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Exhibition

Curated by Foreign Legion, Vera Sacchetti and Matylda Krzykowski.

Contemporary cultural constructs have us believe that not everyone can get a fair share of the cake, and that only a limited few can write history. In the case of female practitioners in design, architecture and the arts, their erasure from the history and the memory of their disciplines has been systematic; but in the first two decades of the 21st century, they have regained visibility. In this pivotal moment, female practitioners have the chance to usher in an important transformation for their disciplines.

We can – and need to – add to the existing cake: infinite layers for an expanded canon. Adding to museum collections and to historical accounts, adding to collective memory and to possible futures. Most importantly, we must realize that ‘adding’ doesn’t mean ‘taking away’, but that it enriches the existing context with multiple, varied voices and perspectives.

Add to the Cake is an exercise in enacting the kind of transformation that design, architecture and arts are about to experience. It develops over the course of an exhibition (preview: 27.04. – 23.06., exhibition: 06.07. – 03.11.2019), an active public program, and a series of performative moments over the course of six months.

The exhibition stems from the ‘A Woman’s Work’ symposium, which took place at the Japanisches Palais in Dresden in January 2019, in context of the ‘Against Invisibility’ exhibition, and gathered local and international perspectives on the present and the future of female practice.

In Add to the Cake, the exhibition collects and develops themes that were first discussed during that occasion, and frames them alongside other objects and ideas developed by female practitioners. Alongside it, an active public program presents a variety of formats, focusing on establishing permanent visibility for female practitioners.

Perspectives represented in the preview of the exhibition:
Danah Abdulla, Tulga Beyerle, Pinar Demirdag, Annika Frye, Thomas Geisler, Katrin Greiling, Christoph Knoth, Sarah Owens, Alice Rawsthorn, Antje Stahl and Libby Sellers.

With contributions from: Common Interest (Nina Paim, Corinne Gisel), Depatriarchise Design (Maya Glasel & Anja Neidhard), DAMn Magazine (Siegrid Demyttenaere, Bessaam El-Asmar, Emma Firmin, Gabrielle Kennedy), Kate Dooley, Amelie Klein, Kaja Kusztra, Alexandra Lange, Emma Lucek, Klara Nemeckova, Not a Muse (Silva Baum, Claudia Scheer, Lea Sievertsen), Sumitra Upham, Hagen Verleger.

Soundpiece by Julia E. Dyck, Visuals by AnnerPerrin and Raby-Florence Fofana, scenography by AnnerPerrin, Raby-Florence Fofana, Matylda Krzykowski, video room by Pinar Demirdag and Viola Renate from Pinar & Viola, produced by von Atilla Turker.

STAGE TREFF

Discursive Format

STAGE TREFF
23 – 25 February 2024
At STAGE Bregenz, contemporary fair for Art & Design

STAGE Treff is a program of informal conversations on sustaining practices, relationships and the environment at STAGE Bregenz by Matylda Krzykowski

There’s a story that I love that taught me all I know about the arts. It’s actually a story about people. And that is what I both fully enjoy, and what is also the source of many questions I have on my mind:

Why do we need to be more courageous? Why do we need both freedom and constraints? What is my relationship to art and design? Why is the appeal of art, design and architecture so important? How can we integrate art, design and architecture into society? How can we blur the borders of our disciplines? Why does innovation lie precisely within the aesthetic of our culture? How can the potential of a region be leveraged globally? What are the different models of being an artist, a designer or an architect? How to introduce the local potential globally? What is the role of art and design and its emancipatory and progressive potential? What requirements does a practice need? How do we contribute to it as institutions and as audience? What is the artist’s responsiveness to sustainability? What does a sustainable fair mean? Is it worth striving for?

So there’s a room full of people, and they should all tell their stories, to become part of the story. It is a systematic investigation of a matter of public interest. People who hadn’t related to these questions and met these approaches before might find a way of relating to them.

It is a story where we just have to “Get on stage, get set, go!” (German: Auf die Bühne, fertig, los!) It might all turn into a theater, but we have to open the stage for encounters to produce conversations. Once you are with other people, you need to listen to others, to empathize, and to adapt your own perspective. That`s a way to sustain art, design and architecture. The story that I love is a continuous dialogue.

Images Büro Magma

CONCEPTUAL SUBSTANCE

Exhibition

Group exhibition curated by Tina Roeder
Eternithaus Berlin
28 – 31 April 2023
Gallery Weekend Berlin

Works by Matylda Krzykowski:

Index Finger, 2022
The hand is the body part most frequently used as a symbol. It is the main human tool with an ability to transfer invisible energy into form. Matylda Krzykowski designed a hand that is active and frivolous, its long fingers can be interpreted as extending into established ideas, crushing them, and reforming them into something new. The index finger latches on to unformed leaky ideas, flirting with unresolved beliefs and notions.

Desktop Exhibition, since 2017
Our digital devices have come to feel like spaces, full of rooms (folders) leading into other rooms (subfolders), some of which we choose to show, and some of which we choose to hide. There’s so much room on the desktop to provide an idea of a place, where ideas are scrapped, mislaid, and drawn raw in form. Desktop Exhibition is a public presentation on a desktop developed by Matylda Krzykowski, in which she opens her digital interior and performs an infinite display.

“As part of Gallery Weekend Berlin, the exhibition Conceptual Substance will take place at Eternithaus from April 28 to 30. Curated by Berlin-based designer Tina Roeder, the show is cross-disciplinary in concept and redefines rigid typologies. The exhibited objects are placed in a contemporary social context and at the same time refer to the history of architecture and design.

A total of sixteen international artists*, architects*, designers* and studios are participating in the exhibition, including Matylda Krzykowski, Bless, Gonzalez Haase AAS, Audrey Large, Formafantasma and Tina Roeder herself. What unites them all is the urge to question existing structures and systems and to find clarity in the blurring of boundaries. Their exhibition contributions therefore offer opportunities for both physical and intellectual engagement and move in different registers – from practical to mystical, from playful to serious.

The exhibition was deliberately placed in the design and architectural context of the Eternithaus in the Hansaviertel. Built in 1957 by Paul Baumgarten on the occasion of the Interbau, the building is part of an overall complex that stands like no other for the new urban development start after the Second World War and new forms of urban living. This strictly modernist framework exposes the works quasi within a historical vision and thus sharpens the artistic dialogue with the present.” Source: Baunetz

THE FINAL (GROUP) SHOW

Exhibition

15 – 23.4.2023
Co-curated by Jorge Penadés and Matylda Krzykowski
For Extraperlo Madrid at Dropcity Milan
Spatial Design by Jorge Penadés and Matylda Krzykowski
Photography by Delfino Sisto
Graphic Design by Raquel Quevedo
Project assistantance by Gema Barranco, Vincent Orts

When Jorge started his experimental platform in 2019 he was inspired by the activities of Depot Basel, a temporary place for contemporary design I was involved with as artistic director until 2018. What both initiatives had in common was working with limitations: spatial and economic. Hence the question we raised were: How can we reduce our installation footprint in group shows? (Especially if they only last for one week) #noshipping And how can we present 40 ideas of 4 years in 1 group show? #shoebox
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THE FINAL (GROUP) SHOW – 5 Years of Extraperlo

Exhibitions are assembled based on the interwoven dialogues between initiator and curator. They piece together these ideas and arrange them into digital and physical spaces. They develop a theme and a visual, conceptual and spatial depiction of the idea. But there’s a catch: there are always two key limitations –– spatial and economic.

Every year since 2019, the curatorial initiative Extraperlo –– initiated by designer Jorge Penadés –– invites a group of people, usually friends of friends of friends, to send *something* for the exhibition. The medium setting the limitation for all shows is the ubiquitous shoebox –– the most commonly used item for shipping. Standard size: 33×19 cm. What can fit inside a shoebox? The requested *something* can be anything — an experiment, a work-in-progress or a fully-finished piece, as long as it sits at the €1 – €500 price point. Don’t be mistaken, the initiative is not motivated by money, instead it is motivated by: subverting ideas through bringing together a selection of people, exploring the life that lies in the shadow economy and representing a group, and its secrets, which eventually constitutes a network of thought.

In 2023, for its 5th and final edition, Extraperlo will show 40 shoeboxes –– one for each of its previous participants. Together, they help visualize, map, but also reshuffle, the connections between the members of this group. The shoeboxes are assembled in a giant walk-in shoebox for visitors to enter. The shoebox is a space of mystery, a clandestine spot where we hide our deepest secrets, unfulfilled projects and our finest discoveries. Extraperlo stands for the *something* inside — a limited room for magic.

WITH:

Ana Domínguez Siemens, Annalisa Rosso, Anne Laure Pingueron, Aric Chen, Attua Aparicio, Brent Dzekciorious, Charlotte Talbot, Chen Chen & Kai Williams, Cristian Zuzunaga, Daniel Charny, Felix Burrichter, Fernando Laposse, Francesco Meda, Fredrik Paulsen, Gemma Holt, Guillermo Santoma, Ilona Gaynor, Jamie Shaw, Jana Scholze, Jane Whiters, Jonathan Malubier, Jonathan Olivares, Joschua Brunn, Juan Mosqueda, Julen Ussia, Julia Mariscal, Kwangho Lee, Lex Pott, Libby Sellers, Luisa Kahlfeldt, Maria Cristina Didero, Marlenne Houisoud, Matylda Krzykowski, Nacho Alegre, Nitsan Debbi, Odd Matter, Okolo, Robert Stadler, Tomas Alonso, Tulga Beyerle

CIVIC

Social infrastructure, exhibition & discourse space

CIVIC
Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW
Freilager-Platz 1
CH-4142 Basel / Münchenstein
Tram-Stop: Freilager-Platz

Matylda Krzykowski, Artistic Lead
Jenni Schmitt, Project Lead
Offshore Studio, Graphic Lead

Opening hours: Monday-Friday: 9 am – 5 pm for the public
For HGK members open 24/7

CIVIC is a social infrastructure. CIVIC is a new physical and digital discourse and exhibition space, a former 400 m2 groundfloor foyer, at HGK Basel. For and with students, researchers, employees and the public.

CIVIC is an educational and experimental environment that provides opportunities for participation, contribution and exchange for and with with students, researchers, employees and the public to promote an understanding of the relevance of art and design to society. Artistic lead by Matylda Krzykowski, Project Lead by Jenni Schmitt, graphic lead by Offshore and initiated by Claudia Perren. Arts & Education announcement.

WHAT IS CIVIC?
This question emerged when everything started in January 2022: The former foyer, a transit location in the high-rise building of the Basel Academy of Art and Design FHNW (HGK Basel) should become CIVIC. A quiz kicked off CIVIC. People from and around the HGK Basel gathered to answer ten questions regarding this new place: What should take place in CIVIC in the future? What kind of infrastructure does CIVIC need? How should CIVIC work? In short: What is CIVIC and what could it become?

The quiz highlighted the importance of diverse contributions in creating dynamic places such as CIVIC: Through open participation, free encounters, and joint projects. Through different infrastructure, with ideas of the people around HGK Basel, as well as exhibitions, interventions, happenings, shows, hangouts, aperitifs, parties, etc. A space to meet, learn from each other, exhibit, and connect. In such a space, people can act independently, organize, participate, and exchange ideas. The quiz also led to the motto: CIVIC IS WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT!

