Onomatopee 52: Research project
Pre-specifics: access x!
Get access to the “X” imposed by designed culture!

Not only humankind might have an “X” Factor; an environment or a product may equally have one. If a person has an “X” Factor, his power increases. Similarly, as soon as an environment or a product has an “X” Factor, it gains control over us… Let’s make this production more accesible!

PRE-SPECIFICS: ACCESS X! not only showcases luring products, spaces and concepts by contemporary artists, designers, architects and others, but actually also provides insight into their strategies. The exhibition thus features both sensory works and accountable strategies and motivations. The accompanying publication offers further notions into designed culture’s X: its productive conditions and modes of mediation.

Over recent years, ‘Design’ has progressed into a collective term for various activities of research, conceptualisation, production and even criticality. As ‘Design’ became synonymous to widespread professional authority, ‘Design’ became the name for physically imposed control and personally imposed power at large: from the spatial design of McDonald’s to the branding of the new hybrid car, from the executive stance of the spin doctor to the services of the shrink and beyond. Li Edelkoort, design guru and former director of the Design Academy, even expressed a demand for the designer-politician…. The research project PRE-SPECIFICS: ACCESS X! offers you both a rich scope of forms of “X” as an instrumental toolbox to engage the “X” in our designed culture, offering ACCESS to X!

Onomatopee commissioned a variety of proposals, first of all to map out to what extent the addressed ‘design’ practice touches upon conditions of such a type of production and, second, to situate X in practice by means of a newly produced work. The proposals have been exhibited at Röda Sten Kulturforening Göteborg. From these proposals, Onomatopee has selected the majority to be actualised at Onomatopee Eindhoven during the Dutch Design Week.

Contributors: Platform for Pedagogy (US), Uglycute (SE), Olaf Nicolai (DE), Dexter Sinister (US), Joana Meroz / Andrea Bandoni / Saron Paz (NL), Unfold (BE), Metahaven (NL), Lust (NL), Claire Fontaine (FR), Société Réaliste (FR), Ryan Gander / Abake (UK), Dave Hullfish Bailey (US) Florian Conradi / Michelle Christensen (DE).

Curators: Freek Lomme (NL) & Michael Capio (US)
Exhibition design: Dave Keune (NL)
Graphic design publication: Eric de Haas (NL)

D 15€

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