “Weltentwerfen. Eine politische Designtheorie” (Suhrkamp Verlag). And he has now, at the invitation of Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum developed an intervention in the museum space on this topic.

The exhibition conceived by architect and design theorist Friedrich von Borries consists of three parts:

The first part – the engagement with “Politics of Design” – shows which political moment design contains within itself through a series of interventions in the museum collection. Theses such as “design sexualizes,” “design colonizes” and “design manipulates” offer a new perspective on Coca-Cola advertising, the Sony Walkman, and modernist furniture. Yet the interventionist stance also includes questioning the museum’s own power of interpretation. For this purpose, an open call has invited to bring objects to the museum; in September all participants then formed an independent jury. As a result, the museum is showing, among other things, models of vulvas, DIY furniture and urban gardening trash cans for the duration of the exhibition. The highlight of the engagement with the “Politics of Design” is the design model of a slide created by Friedrich von Borries for Thonet with a view to the company’s upcoming 200th anniversary. It addresses the fact that sitting down disciplines us and furthermore has a connection to possession – as seen in the German word “besitzen” – while also raising the question of how we get into dynamic movement from the static, persisting seated position.

The second part of the exhibition is a subjective reflection on the work of Friedrich von Borries to date, displayed in the two paternoster elevators. By donating an artwork his heteronym, the artist Mikael Mikael, intervenes in the museum collection, while in a perpetuating, Sisyphean marble-run installation he also points to the fundamental dilemma of a politically active artist or designer, who will presumably never reach the – supposed – goal.

The third part – “Design of Politics” – looks at the possibilities for shaping and changing politics through design. What contribution can design make to the social and cultural development of a society? Workshops are to be held in the context of the exhibition as a discursive, public design process in cooperation with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung/bpb). By means of an open call, interested citizens, activists, designers, artists and scientists are being invited to a series of workshops, a “base camp for democracy,” at which project ideas are to be jointly developed. The results will be discussed publicly with high-profile guests from the fields of politics, science and culture. A Facebook page with text recommendations, book reviews and expert interviews is to accompany the search movement. This process will be documented in the exhibition.

The exhibition does not only address issues such as “surveillance,” “self-fulfillment,” “commodity,” and “market” against the backdrop of democracy as a form of government that is both worthy of protection and simultaneously in need of improvement. Indeed, with a view to the relationship between politics and design, it also raises the question as to which contexts designers and architects now need to navigate if they want their work to be politically responsible.

The catalog accompanying the exhibition will be issued by Koenig Books.

Curator: Dr. Angelika Nollert

Co-Curator: Dr. Xenia Riemann-Tyroller