Among others, these emerged at CIVIC: one neon sign by Selma Ermatinger; one mobile bar by Dalibor Bajunovic, Helen Grüninger, David Luong and Rahel Mor; seven tables, four benches, nine stools and one scaffolding system by Samira Stolpe and Odin Steinhauser; three CIVIC Radio episodes with Radio X ; one DAY DANCE together with HEK (House of Electronic Arts) ; one scenography for Architecture Week Basel ; two exhibitions of International Workshop Week ; one happening during Art Basel: GROWING MAGIC MOMENTS; one accumulative documentation titled HARVEST; one exhibition named MEMORY SPACE ; one essay by Lilo Viehweg on CIVIC FURNITURE; one POSTERSLAM by Visual Communication and Digital Spaces students; one food gathering titled BITES & BANDAGES by FoodCultureLab; one photo-exhibition by Yevheniia Semenova, Arina Sirochenko and Alisa Probylova: ART UKRAINE; one CIVIC Market by Anita Muccoli, Jodok Wehrli and Katharina Kemmerling; one Live-Act by Doing Fashion: THE GRADUATES OF 23; three banners for WOMEN LIFE FREEDOM by various, Jasmine Jetzer and many more; one drawing programme by Désirée Sebele and Leandra Fischer; one EXCHANGE IS THE MOST PRECIOUS THING WE HAVE! by Marina Klein-Hietpas and Lea Bongni ; two community introductions titled CIVIC PEOPLE; one drawing programme; one MUSEUM NIGHT; one quiz; two stickers by Luana and Max Umeh; two open house events; one open source design kit by Offshore; four flyers by Elena Palumbo ; 12 KLUTZ urban furniture modules by Charly Blödel; three PUSHY KIOSK evenings; six stairs and one doormat by Raffaela Boss; three infrastructures: one tiny exhibition house by Anita Mucolli, one Messy Kiosk by Constructlab, and one freeshop by HGK student assembly.

whatiscivic.com
civic.hgk@fhnw.ch
@hgkbasel_civic
#whatiscivic

Images by Pati Grabowicz

CIVIC QUIZ

Social infrastructure, exhibition & discourse space

Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland
Work in progress since January 2022

CIVIC is a newly established exhibition and discourse space, a digital and physical social infrastructure, at Academy of Art and Design in Basel, Switzerland. Formerly know as foyer. #WHATISCIVIC

Matylda Krzykowski, Artistic Lead
Jenni Schmitt, Project Lead
Offshore Studio, Graphic Lead

What is CIVIC? is one of the pressing questions of our times. In order to define what civic parameters a digital and physical social infrastructure at Academy of Art and Design in Basel requires, we first organised a public CIVIC Quiz (during Open House) on Friday, 21 January 2022 at 5 PM. Together with students, researchers, employees, and the public we discussed and answered the following questions: What is civic (for you)? What formats do you want at CIVIC? What topics would you like to include at CIVIC? Who can be a CIVIC connection? What spatial infrastructure should we design for CIVIC? What web formats should we include? What is CIVIC? Or what could it be?

My approach is to see the artistic lead role as one of facilitating other people to decide what they’d like to see at CIVIC. I like to establish that people take part in programming. This will drive the programme of CIVIC and the audience that comes to it. That is unpredictable but endlessly exciting.

If you missed the event you can contribute until 15.2.2022 via the online questionnaire. Or email civic.hgk@fhnw.ch

(Almost) all images by Benedict Dackweiler

THE ENERGY SHOW

Exhibition

3.9.2022 – 5.3.2023
The Energy Show – Sun, Solar and Human Power
Het Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam
Graphic design Noviki
Spatial design Studio Dennis Vanderbroeck
#TheEnergyShow The Solar Biennale

Do you have enough energy today? This question opens The Energy Show – Sun, Solar and Human Power from 3 September 2022 through 5 March 2023 at Het Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam. The exhibition by curator and designer Matylda Krzykowski revolves around the sun and its design possibilities. It reflects on visitors’ personal energy levels, features dozens of examples of innovative solar ideas, and poses the key question: what would the world look like if it were solar powered?

Exhibition text by Matylda Krzykowski:
Today, every country in the world is having an active conversation about energy. Our appetite for energy is insatiable. And it will only increase, not least because our planet’s population continues to grow.

Since ancient times, the sun has played an important role in how human beings found their place on the planet. It has played an essential part in our utopian imaginations as the ultimate source of energy. Thanks to the sun, we see planets and imagine life in the universe. The sunlight that hits the Earth in a single hour provides more energy than the entire world consumes in one year. The sun promises to give us all the energy we need, in a clean and green way. Yet while the sun is a mostly free energy source, most people do not know how to generate energy with it. New forms of generating energy with solar design hardly contribute anything to the global energy statistics yet, although there is a growing number of ideas out there.

In societies, ideas are implemented through human energy. So what can we as individuals, communities, and companies do to actively integrate the sun? How can solar ideas push us to advocate for policy change? Will you become a solar citizen? The idea of becoming solar is not just about substituting one energy source for another for climate well-being. It is about reconsidering who we are and what kind of energy we need.

The promise of a new form of energy is that we can do things differently. People doing things is human power.

With: Agnieszka Polska, Alice Wong in collaboration with Crys Cool, Aliki van der Kruijs, Bert Schoeren, Cream on Chrome, Imre Szeman, Johannes Bruder & Karolina Sobecka, Mirka Laura Severa, Octave Perrault (Zeroth), Su Tomesen, Takram

And: Alex Nathanson, Tega Brain & Benedetta Piantella, Amor Muñoz, Ann-Kristin Müller, Arvind Gupta, Ayesha Vemuri, Beatrice Colomina & Mark Wigley, Benjamin Rodrigues de Miranda, Boudewijn Buitenhek, Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University, Brian Gulassa, Brian Norton, California College of the Arts, Camila Chebez, Canadian Centre for Architecture, Cara Daggett, Carvey Ehren Maigue, Chris Goodall, Climate Heroes (Luke Duggleby), Cymene Howe, Daisuke Hirabayashi, Daniela & Tonatiuh, Darin Barney, ENSCI, EPFL+ECAL Lab, Erik Groen, ETH Zurich, Eva van Ooijen, Filip Schlembach, Fynn Roovers, Gemeente Dijk en Waard, Gerrit Jan van der Kolm, GigaWatt, Guillian Graves, Hansruedi Schild, Henry Glogau, Hessel Haalewijn, Human Power Plant, Bakkerij De Eenvoud & de Academie voor Beeldvorming, Illac Diaz, Imre Szeman, Inside Outside & TextielMuseum, Irina Boersma, James Clear, Jan van Eyck Academie, Jehane Noujaim, Jessenvolleweider, John Perlin, Jonathan Hielkema, Jörg Boner, Jos Tobé, Karim Amer, Khaled Bokaee, Kiki & Joost, Lightyear, Lina Tomesen Hartanto, Little Sun (Olafur Eliasson & Frederik Ottesen), Manuel Doernte, Marjan van Aubel, Markus Kayser, Martin Andersen, Martina Muzi, Melle Smets & Kris de Decker, Mette Heide, Michael Jantzen, Michigan State University Team, Moisés Hernández, Mona Eldaief, Nan Su, NASA, Neel Tamhane, Oxana epik Henneman, PIN-UP, Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed, Rosa van Walbeek, Selco Foundation, Ser-Gün Solar Energy, Shalanda Baker, Sherwin Banfield, Smart Flower Energy Technology GmbH, Solar Innovation Center Dubai, Solar Mamas, Solar Sound System, Solarpunk Lab, Space 10, Stefan Lang, Stephen Yang, Studio Ossidiana, Studio Pauline van Dongen, Studio Roosegaarde, Studio Swine, SunGlacier, The Museum of Solar Energy, Tim Ertl, VANTOT, Ville Kokkonen, We Care Solar, Wim Sinke, Yuval Reuven, Ziyao Cheng

Images:
1) The New Sun by Agnieszka Polska
2-4) Exhibition View
5) Commission: On Solarity by Imre Szeman, designed by Noviki
6) Solar Lifestyle Collection, 5 devices from Museum of Solar Energy
7) Curtain by Aliki van der Kruijs, Sun Visual by Noviki with voice of Matylda Krzykowski, Solar Views by Mirka Laura Severa
8) Quote from Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto (1985)
9) The Energy Quest board game (1977)
10) Exhibition View Detail
11) Perpetual Climate Architecture by Octave Perrault of Zeroth
12) Exhibition View
13) Close to Home Research Project by Takram
14) Solar Citizen Video by Su Tomesen, Script by Matylda Krzykowski
15) We Care Solar, Suitcase for maternal care
16) The Solar Energy Kioks, first commission for The Energy Show, designed by Cream on Chrome
17) Solar Futures book launch by Marjan van Aubel, in conversation with Matylda Krzykowski

YOU DON’T WANT SPACE YOU WANT TO FILL IT

Exhibition, Installation, Performance

YDWSYWTFI at Marsèll Paradise
Via Privata Rezia 2
20135 Milano
Italy

Apéro Preview Sunday, 5 June 2022, 4 PM
Dance Opening Monday, 6 June 2022, 8 PM
Drinks with Fan, Tuesday, 7 June 2022, 5 PM
Drinks with Sightunseen, Wednesday, 8 June 2022, 5 PM
incl. performances and activation of objects and space

There will always be a desire for places where one can rediscover the deep feeling of things and where identities and intimacies are formed. In the essay Dark Alcoves, Hidden Niches, and Cozy Corners, Meggie Kelley describes how as we grow older, a particular play with space vanishes. We outgrow frivolity and accept inelastic ideas of organised spaces to cultivate our identity, making us lose a greater sense of self and the need for cozy, social places. Indeed, the relationship between comfort and space has often been described in the context of consumerism and wealth rather than feelings of ease. What I want to propose are sticky, leaky spaces where informal human interaction and activities lead to a sense of contentment.

You Don’t Want Space, You Want To Fill It is an exhibition, as well as a social place that includes snug spaces and extended typologies of domestic objects. This show is filled with works of contemporary, transdisciplinary practitioners that shift between the visual and performative, the natural and the artificial, the human and the animalistic, the tactile and the soundful. These works of artists, designers, performers and musicians Lisa Ertel, Phillip Schueller, Collo Awata & Delfiné , Mirka Laura Severa and Jannis Zell are an invitation for activities, for mingling, or observation.

It is a wild site-specific place that is imagined rather than defined by fixed expectations, a space in which the two dimensional, the physical and the virtual co-exist. These spaces do not have to be constructive, they just have to feel right.

The blue YDWSYWTFI hand is active and frivolous, its long fingers can be interpreted as extending into established ideas, crushing them, and reforming them into something new. The index finger latches on to unformed leaky ideas, flirting with unresolved beliefs and notions. The hand is the body part most frequently used as a symbol. It is the main human tool and has the ability to transfer invisible energy into form.

Developed with Miriam Wierzchoslawska
Collage A tableau vivant of still lifes by Matylda Krzykowski
Images by Lorenzo Capelli

INSTITUTION BUILDING

Exhibition, Public Programming

27.8 – 7.11.2021
Curators: Nikolaus Hirsch, Matylda Krzykowski, Cédric Libert
Scenography: Jan de Vylder & Inge Vinck, Pierre Labergue
Civa Brussels

The exhibition Institution Building displays and questions the different elements of a museum – not only the most visible parts (such as the exhibition) but also the less public, often hidden components (such as archive, administration, maintenance). Following a sequential logic of 10 institutional components the exhibition will grow week by week, adding another element and eventually present the institution as a cadavre exquis – a permanently changing organism, constantly on questioning and legitimizing its raison d´être.

Situated at the beginning of a phase of transition between the CIVA as it is in 2021 and its new home at Kanal in 2024 Institution Building is a self-reflection of an institution in transformation, a questioning of the role of cultural institutions as such – and of the CIVA in particular – and hence instigating a process of reinventing itself for the coming years. In a sequential logic each chapter aims to reimagine one component of the architecture museum: Hospitality (26.08), Format (02.09), Collection (09.09), Audience (16.09), Agency (23.09), Pedagogy (30.09), Emancipation (07.10), Environment (14.10), Preservation (21.10), Idiom (28.10). The exhibition and collateral events will include more than 150 architects, artists, historians, designers, writers, activists and citizens.

Images:
– Multiplexe by Diego Thielemans & Benjamin De Backer
– Performance What Attention Forms by Jacques Ligot with Eimi Leggett, Timothy Nouzak, Mary Szydlowska, Mooni Van Tichel
– Cave Talks by Bicoli Club, Blurbs and Women Cave Collective
– Set-up of Villa Thunberg by Accattone and Plant en Houtgoed
– Exhibition view with Deliveroo Man
– Exhibition view of Negotiating Ungers by Cornelia Escher & Lars Fischer, Making History by Ania Jaworska, Activism in Brussels by Cinéma Jolia in collaboration with Lieven De Cauter and Gideon Boie. Image by Sepiedh Farvardin
etc.

WHAT IS WANTED?

Online TV Show

Airtime is available online anytime from 20 September 2021 on Wanted Design Online and offline at Halle 3 Swiss Design Awards 2021 in Basel, Switzerland until 26th September 2021.

