HAMBURG.- As part of the ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen) 100th anniversary celebrations, the co-creative exhibition format Pure Gold. Upcycled! Upgraded! opened at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg. The exhibition in Hamburg is the start of a ten-year tour of 20 venues worldwide. The exhibition, devised by Volker Albus, designer and professor at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design, runs from 15 September 2017 until 21 January 2018. Devoted to the subject of waste, Pure Gold presents approaches for processing material to create a product of greater value. The focus is on current international design trends that discuss the treatment of these waste and/or cheap materials. The ifa has structured the exhibition as an innovative co-creative format. Curators from a total of seven regions present 53 designers with 76 pieces relating to this theme: Volker Albus, Frankfurt (for Europe), Adélia Borges, São Paulo (for Latin America), Tapiwa Matsinde, London (for sub-Saharan Africa), Divia Patel, London (for South Asia), Bahia Shehab, Cairo (for North Africa/Middle East), Eggarat Wongcharit, Bangkok (for Southeast Asia) and Zhang Jie, Beijing (for East Asia). After Hamburg the exhibition will move to Southeast Asia, making stops in Bangkok, Yangon, Hanoi and Manila. In addition, Axel Kufus, designer and professor at the Berlin University of the Arts will be offering a digital platform which, extending beyond the exhibition itself, will serve as a growing repository of knowledge and a network for the international maker scene.

Exhibition at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MKG)
Although there has long been an awareness of marine litter pollution and the grave consequences for the ecosystem, and although we are constantly confronted with pictures of gigantic rubbish dumps in deprived regions of the planet, our daytoday approach to what we generally refer to as waste is only changing slowly. Pure Gold. Upcycled! Upgraded! introduces a new global generation of designers who work in an ecological and ethically sustainable manner, and it gathers multiperspectival approaches for a grave problem facing us today. The exhibition theme of upcycling – the re-use of raw materials that have already been processed to create new objects of greater value – aims to raise awareness of alternative production techniques, while simultaneously pointing up contemporary European and non-European design developments. The designs use what appear to be inferior starting materials, combine different kinds of objects in an unconventional way, or creatively process unwanted by-products. Pure Gold. Upcycled! Upgraded! stands in context to the political and sociocritical topics of the Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.

Digital platform as a collaborative network
The digital platform devised under the guidance of Alex Kufus accompanies the touring exhibition. The Pure Gold. Upcycled! Upgraded! project will network with the respective local maker scene in the exhibition location, and will offer practice-oriented design study workshops that pick up on regionally developed upcycling methods and make them accessible online through the creation of instructables. At the same time, this platform is intended to be a forum where interested parties worldwide can form alliances, gather experience and enter into dialogue.