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Gwangju Design Biennale 2011

What was design? Design was the nineteenth-century child of Western art, architecture, and the crafts. It centered on the creation of industrially produced, mobile objects that moved freely within the global market. The designed object functioned as the aesthetic, technological, and economic focal point of the 20th century. As its movement provided the fulcrum of monumental shifts in power and imagination, it was the symbol, image, tool, and agent par excellence of modernity.

What is design? The world is changing and so is design. The shifting networks and nodes of the global world, the movement of wealth and production, the emergence of new media, the changing values of local and global communities have refocused the issues, problems, and potential of design. Design can no longer be viewed as a privileged hegemony of a limited set of names, objects, forms and modes of production based on an increasingly outdated worldview. We must understand design as a fundamental act of intervening in the way we live.

Inspired by the first words of Do Duk Kyeong (Tao Te Ching, 道德經), the 4th Gwangu Design Biennale seeks to (re)place and (re)name the fundamental issues of contemporary design. The title of the Biennale adopts but replaces 道(do) with 圖(do) in No Ja’s first sentence. The Chinese character 圖 (do) means to draw. It was once used to denote design as a formal practice, similar to the notion of disegno and dessin. We are reminded that the more fundamental meaning of 圖 was to design a city on a piece of paper: that is, to create complex human environments within the frame of a specific medium. 圖 was an issue of place and human relations. The Gwangju Design Biennale confirms that we are in the midst of a fundamental transformation of design; of who designs; of how we design; for whom we design; and why we design. Indeed, we must again ask “What is design?”

Moving beyond the established distinctions of the design industry, the 4th Gwangu Design Biennale examines the status of authorship and discipline, space and place, community and individuality in contemporary design. If the mobile object had seemingly negated the conditions of space and place, the new imperative of design is to confront them with renewed rigor. In a hyper-mediated society, where we are and how we identify and interact with our environment are again the basic questions. The 4th Gwangju Design Biennale is a laboratory of the names, places, and communities of contemporary design. It is a laboratory that explores the dynamic of design that is placed and un-placed, design that is named and un-named, and the communities that are woven through these relations. The exhibition is conceived as an ecology that reflects the complexity of contemporary conditions and allows for new and unexpected concepts, practices, and social relations.

노자 도덕경의 첫 문구인 道可道非常道, 名可名非常名에서 출발한 이번 주제는 “도라고 칭하는 것이 다 영원한 도가 아니며, 이름하는 것이 다 영원한 이름이 아니다”라는 뜻의 이 문구에서 길 도(道)를 그림 도(圖)로 바꾸어 주제문이 만들어졌다. '도가도비상도'는 전통적인 아시아적 가치를 표방하면서도 문명사적 변화를 전제로한 새로운 디자인의 비전을 제시하려한다. 이 주제를 선정한 배경은 그림 도(圖)는 서구에서 디자인의 어원인 이탈리아어 “Disegno디제뇨”와 프랑스어 “Dessin데생”과 유사한 개념속에 착안하였으며, 그림 도(圖)의 근원적인 의미는 사각 틀 속에 마을을 그리는 것. 즉, 디자인이란 단지 보기 좋은 형상을 만드는 것이 아니라 삶의 터전을 만드는데 있으며, 21세기의 디자인이 오브제에 대한 관심으로부터 장소와 사람의 관계에 대한 관심으로 전환한다는 의미로 주제선정하게 되었다.

전시구성

“도가도비상도”의 기반속에 디자인의 주체와 디자인의 현장을 중심으로 소주제별 구성

- 유명/Named : 이름을 가진 디자인
- 무명/Un-Named : 이름이 없는 디자인
- 장소/Urban Follies : 광주의 구체적인 장소에 지어지는 건축시설물
- 비장소/The Biennale City : 전시장이라는 가상적인 공간
- 커뮤니티/Communities : 이름과 장소가 엮여 만들어지는 커뮤니티
- 아카데미/Academy : 전시의 기획 과정을 이끄는 일련의 학술회의와 워크샵