‘I think the qualities of stories of today are now being seen on Internet television and that people who want to see stories that have those kinds of narrative qualities are watching it online’.

Curated, scripted, hosted by Matylda Krzykowski
Production by Tristesse
Visual Identity by Dual Room

Watching television as an activity has been a part of our modern culture since the early 20th century. TV sets became one of the main designed objects in the Western domestic environment. We depend on TV for entertainment, news, education, and culture. 1994 saw the very first broadcast on the Internet; TV sets were slowly replaced by personal computers. In 1995, the 24-hour news cycle which ushered in the era of cable news was invented in the US. Several studies found that television has many advantages. Familiar formats like the news can be powerful and effective educational tools if used smartly. Today, our internet enabled mobile devices give us access to information wherever and whenever we want. And with prolonged viewing, the world shown on television becomes the real world.

Airtime is a TV show produced for viewing on screen and broadcasted via the Internet. Airtime includes breaking news, general information, entertainment and future speculation about contemporary design in Switzerland. The TV show explores the question WHAT IS WANTED? together with fourteen contemporary practitioners working with or around design:

After Work Studio (Fashion Design), Marwan Bassiouni (Photography), Paula Cermeno Leon (Industrial Design), Nadine Cocina (Interaction Design), Bamna Dadashzadeh (Research), Alena Halmes (Product Design), Martina Huynh (Social Design), Keine Agentur (Communication), Sumegha Mantri (Medical Design), Sarah Owens (Education), Ozan Polat (Digital Design), Rrreefs (Technology), Luca Schenardi (Illustration), Valentin Woeffrey (Videography).

Airtime broadcasts the world of things and the world of immaterial and invisible design ranging from technology and nature, to education, and fantasy, and anything on the spectrum in between.

Supported by Consulate General of Switzerland in NYC, Swissnex Boston and Swiss Design Awards

INTERVIEW

Coming soon.

Meanwhile an Interview by Julia Rademacker (in German)
featuring the format DESKTOP EXHIBITION, the essay OPENING THE DIGITAL INTERIOR, the exhibitions TOTAL SPACE and WORKSPACE IN PROGRESS, the concept THE ONGOING MUSEUM and the TV Show AIRTIME.

WORKSPACE IN PROGRESS

Exhibition & Workshop & Film

Exhibition at MAKK Cologne
Postponed again! 7  – 31 October 2021

Workshop at the Industrial Design Department
University of Applied Arts Vienna
October 2019

Watch film here.

Workspace in Progress is presented from 7 – 31 October 2021, parallel to a digital program, in the Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne MAKK. The project is initiated by Stefan Diez, curated by Matylda Krzykowski, planned by Lina Fischer (DIEZOFFICE) and graphically defined by the Bureau Borsche. Film production by Daniel van Hauten and art direction by Matylda Krzykowski. The overall project is supported by WAGNER-LIVING, Augsburg.

The focus of attention in Workspace in Progress (My desired title: How do you want to work?) is the relationship of the students of the Industrial Design Department at Angewandte Vienna to the topic of WORK. Their ideas address the current conditions of the work environment, such as creativity, adaptability and flexibility, and the related technological, economic, psychological and social challenges. There is hardly a better place to negotiate the present and the future than in education. The question about the spaces we need to earn our income and how we want to invest our time is recurring. And more importantly, will it be activities that we want to pursue?

The result of this negotiation is an exhibition at MAKK Cologne (6 – 30.10.2021) consisting of a depot of projects in the form of processes, furniture, lights, clothing, devices and systems. When asked how the students’ designs can come into contact with an audience who may be absent from the museum, the proposal arose to document the work processes presented in a performative manner and to share them in form of videos in digital space. It is not enough to translate something that took place in the analogue world into the digital world. Contemplating a physical experience, on the other hand, stages the possibility of experiencing the ideas in another way. These ideas are activated in the form of props on a stage through performances. The actions reveal expected and perceived challenges such as remote working, lack of movement, limitation of space, mental health issues or lack of privacy. Only through an action designed ideas are integrated into a possible worldview.

Matylda Krzykowski, Berlin, February 2021

Programmed Ornaments by Jakob Niemann (Process), 9-to-5 by Ludwig Bachmann (Process), Magic Tapestry by Laura Dominici (Furniture), Nesting by Steven Dahlinger (Furniture), Rest Before You Get Tired by Mona Abusamra (Furniture), Performing Stages by Alice Klarwein, (Furniture), Folded Sheet of Paper by Karin Markowski (Furniture), Stets by Alexander Allroggen, Tinted Ray by Jasmit Hof (Furniture), Private / Shared 2.0 by Kerstin Pfleger (Furniture), Denkraum by Anatol Stelzhammer (Furniture), Cable Grip by Anton Defant (Light), Identiform by Camilla Ruh (Apparel), Talktile by Madeleine K. Wieser (Device), Moodbooster by Armin Muhamedagic (Device), 3WaveService by Anton Defant (System), Monoki by Philipp Pranzl (System).

More images coming soon.

THE BEGINNING

Curator-At-Large

Maastricht Institute of Arts
Concept, videos, installation, neon
Since Spring 2021

I once heard an urban myth that someone from the building authorities in Warsaw watched Jaques Tati’s playtime resulting that every architect in town did not only design a place but also a neon light that had to stand for the function of the building. Edwin Jacobs made me curator-at-large of Maastricht Institute of Arts and I designed The Beginning neon for the glass brick facade of the Wiel Arets building from 1993, an educational environment.

Text for the first The Beginning Show 2021

Where to begin? is the first question in a new life decision. According to Algorithms of our browser window, you begin a business, a keto diet, writing a book, a startup, building a house, running or meditation. Or you just begin to observe. I like to think that observations are as important as anything else you do in life. Not only observing yourself but also observing everything around you.

One place for this acquisition of information is the educational environment. You go there not for a reproduction of knowledge, not for old worldviews, but for an encouraged diversity of thinking and acting. In that place the pedagogies support you to find out about your future self and everything around you. At this place you learn to make it work.

Imagine it like an exercise where you write a letter to your future self today by answering some of these questions: Who will you be? Where will you be? How will you live? What will you not compromise? What will matter most to you? What will you contribute? Who will be there with you? And how did it all begin?

Welcome to the first Beginning Show at Maastricht Institute of Arts!

Matylda Krzykowski
Curator-At-Large Maastricht Institute of Arts

Images
1) The Beginning Neon, photo by Jonathan Vos
2) Videos in collaboration with Daniel van Hauten
2) Installation in collaboration with Daniel van Hauten

TOTAL SPACE

Exhibition

23 October 2020 – 20 June 2021
Museum für Gestaltung Zürich
Curation & Scenography by Damian Fopp and Matylda Krzykowski
Assisted by Annina Meier
Visual Spectasma by Tristesse

Total Space describes a designed total space experience. The classic distinction between subject and object, between inside and outside, is dissolved. Total Space is also a call for serenity in interesting times.

‘I recently visited the Total Space exhibition. I was thrilled by the way questions are being asked and the very existence of the exhibition is somehow kind of an answer.’ Naomi Ena Eggli, from an e-mail of a visitor

Read Alice Bucknell‘s article TOTAL SPACE: A DISORIENTING EXHIBITION FOR DISORIENTING TIMES in PIN-UP. ‘Across history, the desire for total space emerges from and is catalyzed by periods of global instability and cultural stasis. It’s a rush toward a new kind of feeling and a new kind of space; a reassertion of embodied knowledge when everything else is so uncertain. While the pandemic constricts our ability to move through the world with all our senses, Total Space becomes an increasingly urgent design premise for life after lockdown.’

Total Spaces by Soft Baroque, Trix & Robert Haussmann, Kueng & Caputo, Sucuk & Bratwurst and Luftwerk.
Total Space references by Olaf Grawert, Olamiju Fajemisin, Daniel Zamarbide, Morp Love, Prem Krishnamurthy, Studio Immediate Spaces, Atelier Gut, Zoë Ryan, La Totale Collective, Parasite 2.0, Fredi Fischli & Niels Olsen, Please don’t touch, Vera Sacchetti, Cameranesi Pompili, Ozelot, Jana Scholze, Roli Deluxe, Okolo, Adrien Rovero, The Decorators, Trojans Collective, Hier, One Minute Architecture (Tal Erez & Dan Handel), amongst others.

Total Space is fantasy.
Total Space is immersive.
Total Space is transdisciplinary.
Total Space is analog and digital.
Total Space is visual and auditory.
Total Space is a total space experience.
What is Total Space?

3 Questions to Matylda Krzykowski about Total Space here.

PARLIAMENT OF QUESTIONS

Desktop Exhibition

Parliament of Questions
Online Exhibition
Students of MA Design HKB Bern, Switzerland
Duration 12:24 min
Online since 29 May 2021

Welcome to Parliament of Questions — seven MA Design students are forming the body of this government. Here Design is negotiable, ongoing and most importantly questioning and redefining existing systems. Here we come together to pronounce the research-related and entrepreneurial questions, and to share the work in progress of breaking existing stereotypes. We wonder how design can depart from a question and what design can do?
 This Desktop Exhibition is an online exhibition of ongoing projects at HKB Bern based on a workshop with Matylda Krzykowski.

Adrian Demleitner – How can we implement privacy and intimacy with voice assistants

Anouk Bonsma – How can designers deal with copying in the digital work process?

Burim Selimi – What role can visual brand language play in the mechanical engineering industry?

Isamal Zorrilla – How can salutogenic design theory improve health at homes?

Kathrin Scheller – How can the way we design maps of our environment influence our idea of nature?

Yan Yu
 – How can we make people respond in daily behaviour to the impact of CO2 emissions?

Nicolas Baertschi – How can student projects start a venture and be more successful?

Curated by Matylda Krzykowski

Desktop Exhibition is a public presentation on the desktop. It is a format developed by Matylda Krzykowski. Clicking through the files on the desktop, in a manner akin to walking through a physical space and guiding visitors through an exhibition.

Scenography by Anouk Bonsma
Dramaturgy by Adrian Demleitner

Graphic Design by Kathrin Scheller, Anouk Bonsma
Instagram Management by Yan Yu

#DesktopExhibition #ShowYourWorkOnline #ParliamentOfQuestions

YOUR DESKTOP IS YOUR BALCONY

Exterior Installation

Die Balkone 2 – Scratching the Surface
An exhibition in the windows and on the balconies of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin. Curated by Övül Ö. Durmusoglu and Joanna Warsza
30 April – 2 May 2021

Your desktop and your interior can be understood, in a very general sense, as the locations of experiences and negotiations, of the 21st Century. In its desired form they are the places where personal identities are formed. I do not have a balcony but my window to the outside world is the desktop, while the interior of my home is committed to the idea, that it not only mirrors my contemporary life, more importantly, it plays a role constructing it. This exterior installation is an information to my physical and digital interior condition in pandemic times.

Me: I do not have a balcony.
María Inés Plaza Lazo: Your desktop is your balcony!

Quote:

The increasing levels of complexity that characterise realised, represented and idealised interiors in early 20st Century private and public spaces suddenly seem unproblematic, however, until they are considered alongside the implications for the interior of the concept ‘virtual space’. Perhaps in that context, in which new inside and outside spaces can be accesses through computer screen – which can be viewed at home, at work, in the gym, in the garden, in an aeroplane or on the top of a mountain – the idea of modernity, of the seperate spheres, and above all of the modern interior, cease to have any meaning.

Penny Sparke, Professor of Design History at Kingston University, London, from the book The Modern Interior (2008)

From the curators:

Die Balkone becomes a cyclical calendar exhibition, a temperature-check marking time from the beginning of the pandemic, and a situated exercise for art as a form of recovery, social glue, and point of connection. Die Balkone is also an invitation to negotiate what the pandemic has taught us: the interdependence between the priorities and the needs, the very local and the global, the inside and the outside, the digital and the analogue, the public and the personal, again somewhere on the edge of a balcony.

Övül Ö. Durmusoglu and Joanna Warsza (2021)

DOMESTIC SLICE

Furnishing

A piece pf furniture
Coloured gun grey solid MDF
2 sizes
Produced in Berlin
2021

More images coming!
E-mail for prices.

BARBARA STAUFFACHER SOLOMON

Exhibition

GROP
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon
6 March – 8 May 2021
Von Bartha

Curated by Matylda Krzykowski
March 2021

Read it also here.

‘I’m interested in doing more work,’ says the 92-year old Barbara Stauffacher Solomon when she speaks about what she does. ‘If I would have been only an artist I wouldn’t have made a living. In museum shows they did not pay me a penny for my artwork, but they did pay me for designing their flyers and catalogues.’

Barbara Stauffacher Solomon was a dancer and painter first; a historian, philosopher and landscape architect second. After studying graphic design at Schule für Gestaltung Basel with Armin Hofmann in the late 1950s, she started painting giant ‘Supergraphics‘ on large white walls – one wall telling her what to paint on the next wall, the wall across the room, the ceiling, and so on. Empty structures become big white canvases, butted up against each other. ‘Make a clean solution. Make a clean situation,’ she recalls Armin Hofmann would say. ‘Making visual propaganda was everything to him.’

In the 1980s, Solomon became obsessed with small 8 1/2”x11” sheets of paper: Playing on a page in the bright white light of San Francisco, on her white walls, on her long work table, stands a tall pile of pure white, 8 1/2”x11” sheets of paper offering limitless opportunities. On these, she draws lines, type lines, and collage lines, lies and land(e)scapes on 8 1/2”x11” pieces of paper, the next, and the next. Everyone’s public history, the one we think we know, and her private story. What is the source of this obsession? Working in this way, Solomon explains, was a way to maintain order in the family home: it kept the family’s ‘700 sq.ft. duplex in San Francisco from being dirty when living, working, cooking dinners for my husband and raising two daughters’.

What is the result of this obsession? ‘Drawings from my drawing board. Pages of text printed from my computer. Lots of cutting and pasting,’ Solomon explains. From this, she made books that are Art: from Green Architecture & The Agrarian Garden (1988) to Good Mourning California (1992) and Why?WhyNot? (2013) to DITTO (2021).’ While Stauffacher Solomon works on each book, she lines-up 8 1/2”x11” pieces of paper into lines of pages on her white walls so she can see all the pages in one glance, figuring out what she is doing; reading the walls.

In the 1990s when she participated in the group exhibition Visionary San Francisco, Stauffacher Solomon painted a series of 12 Ping Pong paintings titled This Is Not A Ping Pong Table (1990), the size of ping pong tables, using the table’s green rectangle to evoke the form of parks, gardens, parking lots and public squares. Critics declared her contribution one of the best architectural responses on the ‘dialectic between the street grid of San Francisco and the concept of play between the idea of urbanity and the arcadia that it has always represented’. Solomon’s decision to work with oil on canvas aimed to sought to provoke questions about how art is valued:‘If I had done it on paper,‘ she explains, nobody would pay any attention, but because I did it with oil paint on canvas like I was trained to do, then it makes it art. That’s just kind of a joke on painting and museums’.

The exhibition title GROP is an acronym for Green Rectangles of Paradise. The name is taken from one of Solomon‘s 8 1/2”x11”drawings from 1982, which consisted of a green rectangular garden and a road towards two giant breasts with stiff nipples. The piece is the embodiment of ‘California dreamin’: private properties, endless roads and sex. The work What price Liberty? (1991) depicts the statue of liberty standing on a green American Express card. We are in New York and on the other side of the United States of America, where the price is higher for personal dreams.

For Visionary San Francisco (1990) and her solo show I Broke All The Rules at Palm Springs Museum (2019), Stauffacher Solomon placed ping pong tables into the exhibition space for the audience to play on. For GROP at von Bartha, one ping pong table in the gallery provides space for play but turns into an artwork again via the table surface painting Alas, Her Pink Ass Asked for Grass (2020). Discussing this work, Solomon says: ‘A ping pong table is real. You can buy it anywhere. But you do not get a ping pong painting in a shop.’

The large four vermilion coloured letters GROP in the gallery are from Barbara Stauffacher Solomon’s BSS Alphabet (2019). GROP is a four-letter word. It has meaning, but there’s also a form to it. What Stauffacher Solomon does naturally is elevate typography into art:

Matylda Krzykowski: Bobbie, we need a name for your alphabet.
Barbara Stauffacher Solomon: Hm…call it Bobbie’s alphabet. Everybody I know, knows it is mine.
MK: But every font has a name Arial, Helvetica, Comic Sans.
BSS: I don’t have a name for it. We can call it the BSS Alphabet.
MK: BSS. That’s perfect.
BSS: Call it the BSS Alphabet. Because that’s it. Bullshit by Bobbie. Perfect.

For her second book Good Mourning California (1992) she made Design for Garden (1991) where the dollar bill has a white axis down the middle, which transforms it into garden. ‘It cost a fortune to plan a garden but having a dollar bill cut down the middle with an axis makes it a cheap French garden’.

Today, 30 years later, Staufacher Solomon uses copies of one dollar and 50 Swiss Franc bills and pastes pink asses onto them in the series Alas, the Pink Ass Asked for Cash. ‘Sometimes I make the dollars into a garden but with various ways of interpretation.’ Stauffacher Solomon didn’t make the 50 Swiss Franc bill into a garden, instead she pasted a pink heart shaped ass on it. ‘Hopefully, the invisible becomes visible and the ordinary becomes extraordinary. I will keep doing it. Covering small areas with lots of content.’

All images from my iPhone

YOUR LITTLE MATYLDA

Exhibit

Edition of 1 + 1 AP
February 2021

Extraperlo, an annual exhibition that takes place in the Madrid home and studio of Jorge Penadés. Inspired by the idea of “extraperlo” — which in Spanish refers to the illegal trade of goods circumventing state-mandated taxes — Penadés’s unconventional curatorial platform aims to recreate a sort of black market; the contributors, who are asked to make objects no larger than a shoebox, get to keep 100 percent of their sales (not a euro for the Spanish government).

The third iteration of Extraperlo (2021) is titled Curating Curators by Jorge Penadés and Maria Christina Didero. Indeed, “a curatorial platform for the unorthodox,” as Penadés describes the project, this edition is flipping the script by commissioning work not from artists or designers, but from well-established design curators and writers, among them Aric Chen, Matylda Krzykowski, Jonathan Olivares, and PIN–UP’s very own Felix Burrichter. (Words by Natalia Torija Nieto for PIN UP)

Your Little Matylda



Dear You, Congratulations on your purchase of a MATYLDA. Please read the instructions carefully.


MATYLDA’s open yet uncompromising attitude allows her to do pretty much anything, shifting themes and disciplines, mixing formats and methods comfortably. 



MATYLDA is both a host and a guest. She can be left alone occasionally but needs to be fully immersed by people regularly.


MATYLDA challenges the existing. She needs people who think and act the same way. If the desired effect cannot be materialised, leave her alone. 



MATYLDA twirls her hair. She needs to compensate energy.



MATYLDA’s uniform is made from Omega,
a limited edition jacquard fabric by Valentina Cameranesi. Designed as homage to Bloomsbury Group’s Omega Workshop, which believed that artists could design, produce and sell their own work. 



Last but not least, place MATYLDA close to you. Check the results of her influence from time to time and extend phases with her as necessary.

MISANTHROPOZINE #1

Editorial

Misanthropozine #1:
Tantric Urbanism
Architectural Magazine
2020

“Now wait a minute, y’all, this work ain’t for everybody” drones Matylda Krzykowski to the tune of Push It by Salt-N-Pepa, referring to the deadline culture in architecture. How absorbed you can be in a practice that has 24/7 deadlines and demands a workaholic discipline from newly graduated interns. “C’mon dears, let’s go show everyone that we know how to become number one in a hot museum show. Now push it…” Offering a dogmatic ‘exit route’ can be taken literally: sweeping together perspectives, attitudes towards work and organisational cultures that keep architecture locked in, and by extension all sectors that rest upon hypercapitalism, digitalisation, development and repurposing.

Text by Pieterjan Ginckels

More than 20 international authors have contributed to the first issue. They offer a cool critique of the generic urban environments in which we, or at least our loved ones, end up. MISANTHROPOZINE #1: TANTRIC URBANISM walks you through a series of computer images made incarnate. From hip twenty-somethings to early retirees, we know the renders, with their recurring render-people, textures and symbols, that conjure up visions of a ‘tantric life’ in today’s city. Tantric is derived from ‘tantric sex’, which aims at prolonging and eluding the climax. We are the actors playing a part in the ballet that planners have devised for us. With a designer soap shopping bag in hand, we arrive in our plasterboard bubble. Only the skating teenagers disturb our tantric experience.

Editorial team:
Pieterjan Ginckels
Tine Holvoet
Andrew Kovacs
Cédric Libert

Founding editors:
Pieterjan Ginckels
Tine Holvoet

ISSN: 2684-4745
33×24 cm, 112 pages

WHAT MAKES AN ENVIRONMENT REAL?

Workshop & Exhibition

9 – 12.12.2020
ZHdK MA Interaction Design
Work in Progress Exhibition
By Foreign Legion, Vera Sacchetti & Matylda Krzykowski
Graphic Design by Nadine Cocina


Images from Krzykowski’s and Sacchetti’s smartphones



‘We have about 8 students in the programme and they are currently working on topics such as: posthumanism, aesthetics of oil culture, artificial intelligence, hypersensitivity, addictive design, speaking cities, pollution sensing.’



How can we probe our surroundings and see what is invisible to the naked eye? How can we act and change them from within? This work in progress exhibition explores these questions as they surface in the work of eight students of the MA Interaction Design of the Zurich University of the Arts. Mentored by Foreign Legion (Matylda Krzykowski and Vera Sacchetti), students Viviana Castellanos, Nadine Cocina, Dzhuliia Kolodko, Silvia Monti, Jooin Shin, Eli Woke, Marten Limbach and Paulina Zybinska present a snapshot of their MA thesis investigations, crystallized in this moment in time and in a specifically conceived installation. 

The exhibition installation morphs into a virtual space with an homage to the Vaporwave aesthetic. Ironic, hyperbolic, surreal and nostalgic, the space becomes a dreamscape of neon colors surrounding the visitor, transporting them into another reality. Synthetic colours, deep fakes, cyberdelic mandalas, soundscapes, suggestive shapes and texture; this exhibition makes you question what it means to interact with the world and the role of technology in altering and embracing it. 

Ne plus ultra – The religious roots of Silicon Valley by Silvia Monti

Impostor syndrome – A participatory exploration in ways of synthesising fake realities by Paulina Zybinska

Sedona – An ambience that expands your sense of perception by Viviana Castellanos 

Nothing is what it appears – An exploration of our secondary experiences with personal technological devicesby Nadine Cocina



Making oldness new – Blurring the median between modern and ancient Armenian art 
by Dzhuliia Kolodko


Sensing Imperceptibles – Intuitive interfaces for sensing dangerous imperceptibles 
by Jooin Shin 


OORMSP – Assembly Guide: Offshore Oil Rig Model for Sonic Petrospectacles 
by Eli Wok

INTERIOR COMFORTS

Online Seminar

Spring 2020
AA, The Architectural Association School of Architecture, London
With Meggie Kelley, Shawn Maximo, Soft Baroque and Dan Handel

Interior Comforts is an online seminar by Matylda Krzykowski, in context of AA Speculative Studies, initiated by Eva Franch, exploring issues of contemporary culture through the study of other disciplines and practices and their relation to architecture.

INTERIOR COMFORTS, SPATIAL DISORIENTATION
Written by Nour Hamade, a participating student. PDF by Nour Hamade.

An opinionated description on the seminar series ‘Interior Comforts’ by Matylda Krzykowski fulfilled through Microsoft Teams during COVID-19 from 29th of April 2020 with a final online ‘exhibition’ launched on the 16th of June 2020, via the AA School Instagram.

Day forty-seven
I woke up today
I haven’t left the house in six days
It’s grey again

I look around my room
White surfaces
Colourful objects
It’s grey again

The idea of home
Filled with its paradoxes
Its omnipresence – I neglect it
It’s grey again

April 28th; 15:58 BST – An introductory task by e-mail set by Matylda Krzykowski within the context of Meggie Kelley’s architectural writings on cosiness: ‘Your assignment for tomorrow is to write down thoughts and ideas in bullet points about what comfort and cosiness is. There is no right or wrong, you can of course take it from the idea of an interior, but you can also take it further into political, social, or general aesthetic terms’:

My bulletpoints: • Home • Hygge • Warmth • State of mind • Safety • Acceptance • Being free and able to express yourself – the freedom of movement (or the lack of) • People • Objects • Mental Subjectivity • Physical Subjectivity • What it is NOT: worry and fear • Gestures • Seduction

We ‘met’ for the first time on the 29th of April, with Matylda introducing the seminar series, guest lecturers, expectations and the outcome of the course. By the first hour, we were joined by architect and writer Meggie Kelley. Kelley’s work focuses on humanism and materialism, where she rediscovers the ‘feeling of things’ within architectural history. Within the lecture, Kelley gave us an analytical description on the concept of snug spaces, focusing on the alcove. She explains “snug spaces are often defined as compact and close fitting. In other words, small enough to promote a sense of privacy, but large enough to feel at ease,”(1) giving a sense that a snug space lies somewhere perfectly in between two ideals. The recurrent reference to ‘cosiness’ was fascinating in retrospect to my preceding understanding of comfort. She described the theory of cosiness in its ambiguous nature, warning us on its association with the bourgeois and its established association. Like comfort, cosiness cannot and should not be interpreted as uniform or standardised, therefore, cannot be fixed.

What is comforts Interior?

Every time ‘comfort’ came to mind – I so unwillingly thought of home. But why? The term ‘comfort’ suggests a notion of ease and an easiness – to be comfortable is, essentially, to be at ease with one’s environment. To be comfortable is to put strenuous efforts in order to distinguish where the body ends and where the world begins; it is essentially a disregard to one’s surroundings. When one overlooks things – when nothing seems to be out of (ones) ordinary. When all adjacent objects transcend into the background.

The aim of Speculative Studies was to “test new educational formats and alternative methods of teaching and learning.”2 Encompassing prevalent issues within contemporary cultures, Eva Franch i Gilabert, the AA’s director at the time, introduced the new ‘core studies’ as a way to tackle architecture and its inter-disciplines. With the additional challenge of worldwide confinement, we were to have the course from the comforts of our own homes. As Matylda stated; “the intent of the seminar is to practice the visualisation, improvisation and production of alternative interior elements in order to develop ideas around comfort.” How to live?(3) She asks. How do I live? Where, what, why, with who? The course included fifteen students, three of which were from the diploma school (including myself). As a fourth year during the course, it was an additional elective that was not mandatory, though, there was something striking about this idea of learning about interiors whilst being forced to remain in (only) one.

Instructions given include (but are not limited to):
• not to think about the spatial elements of domesticity
• to forget about the home
• to forget about furniture
• to forget about the goals of different element
so, ultimately, to concur an interruption on our memory of space, domesticity and comfort. Matylda references the 1997 film series ‘Men in Black’, where Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones use a ‘Neuralyzer’ that has the ability to wipe the mind of anybody.

Taxonomy; the act of classifying. Within architecture, taxonomy is the act of naming spaces, objects and people as functions. A ‘kitchen’, ‘bedroom’, ‘bathroom’ or ‘lounge’ demonstrates the function that will occur in the labelled space, hence, already limiting the user’s ability and use of such (space). Architects classify the design of their spaces in order to easily understand how their designs function; understandingly, it aids designers in creating functional spaces with a pre-set use, therefore, designing the correct space for the correct use. We study architecture, our entire education is based on the specific roles of the floor, the wall, the roof.

We are taught to believe that there are standards for comfort. Set guidelines that would ultimately create a ‘comfortable’ space: the specific volume of a room, the size of an opening, the materials and colours of the surfaces that surround us, the proportions of objects that allow us to sit, eat, sleep, or even pee comfortably. Soft Baroque4 is made up of design duo Nicholas Gardner and Saša Štucin, who were a part of our second seminar, exploring the (anti) roles of furniture and objects. Their projects explore and blur the boundaries between acceptable furniture typologies and conceptual representative objects. Within the seminar, we explored living structures, things that are atypical; objects, furniture, products or systems that exist outside the norm. Soft Baroque’s work scrutinizes the interrelations between furniture, graphic design, ‘objecthood’ and the perception of materiality within the digital age. I found a project by Mona Hatoum, a Lebanese artist, untitled, that depicts a wheelchair made out of stainless steel. Object, comfort and use; the piece demonstrated the relationship between comfort and use – the ways in which function can be made redundant when comfort is absent. This led to a discussion on the use of materiality within comfort, and the depiction of comfort as a somewhat tangible (or transcribed) object.

Is it pleasure?

This is when it is worth differentiating between comfort (physical) and comfort (mental/state of mind). Physical comfort can usually be pre-determined by ergonomic forms, physical attributes and standard human behaviour; these are factors such as size, material, light and temperature. A mental comfort is subjective to each body, which relates more to memory, people and objects; a personal preference. “Pleasure awakes new understandings of reality, while comfort numbs us.”(5) We tend to associate comfort with pleasure – commonly understanding it as a positive indicator. In architecture, “comfort is normally related to bodily experience in terms of sensory relaxation.”(6) I like to think of comfort as being orientated, as so that when you are uncomfortable, that is merely a reaction of being disorientated. Bodies that experience discomfort or disorientation can be defensive. Their bodies react to a form of conservative politics that are exhibited in their gestures – gestures that seek to re-ground themselves. Comfort and cosiness are a state of mind – they are personal subjectivities that cannot be pre-determined. Spaces are a continuation of ourselves, they are like a second skin that “unfolds in the folds of the body”7 – spaces are not exterior to the bodies.

How does it turn into discomfort?

The objective of the seminar was an ‘online’ exhibition, covering the spatial intentions of the fifteen participating students on the ideal space of confinement. Matylda asks: “consider practical, physical and psychological understandings of what you expect from an interior and design an indoor space to survive by determining space requirements and selecting essential and additional items, such as shapes, colours, lighting, and materials, among others.”

When I was forced to think of a space that I would ‘like’ to be isolated in – I was blank. I could not think of comfort as a tangible object, or even a space. All I wanted was freedom. Although it was difficult to think of the ideal space of comfort, I began by essentially thinking of the most uncomfortable space I could potentially be in. A confined, definitive space in an absolute position and location in space that limits motility and freedom. An enclosed volume where one cannot manipulate their sense of orientation, one where creativity is interrupted and imagination is obstructed. Fixed layouts and unadaptable objects impose a standstill – halting time. They develop a sense of disorientation as the body and the mind are forced to function at a limit – a limit foisted by the space itself. In regards to Soft Baroque’s emphasis on materiality, interchangeable textures and limitless typologies, I had a contradictory thought; a space with no (obvious) materials, no textures, no prescribed reactions – not necessarily a colourless environment, but one that can be created by the user, during their experience. The space I finally designed was a material-less, wall-less (open), declassified (functionless or adaptable) environment. I placed a curtain (a piece of material that acts as a screen) on one ‘side’ of the volume in order to create a sense of orientation – a physical sense of direction navigates a sense of safety, where the body’s position incorporates a sense of perspective on/to other places. The space was surrounded by what we can describe as a ‘green screen.’ It was used as a tool to alternate between ‘scenes;’ where the conditions of the environment are interchangeable, adaptable and distinct. From the beach, to the mountains, to the inner city, it was a choice given to the individual confined within (myself). I named the space: ‘The Controlled Odyssey’ – a paradox, yes.

Can transience be permanent?

Shawn Maximo(8) presented his architectural dioramas and spatial hybrids for the first time through a video call. Most of Maximos’ presentation posed ‘what if’ scenarios, which greatly inspired my understanding of space and confinement. Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau: A 21st Century Show Home at the Swiss Institute exhibition by Felix Burrichter(9) – where Maximo designed the exhibition – had numerous objects and spaces placed in a large green screen space, which allowed viewers to create scenes with the exhibited objects. As an architectural tool that gave the visitor the power and creative control, I sought to uncover how that control would be primal within my own space. A virtual reality within a world that seemed to be disintegrating sounded nice – some relief from the ongoing pain. As I recollect my spatial intentions, I now think of how I subconsciously thought of an adaptable environment without recollection of Maximo’s work; his work captivated my views on transient (permanent) space.

To further challenge the role of taxonomy, Dan Handel10 discussed his work ‘Carpet Space’. A project that challenges aesthetic and performance – the role of a carpet, the floor, and the possible relationships between carpets and their architectural hosts. The project exposes the links between “optics, technology, body politics, and space,” further challenging the economy of consumption. Uncovering the relevance and the authentic role of the floor, I began re-questioning the rules of taxonomy that we were taught within school. If I was to break through the necessary functions of a floor, a wall or a roof, I could then envision surfaces – simply planes. This led to a design decision which took such surfaces as floating devices that could be used in every which way, functional or ornate. Within the seminar, Handel exclaimed: “happy accidents and banal questions are a great start to any project;” posing the question “what kind of rituals do you want in your space?” I decided to design and construct a sort of manual – a how-to (use) tool for the space.

The Controlled Odyssey User Manual: The feeling of confinement or entrapment can make one feel uneasy and ‘uncomfortable,’ therefore, the space serves to allow the body to move freely and operate without boundaries, whilst still bound within a space.

To use the space, you must;
i. Leave your worries and imagine yourself in a happy place, wherever that might be.
ii. You, only you, are in control of your body in this space – everything within is there to serve you.
iii. or do nothing – space is there to allow you to be you. iv.Infinite surfaces allow you to be surrounded by comfort – things, objects or memories that allow you to reminisce, reorientate, and recreate ‘serenity.’
v. Comfort as you please.

As the seminar series came to an end, we finally presented the fifteen students’ work via 69 stories on Instagram, conveying our interior comforts through a 5.8 inch screen. With everyone scattered around the globe, we were able to exploit the digital world by allowing people within the school (and strangers) into our sacred spaces and ideas of comfort. It was worth questioning the future (and current) architects of the spaces of which we inhabit everyday and how they should adhere to the role of comfort. The role of comfort in respect to the body’s and mind’s experience.

Ending with Michael Sorkin’s quote from a text we had read in the seminar, Comfort: reclaiming place in a virtual world “the danger after all is not in the measurements of private pleasures, but in a universal standard, comfort fits all.”(10)

Finally, thank you Matylda for forcing me to test the parameters of comfort and for the opportunity to write about it.

Footnotes:
1 Kelley, M., (2014). Dark Alcoves, Hidden Niches, and Cozy Corners. New York: Circadian Press. p. 47
2 AA School, (2020). Experimental Programme: Core Studies. Architectural Association. Accessed 3 September 2020. https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/ academicprogrammes/experimental
3 Fundaments from the practice of the artist Andterea Zittel
4 Soft Baroque, (n.d.). Work: Superbench. Accessed 22 September 2020. https://softbaroque.com/superbench
5 Esteve, P., (2017). ‘Wake Up Call: architectural comfort in the age of passivity’, PIN-UP, 23.
6 Ibid.
7 Ahmed, S., (2006). Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University Press. p. 134
8 Maximo, S., (n.d.). Shawn Maximo Studio. Accessed 22 September 2020. http://shawnmaximo.com/Home. aspx
9 Carpenter, W., (2015). ‘21st-Century L’Esprit Nouveau: PIN–UP’s Felix Burrichter wows us with a must-see Swiss Institute exhibition’, Pamono. (Online Article). Accessed 24 September 2020. https://www.pamono. co.uk/stories/21st-century-lesprit-nouveau
10 Handel, D., (2019). Project: Carpet Space. Accessed 22 September. http://www.handandel.com/carpet-space
11 Sorkin, M., (2001). Comfort: Reclaiming Place in a Virtual World. Cleveland: Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art. p. 14
12 Hatoum, M., (1998). Untitled (wheelchair). Tate. Accessed 6 May 2020. https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ hatoum-untitled-wheelchair-t07497

THINGS MIGHT

Column

Since 2020

Things Might is a column about the designed environment and how it sometimes becomes, often hurts, occasionally explodes and usually takes by Matylda Krzykowski, CEO of Total Space Global.

Things Might is a diaristic account of choreographies and constant adaptations for Arts of the Working Class, a multi-lingual street journal on poverty and wealth, art and society published every two months. It contains contributions by artists and thinkers from different fields and in different languages. Its terms are based upon the working class, meaning everyone, and it reports everything that belongs to everyone.

Things Might – become everything but a carpet, for 2038 ‘The New Serenity’ a collaboration between the curators of the German Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia and Arts of the Working Class. The issue was released in the future reflecting on the present.

Things Might – have to be exercised, for Bom Dia and Arts of the Working Class Picnic on Sunday, 22 August 2020 at Tiergarten Berlin. A reading an an exercise for the possibility of empathy.

Things Might – break if you want to, for issue 13 ‘Identity is a Pain in the Arse’, coming September 2020 to the streets of the world and to the Arts of the Working Class online shop

Images:

1) Sketch on Olaf Grawert‘s iPad on the floorplan of the German Pavilion in Venice for a carpet design titled ‘Mensch Ärger Dich nicht’ by Matylda Krzykowski
2) Cover image of 2038, issue of Arts of the Working Class for the German Pavilion at the 17th International Architecture Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia
3) María Inés Plaza, Matylda Krzykowski and Ludwig Engel at Bom Dia and Arts of the Working Class Picnic
4) Exercising Empathy
5) Screenshot from the website of Arts of the Working Class
6) Screenshot from the website of Arts of the Working Class

CHOREOGRAPHY MAY REFER TO THE DESIGN ITSELF

Workshop & Exercise Series

Since 2013 – Ongoing
Various places and settings

10 – 18.9.2021
I do my Thing, we do our Thing by students of The Critical Inquiry Lab, Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands & CIVA Brussels, Belgium

9 – 11.9.2020
If Power would be Care by students of The Critical Inquiry Lab, Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands

18 – 21.2.2020
Mega Practice Fantastico Theater by students of The Centre of Philosophical Technologies, ASU Arizona, USA

Note:
I applied with a choreography-related proposal to the Jan can Eyck academy in 2013. Back then I was artistically directing Depot Basel, the place for contemporary design, that I co-founded. At that time we unexpectedly received a high amount of funding for a 3 year period of programming, which demanded concentration to cultural formats, rather than choreographic experiments. An invitation by The Centre of Philosophical Technologies at ASU Arizona (USA) was the opportunity to shift my practice towards experiments around choreography in relation to the build environment again. In February 2020 I brought Mega Practice Fantastico Theater to ASU Arizona where students brought an object, gave it an alternate role and performed the meaning together after group rehearsals. In September 2020 objects were obsolete and empathy became the objective.

Due to Covid_19 Janfer Chung, a students of The Critical Inquiry Lab, was still in Hong Kong when I conducted the workshop at Design Academy. In an e-mail exchange I suggested to Janefer that she should join us online and write a report about the workshop from the point of view of an observer. When you scroll down you find the text for ‘If Power would be Care’, the piece we developed im the workshop. But first read Janefer’s observations:

To Synchronise our Movements

From 9286 km away from Eindhoven, through my laptop screen, I was able to perceive the workshop “Choreography may also refer to the design itself”, led by Matylda Krzykowski. This review is based upon my observations through the flicking images and choppy voices from the fixed location and limited size of my laptop screen. While Matylda Krzykowski and the class were perceiving my existence through a laptop on the other side. This setting amplified my voice, extended my sight and my image into the classroom, and in reverse, it also extended the motions of the class into my living room. While Matylda Krzykowski’s intentions were to develop our thinking and bodily experiences through choreography as design, my physical limitation granted me an interesting position to make certain observations. Some of my experiences are interpreted through my imagination.

‘Choreography may also refer to the design itself’ by Matylda Krzykowski

On the first day, we started learning about Matylda Krzykowski‘s artistic practices and her critical interests. Then, we went through a series of experimental theatres practices, improvisation theatre exercises, movement exercises, writing practices and a group discussion about the way that those made us feel. In the evening of the first day, the class had a chance to view the performance of Febris by choreographer, Simon Bus, and Stop Making Sense by Aleysha Dobysh followed by a Q&A session after the performance where my classmates were able to ask and engage with the performers, sound and lighting designers. On the second day, Matylda invited Simon Bus to our class for a session to engage in dance choreography . We dedicated the time to designing and experimenting with choreographic sequences, followed by practice and rehearsal for the final performance. With all the joint physical and verbal effort, we developed the choreography of our performance, ‘If Power would be Care’, performed and video documented on the final day of the workshop.

The session with Simon Bus essentially became a pivotal reference for the formation of our choreographic design and the performance as a whole. His demonstration of “Threading”, a technique connecting parts of the body to make a hole, and going through the hole with another part of the body, fundamentally enacted our relearning to our body coordination, and a reexamination of our physical endurance. Through repetitive movement, a muscle reacted to another muscle and a movement enacted by another movement. The sequences evidently created a sense of isolation within the individual self, and collectively, a sense of authorship and ownership emerged.

‘If Power would be Care’ by students of The Critical Inquiry lab

The process of creating ‘If Power would be Care’ was unexpected and intuitive but guided by Matylda Krzykowski. The system of the performance was made up of 16 movements, each developed by the students.. Inspired by Simon Bus’s “Threading”, a student developed a variation of the movement, “Needle & Thread”. Another movement is “Puppet”, where the performer, being the puppet, stands taut and stiffly straight, and abruptly, they loosen the muscle strength of their upper bodies, seemingly like the puppeteer released their control of the strings from above. Other singular movements were the Cleaner and the Sponge. Some movements were designed to work in a trio or a pair like the “Jellyfish” along with the “Pusher” and the “Helper”, , “Domestication” with the “Snail” and finally “Unboxing” made up of a student in an imaginary box, and another defining the box using the first’s body and then releasing the boxed person. All together these movements constituted the whole performance. Some catalyst characters like the “Helper” and “Pusher”, create the act of “helping” and “pushing”, the Jellyfish or other performers in the space, these accelerate the reactions from each of the performers. Matylda Krzykowski became a facilitator to this.

The explicit act of repetitive motions may in fact signal the demonstration of power within one self. Concurrently, the demonstration of care and empathy, relations and coordination with the others, the boundaries of self takes shape. Through the performance, we inquired about the intertwined relationship between power and care from the perspective of personal, historical, political and societal, in the midst of strange and terrible times.

The Choreography Turn in our Design Study

As a starting program of our master study, Matylda Krzykowski’s attempts on testing how choreography could become part of the design curriculum expanded our horizons in design formation. Her workshop also multiplied the connections between content and material context, motion and emotion, space and physical entity, live action and documentation. In the 3 days of choreography workshop with Matylda Krzykowski, a collective sense of bonding, trust and intimacy generated within the group. We were quickly opened up to each other through the improvisation theatres on the first day, with exercises deployed a lot of eye contact and communication through the bodies. Matylda‘s presence, energy, her way of leading and the motivation she offered were stimulating. Simon‘s performance in the evening and the session with him in the following day were powerful and contagious. Above all, throughout the process of designing, practicing, performing and reviewing, the group derived collective consciousness and confidence through the final production of the performance.

Online Being vs. Physical Presence

(Final Thought : The SARS and H1N1 happened in my childhood traumatised me, I have been getting very anxious and paranoid. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have tried to do the best precaution I can to avoid getting infected. While Matylda asked me to write about my feelings of seeing the close interaction within the class, to be honest, if I am physically present in the class, I might not be able to enjoy or to interact with the group comfortably. On the contrary, I saw the trust, bonding, openness emerged within the class and the collective, I felt abashed by my fear. I really hope to join the class as soon as possible, and to grow together with the class.

Above all, it has been a unique position for me to participate in this interactive workshop digitally. What I see choreography may offer to the design curriculum are the instantaneous and variations it contains. The sensual experience emerged in the process of constitution, and the choreographer’s direct contact with the observer, and the knowing of their existence (the audience, or the recording tools), would inherently shape and reshape the performances. These qualities of spontaneity and the uncalculated might be important to include in the development of design.

By Janfer Chung
______________________________

What if power would be Care…
A Moving Encounter
Performance & Multimedia Installation
October 2020

In the rebirth of this inner universe fall space and time, clearing possibilities for new cosmic reflections. We wonder: Can power and care co-exist within oneself? What is the role of power in a world dictated by care? How do power and care overlap and form an intertwined whole? At the heart of this revival, a sedimentation of iterations takes place. As past mores come undone, the collective mind undergoes a renewal through the body. The particles, floating in space, contemplate their endeavours. Among themselves, a dichotomous dialogue ensues reflecting on the spectrum of power and care. In an astral ballet, a constellation of questions expands exponentially within them. Through an encounter of motions, a narrative emerges echoing the troughs and falls of their inquiry.

Based on the workshop: ‘Choreography may refer to the design itself’ by Matylda Krzykowski.

Conducted with and by: Franziska Bax, Maxime Benvenuto, Oshin Siao Bhatt, Fernand Bretillot, Matilde Brizzi, Janfer Chung, Camille Guibaud, Lina von Jaruntowski, Jessica Rosalie Jones, Neal Jordan, Yeseul Kim, Eva Lotta Landskron, Jone Miskinyte, Pedro Matos Meireles De Barros Lobo, Niels Postma, Emma Sfez, Camille Wiesel

Students of the MA The Critical Inquiry Lab
Lead by Saskia van Stein
Coordinated by Gijs de Boer
At the Design Academy Eindhoven.

Special thanks to Simon Bus for his support in the development of this performance.
Thanks as well to Alesya Dobysh and Roy Overdijk.

BODY OF WORK

Lecture Format

13 Feb 2020
The Higher Technical School of Architecture of Madrid (ETSAM)
Mayrit Fest

With Body of Work Tamar Shafrir and Matylda Krzykowski lead performance-based conversations, swimsuit talk, unemployment shame, baby animals and favourite colours related to exhibitions, education and experiments in design, art and architecture. The format included tasks and questions and also demanded the participation of the audience.

The title Body of Work stems from the e-mail invitation by Miguel Leiro saying: Since both of you know each other and share a series of similarities in terms of your body of work in investigation, I thought that it could be interesting to have both of you share the stage for the duration of 2 hours.

Organisation: Miguel Leiro, Cristina Schaver
Photos: Cristina Crisph

SPECTATOR MODE

Exhibition & VR Performance

7 – 9 February 2020
Klasse Digitale Grafik
Annual Exhibition HFBK Hamburg, Germany

We are always online but have we really read the terms and conditions? Are we just idling or are we really participating? Are we just floating with the stream or are we actively steering the debate? Klasse Digitale Grafik aims to claim the virtual spaces that were occupied by templates, closed platforms and walled gardens.

Students: Natalie Andruszkiewicz, Megan Dieudonné, Kimberly Duck, Stella Friedenberger, Wiebke Grieshop, Julius Kühn, Artur Neufeld, Claudia Nielsen, Ivy May Müller, Sandy Richter, Benedikt Rottstegge, Oskar Schlüter, Jens Schnitzler, Jana Schwinkendorf, Lukas Siemoneit, Sofia Star, Yulia Wagner, Marco Wesche

Klasse Digitale Grafik is run by Knoth + Renner,
Christoph Knoth and Konrad Renner

Photos: Marco Wesche and Matylda Krzykowski
VR: Artur Neufeld, Lukas Siemoneit
#klassedigitalegrafik #hfbkhamburg

DESKTOP EXHIBITION

Presentation Format

2017 – ongoing
Various Locations

A Desktop Exhibition is a public presentation on a desktop, conducted on a laptop, a private screen. It is a presentation format developed by Matylda Krzykowski, shortly after closing the physical space of Depot Basel. The curator clicks through files on a desktop, simulating a guide who walks visitors through the physical space of an exhibition.

In October 2017 Matylda Krzykowski presented the first Desktop Exhibition at Is Technology Sexist?,  a conference curated by Chus Martinez at Institut Kunst, Basel.

Have you seen the presentation of the first speaker on the technology and gender conference? She curated various files onto her desktop background and called it an exhibition.

Present like a Pro, an article by Hilke Ludwigs about the Dektop Exhibition.

Previous Desktop Exhibitions:

6 Aug 2020
About the Desert by Matylda Krzykowski, Drinks by Something Fantastic
Bonjour Tristesse, Berlin

15 July 2020
Design Dialogue with Glenn Adamson for Friedman Benda
Online

7 July 2020
Spatial Projects in Digital Worlds – Sammlungspräsentationen
Kultur­ und Medienmanagement Sommersemester 2020, FU Berlin
Online

19 Feb 2020
Center for Philosophical Technologies, Speaker Series: Bordering
Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

11 Dec 2019
Formats, in context of the seminar ‘One Minute Architecture’
by Dan Handel & Tal Erez
Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Tel Aviv, Israel

27 Sep 2018
Mitchell Lecture Series, conversation with Ilona Gaynor
The School of Art Institute Chicago, USA

12 March 2018
Methods & Formats
BauNow Bauhaus New Perspectives, Alma Tel Aviv, Israel

05 Dec 2017
Inaugural Lecture
Muthesius University of Art and Design, Kiel, Germany

30 Oct 2017
Prototyping Ideas, Theme: Local
Domus Academy Milan, Italy

18 Oct 2017
The Art of Presenting
Z33 & Designplatform Limburg, Hasselt, Belgium

10 Oct 2017
Is Technology Sexist? Symposium
Institut Kunst, Basel, Switzerland

Desktop Scenographies by Tom Hancocks
Valerie van Zuijlen or Matylda Krzykowski

ADD TO THE CAKE

Exhibition

26 April – 4 November 2019
Kunstgewerbemuseum Schloss Pillnitz Dresden, Germany
Curated by Foreign Legion, Vera Sacchetti and Matylda Krzykowski

What happens when you Add to the Cake*?

In the second phase of Add to the Cake the preview becomes an exhibition opening 5 July 2019, in which the spaces are transformed to give way to a series of installations on visions for the future of female practice. Commissioned works create paths for the present and future of female practice. Simultaneously, various Visual Fictions spread throughout the spaces act as a spatial expression of desire for something lacking here and now . Add to the Cake becomes the transformation it heralds, enacting futures that are inclusive, generous, all-encompassing and joyous.

*Cake, here, is meant as a variation on the concept of “canon”. The most repeated observation during the by Foreign Legion organised symposium A Woman’s Work was “We have to add to the Canon”.

Visual Fictions

Associates Associates (Ania Jaworska & Zack Ostrowski), Shumi Bose, Sara de Campos, Fictional Journal (Gabriela Baka, Sophie Rzepecky, Teresa Palmieri), Anne Dessing & Michiel van Iersel, Marie Herwald Hermann & Anders Ruhwald, Zoë Ritts & Océane Réveillac, Galerie Stephanie Kelly (Kerstin Flasche, Claudia Kleiner, Michael Klipphahn, Lucie Klysch, Paula Letalik, Theresa Rothe, Nina Schwarzenberger, Winnie Seifert), Kosmos Architects (Leonid Slominsky, Artem Kitaev, Nikolay Martynov), Oliver Klimpel, Alexandra Midal & Emma Pflieger, Kamau Patton, Martha Poggioli, Alejandra Navarrete Llopis & Naho Kubota, OOIEE (Mary Begley, Matt Olson, Drew Smith), James Taylor-Foster

Commissions

Unstable Signs as Radical Tools
Anja Kaiser and Garrett Nelson
What if we present reference points and messy histories for building knowledge of unstable signs as radical tools?
In Unstable Signs as Radical Tools, Anja Kaiser and Garrett Nelson offer a future of work where unstable signs become radical tools. Using as a starting point Sheila Levrant de Bretteville’s 1974 Women in Design conference poster, they propose reference points for building knowledge and awareness of unstable signs as radical tools, opening visual and narrative spaces for revolution.

Futuress
common-interest and Ann Kern
What theories have not yet been formulated or recorded?
This project questions who writes history and whose histories are told. It is a feminist library of blind spots, untold stories, and missing narratives within history and theory, in the form of a collectively built, continuously growing online repository. Futuress invites all to contribute to the active writing of past, present and future history.

For Your Information (FYI) A non-periodical newsletter of women-related current articles
Chrissie Muhr and Ji-hee Lee
Do you understand your reality?
In this unsteady newsletter of current articles related to women, Chrissie Muhr and Ji-hee Lee offer a subversive take on contemporary news, skewing and decentering the media landscape. In a continuous collection of national and international news, the project invites a new reading of women’s current and future place in the media, and gives visitors access to this information flow.

Call for Collective Representation
Gabriel A. Maher and Ina Weise
Can you only dream what you’ve seen?
This project shows a future where women are seen, heard, and at last, visible. What would it mean to be seen together, as a powerful community that is challenging notions of representation and revealing a greater collective image? And how could that expanding visibility transform the way we model not only our work but the way we model ourselves for future generations?

Exercise to Unlearn the Canon
Vivien Tauchmann
How can you learn anew?
This is an invitation to practice changing power dynamics through tactile and bodily engagement. As a series of experiential performative interventions, the participants in Exercise to Unlearn the Canon become the material itself, exploring the capabilities of our bodies to extend the individual experience of our environment and thus provoke behavioural change. Performed during Dresden’s Museum’s Night,
6 July 2019.

Multiverse
Julia E. Dyck
How can we make space for a multitude of voices?
Working with analogue synthesis and a small group of voices, this composition is a soundscape for a speculative non-place. Driven by the passage “Add to the cake / Add to the canon”, the shifting atmosphere reflects spontaneous creation and the continuous conversion of energy into matter.

Ritual of Self-empowerment
Pinar & Viola
How does an alternative world look and feel like?
In this personal presentation, Pinar Demirdag of artist duo Pinar & Viola discusses her self- growth process in recent years, sharing her journey towards self-belief and breaking out of conventions and expectations.

ADD TO THE CAKE – PREVIEW

Exhibition

Curated by Foreign Legion, Vera Sacchetti and Matylda Krzykowski
26 April – 4 November 2019
Kunstgewerbemuseum Schloss Pillnitz Dresden

Contemporary cultural constructs have us believe that not everyone can get a fair share of the cake, and that only a limited few can write history. In the case of female practitioners in design, architecture and the arts, their erasure from the history and the memory of their disciplines has been systematic; but in the first two decades of the 21st century, they have regained visibility. In this pivotal moment, female practitioners have the chance to usher in an important transformation for their disciplines.

We can – and need to – add to the existing cake: infinite layers for an expanded canon. Adding to museum collections and to historical accounts, adding to collective memory and to possible futures. Most importantly, we must realise that ‘adding’ doesn’t mean ‘taking away’, but that it enriches the existing context with multiple, varied voices and perspectives.

Add to the Cake is an exercise in enacting the kind of transformation that design, architecture and arts are about to experience. It develops over the course of an exhibition (preview: 27.04. – 23.06., exhibition: 06.07. – 03.11.2019), an active public program, and a series of performative moments over the course of six months.

The exhibition stems from the A Woman’s Work symposium, which took place at the Japanisches Palais in Dresden in January 2019, in context of the ‘Against Invisibility’ exhibition, and gathered local and international perspectives on the present and the future of female practice.

In Add to the Cake, the exhibition collects and develops themes that were first discussed during that occasion, and frames them alongside other objects and ideas developed by female practitioners. Alongside it, an active public program presents a variety of formats, focusing on establishing permanent visibility for female practitioners.

Perspectives represented in the preview of the exhibition:
Danah Abdulla, Tulga Beyerle, Pinar Demirdag, Annika Frye, Thomas Geisler, Katrin Greiling, Christoph Knoth, Sarah Owens, Alice Rawsthorn, Antje Stahl and Libby Sellers.

With contributions from: Common Interest (Nina Paim, Corinne Gisel), Depatriarchise Design (Maya Glasel & Anja Neidhard), DAMn Magazine (Siegrid Demyttenaere, Bessaam El-Asmar, Emma Firmin, Gabrielle Kennedy), Kate Dooley, Amelie Klein, Kaja Kusztra, Alexandra Lange, Emma Lucek, Klara Nemeckova, Not a Muse (Silva Baum, Claudia Scheer, Lea Sievertsen), Sumitra Upham, Hagen Verleger.

Soundpiece by Julia E. Dyck
Sraphic design by AnnerPerrin
Visuals by-Florence Fofana
Scenography by AnnerPerrin, Raby-Florence Fofana, Matylda Krzykowski
Video room by Pinar & Viola, produced by von Atilla Turker

FOREIGN LEGION

Curatorial & Spatial Practice

Various location
2018 – ongoing

Foreign Legion is a globally active curatorial initiative by Vera Sacchetti and Matylda Krzykowski. Foreign Legion works in a wide range of formats, either existing or imagined, for the cultural and commercial sector. “We are foreign and we are everywhere.”

Instagram

Website and Visual Identity by AnnerPerrin
Illustrations by Raby Florence Fofana
Mock-Up by Matylda Krzykowski

Upcoming exhibition: Add to the Cake, 26 April – 4 November 2019, Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, Germany.
Save the Date: Opening 5 July 2019, 6 PM
Summer School: 6 – 8 July 2019. Info coming soon.

A WOMAN’S WORK

Symposium

17 January 2019
Curated by Foreign Legion, Vera Sacchetti and Matylda Krzykowski, Client Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden 
Visual Identity by Andrea Anner, Images by David Pinzer

A Woman’s Work aims to explore the roles, influence and visibility of contemporary female practitioners. Structured in three parts: ‘Advocates of history’,‘Enablers of visibility’ and ‘Dismantlers of existing conditions’, the gathering aims to bring women in and around design, art and architecture to the fore, creating the conditions for their visibility to become a permanent condition. Program Friday, 18 January 2019

  • 9:30 – Registration and Coffee
  • 10:15 – Introductory Remarks
    Matylda Krzykowski and Vera Sacchetti, Foreign Legion
  • 10:30 – Introduction to “Against Invisibility”
    Klara Němečková, curator, Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden
  • 10:45 – Part 1 – Advocates of History“Women have always been there”, critic Alexandra Lange has recently noted, “but we have overlooked their contributions.” If design history has been skewed from the start – given the perspective of those who wrote it in the first place – what can be done to rediscover women designers? Advocates of History looks at recent examples of revisited design history, in exhibitions, books, institutions and events, that seek to celebrate female practitioners and their contributions to the fields of design and architecture.
    Thomas Geisler, director, Werkraum Bregenzerwald
    Annika Frye, designer and Professor of Design Science and Research, Muthesius Kunsthochschule Kiel
    Libby Sellers, design historian, consultant and author of Women Design
  • 12:00 – Lunch Break
  • 12:45 – Part 2 – Enablers of Visibility It is not enough that female practitioners do the work – it is also up to those in positions of power to bring their work to the spotlight. How can we make sure that the histories of these designers are written, talked about, broadcast? And how can they be transported from one generation to the next? Enablers of Visibility examines the roles of museums, schools, critics, journalists, and even social media in disseminating the stories of women. 
    Katrin Greiling, designer and teacher, founder of Studio Greiling
    Alice Rawsthorn, design critic and author of Design as an Attitude
    Antje Stahl, journalist and editor, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
  • 14:15 – Ritual of Self-Empowerment
    Pinar Demirdag, Practitioner and co-founder of Pinar & Viola
  • 14:30 – Part 3 – Dismantlers of Existing ConditionsEven while pushing for the visibility of the female practitioner, we often fail to recognize our own bias and ingrained behaviours. How can we create frameworks for the visibility of women designers without replicating the same Eurocentric stereotypes, and without overlooking different perspectives and geographies? Dismantlers of Existing Conditions discusses strategies for shifting our perspective, and that of our students, our audiences, and our establishment.
    Danah Abdulla, designer, researcher and educator, Brunel University London and Decolonising Design 
    Christoph Knoth, graphic designer, web developer and professor HFBK Hamburg
    Sarah Owens, professor of Visual Communication at Zurich University of the Arts
  • 15.45 – Roundup and Concluding Remarks
    Tulga Beyerle, director, Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
    Matylda Krzykowski and Vera Sacchetti, Foreign Legion
  • 17:00 – Reception

‘No longer need women to navigate the design profession without role models to look up to and be inspired by. No longer have women to conform to any predefined career orientation, designing their paths in whichever way they deem best. And because, in recent years more than ever, women in design can find inspiring examples all around them, the practitioner of today should not have to quiet down their voice, hush away their presence, hide their influence. And yet, it is this reclaiming that is the biggest challenge, one that must take most of our attention right now: finding and using our own voices in design, loud and clear. To say things such as:

Yes, I want that opportunity.
Yes, I want access to that platform.
Yes, give me that job (and pay me as much as you would a man).
Yes, represent and sell my work (for the same price as you will sell a work made by a man).
Yes, this is obvious, necessary, and the only way I will work for you, with you, alongside you.

‘Extract from the essay ‘A Woman’s Work, or, steps towards the yin revolution’ by Foreign Legion for the ‘Against Invisibility exhibition catalogue’ (Gegen die Unsichtbarkeit, Designerinnen der Deutschen Werkstätte Hellerau, 1898 bis 1938, July 2018

PARALLAX

Seminar & Exhibition Series

Muthesius University for Art and Design
2017 – 2018

A seminar at Muthesius University by Matylda Krzykowski, turned into a hybrid project, an approach to design education, with Annika Frye. Website Digital Interface  by Benjamin Unterluggauer and Matylda Krzykowski. Catalogue Printed Interface by Annika Frye and Matylda Krzykowski.

A Contemporary Understanding of Design – The concept of the Werkbundkiste (Werkbund crate) was developed in the 1950s by the Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen). The Werkbund was founded in 1907 as an association of artists, architects and entrepreneurs, at the suggestion of Hermann Muthesius et al., the eponym of our Muthesius University, which was also founded in 1907. The various Werkbundkisten contained mass-produced household goods; functional everyday objects such as tableware or kitchen appliances. About 80 of these boxes were distributed to schools as visual aids in order to anchor the utopian idea of the democratic Gute Form among future consumers in the period of upheaval that the economic miracle during the reconstruction of Germany constituted. It is hard to imagine today that people believed at that time that they could convey a sustainable and democratic concept of design on the basis of a box full of household objects alone. For today the process draws more attention than he product in design. So what would be the current format of a Werkbundkiste?

Muthesius Parallax shows processes, methods, tools and attitudes instead of finished products. The spatial interface is an approach to mediating design education. This form of approach to process-based design aims to convey to visitors a conscious—today one would say contemporary—understanding of design.

#muthesiusparallax
#lifelonglearningparallax
#spatialinterface
#designhistory
#werkbundkiste

With Jakob Brand, Katharina Graff, Franziska Schneider, Benjamin Unterluggauer, Alex Niggemeyer, Leon Clausen, Sebastian Kommer, Henrieke Neumeyer, Hansol Kim, Thank you to Simon Denny, Veronica Ranner, Ingo Gerken and Christoph Knoth.

 

FÉMININ

Short Film

2017

Féminin is the title of the solo show of Valentina Cameranesi Sgroi that took place in an abundant coiffeur in the seaside destination of Toulon in the French Riviera. Féminin was part of Villa Noailles‘s program.

During the exhibition Valentina Cameranesi and Matylda Krzykowski decided that the show that was installed like a place that existed, rather than a place that was fictional, should be documented in film. Adrianna Glaviano produced the short film while Matylda Krzykowski wrote the words and narrated them. The short film takes the same title as the exhibition and is constructed from video fragments inside the show, where a gracious woman seems to inhabit the space. Video recordings of visual features from outside, quaint street scenes and architectural features, are connecting the inside of the constructed show to the reality of the Mediterranean coast town.

Is there anything unpleasant about being here?
No,  you cant even talk about anything unpleasant here.
The only thing unpleasant is if someone comes here for half a day and does not get really to know the place . … that must me unpleasant. 

Nothing changes year after year.
It brings together seemingly unsuitable visual elements.
In the same time they couldn’t be more unsuitable
Artificial and natural. 

They are props like the rest of the world.
Things appear as seductive, often exaggerated variations of references.
They are decorated.
They are all pretty girls and guys.
Who? Everyone. Everything.

Work and Art Direction by Valentina Cameranesi Sgroi
Short Film by Adrianna Glaviano
Texts by Matylda Krzykowski
Voice by Matylda Krzykowski

Text was published in a limited edition catalogue and in PIN-UP – The Feminine Glaze

The scene of Féminin, Valentina Cameranesi’s recent exhibition in Toulon, France, is set in a former hair salon, a place of self-reflection. Conceived as a spatial still life that includes vases, fabrics, and photographs, the show inspires nostalgia for the 1980s, a time when hair was big, blocky shapes defined interiors, and people generally weren’t afraid to make bold style statements.

The title of the show is taken from the vinyl lettering remaining on the salon’s window façade. It is the ideal reference for Valentina Cameranesi’s work, which deals with a perception of femininity, from an era when the understanding of confident, sensual femininity was being redefined as many women’s idea of power dressing started to emulate that of men.

Vases with their curvy ceramics echo the female form, entering into a dialogue, in the case of Cameranesi’s works, on femininity. Cameranesi drew her first vase in 2011, after being deeply moved by an exhibition of Gino de Dominicis at the Maxxxi Museum in Rome, something she remembers being both saddened and inspired by. In the following year, she continued to let her emotions draw variations of symbolic and decorative vessels until she was introduced to a supplier in the Veneto, in Northern Italy, where she produced her first set. The transformation of a drawing, an abstract idea, into a ceramic object was new to Cameranesi and gave her an unexpected sense, complementing her work as an art director and stylist.

Another example of Cameranesi’s aesthetic understanding is the pastel-colored, blue-shaded, expressive Jacquard fabric in the show. Made according to an industrial weaving technique, it also offers a possibility to translate her imagined, hand-drawn ideas into visual patterns. There is a difference between what she drew and what the machines produced — the end result an is abstract and uncontrollable version of the original concept, manipulated by its weaving technique. It is a process that she describes as “a romance with digital embroidery.”

Adding to the Féminin’s profusion of nostalgia — visually elegant and often decoratively beautiful — Cameranesi references mass-produced images that have informed our ideas of femininity over the years. As an art director and stylist whose work is captured through photography, the artist is intimate with the power of pictures. One could say Cameranesi is looking for an artistic lexicon of shapes, colors, and ornaments, her themes referencing the issues of female identity. Today the sensually elegant L’Oréal from the late 70s and early 80s may no longer be present, but in Féminin her image lingers on.

MILANO AFTER HOURS

Exhibition & Event

April 2017

One night hosted by Felix Burrichter, Juan Garcia Mosqueda and Matylda Krzykowski at the former residence of Lucio Fontana during Salone del Mobile Milano, Italy.

Matylda Krzykowski curated a temporary environment consisting of some in-build custom made furniture and neon lights by Lucio Fontana and contemporary work by Ilaria BianchiAndrea Sala, Davide Groppi, Johanna Grawunder, Lorenzo Vitturi, Parasite 2.0, Stefano Galuzzi, and Valentina Cameranesi Sgroi. 

Thank you Francesca Cefis, Cameranesi Pompili and Natalia Troja for support. Photography by Delfino Sisto Legnani.

‘On the top floor of an inconspicuous 1950s apart­ment building, on an unassuming street just off the bustling Piazzale Loreto — northeastern Milan’s answer to Picadilly Circus is the former one of the 20th century’s most iconic artists: Lucio Fontana, who lived here with his fashion designer – wife Teresita Rasini, from the early 1950s until his – the founder of Spatialism, which sought to – distil color, form, space, movement, and sound into – a new breed of post­war art.’ PIN-UP #23

ONLINE DEPOT

Website
Online Archive

2017

http://onlinedepot.ch/ developed for Depot Basel together with Luke Archer from Omnigroup.

Originating from the holdings of the Depot Basel, the Online Depot is in itself a form of permanent exhibition and a virtual space in which design is discussed, explored and developed. The jury honours the fact that the Depot Basel is constantly developing and that its global network is growing thanks to the Online Depot.

Depot Basel is a former place for contemporary design that was co-founded by Matylda Krzykowski in 2011. The physical place of Depot Basel closed in 2017.

Winner of the Swiss Federal Design Award 2018
Category: Design Mediation

SOCIAL MUSCLE CLUB

Table Host

4.11.2016, Kunsthalle Basel, SMC Basel #7
11.3.2017, Elisabethkirche, SMC Basel #8
9.9.2017, Offene Kirche Elisabethkirche, SMC Basel #9

Social Muscle Club is a group of international artists who have been working together in different forms since 2012 to change our usual habits of thinking and doing and ‘train the social muscle’. The club was founded for everyone in the global village seeking to support each other in a society in which one often feels alone. The club began in a Berlin living room and was inspired by a documentary about a workers club in Sheffield, English which promised ‘entertainment and mutual support’. As a contrast to stress and pressure to a capitalistic, competitive working world, the club offers a self-organised social net.

The Berlin founders of Social Muscle Club experienced personally the psychological effects of pressure to succeed, earn money, and fit in society. So they began practicing giving and receiving with friends and colleagues in their living room, in order to support each other. Since 2012 the club has grown exponentially and has reached thousands of people in ten international cities, including ongoing clubs in Berlin, Basel, Bristol, and Vienna. nThe club integrates people from different social backgrounds as well as people who normally don’t visit or participate in the theatre scene, out of which a growing international network of solidarity has been established.

The Social Muscle Club Basel edition is initiated by Benedikt Wyss

SUPERPROJEKT

Exhibition & Performance

13 Jun — 10 Jul 2016

Performative exhibition project developed with Rebekka Kiesewetter and Kaja Kusztra for Depot Basel. Assisted by Heidi Franke. Presented during Art Basel 2016.

What is contemporary?

How do people implement their self-imposed aspiration to be contemporary – to act within their time – how do they reflect their own occupation, their position and the now? What are the manifestations and the materializations of our time?

‘Superprojekt’ is a provisional stage at Depot Basel, exploring the question ‘What is contemporary?’ by different means: The written and the spoken word, the physical item, the body language, and the public’s reactions, condensed into a timeframe, mirroring the contributors’ personal and subjective views.

Attending the performances is essential for perceiving and understanding the works.The exhibition space is the stage and vice versa.

20-minute exhibition

Depot Basel determines that the duration of the exhibition will be 20 minutes. In an everyday life in which the maximum possible attention span is constantly shortened due to a steady flow of snap-shots and the work on various equally urgent projects at the same time, 20 minutes have become a fixed unit of time measurement.

In the performative exhibition following a script that has been created in collaboration with Kaja Kusztra, the perpetuity of objects overlays with the fleetingness of the actions that are inscribed into those very same objects. The quality of things as carriers of meaning and as significants of our time will be depicted. It is necessary to participate in the 20-minute exhibition to fully grasp the works and to understand what ‘contemporary’ can signify today.

From a curating point of view, this interval offers a focused frame in which the different aspects and levels of the works of Luke Archer (UK/CH), Leonardo Azzolini (IT/CH) , Ferréol Babin (FR), Dimitri Bähler (CH), Tymek Borowski (PL) Soft Baroque (UK), Santiago Guerrero Font (UK), Joanne Hakkert (NL), Leonard Kadid (FR/CH), Sebastian Marbacher (CH), Diana Pfammatter (CH) and Dan Solbach (CH) are made accessible to the visitors.

CLUB

Club Night
17 Feb 2017

A temporary club for dancing and talking at Depot Basel.

Photography: Diana Pfammatter

SHOW I – IV, COLLECTION #3

Exhibitions

2016 – 2017
Chamber Gallery, New York, USA

By referencing the 1956 artwork by Richard Hamilton, “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?”, all four exhibitions at Chamber gallery in New York explore groups of objects that are possibly as desirable now as the items featured prominently in Hamilton’s work were half a century ago, at the dawn of the modern consumer age.

“The request to make a choice of one hundred items for a gallery show is like collecting one hundred potential fragments for a collage.” – Matylda Krzykowski

Hamilton pasted images onto a page, and Krzykowski places objects in a space, creating a collage of contemporary works in real life. Many of the works on view center around colliding ideas of functional object and sculpture. Domestic sculptures, surrealist lights, abstract shapes, foldable structures, informative paintings, architectural templates, aesthetic games and beyond.

– Show I, Just What Is It, 28 Oct to 3 Dec 2016
Work by Trix and Robert Hausmann, Pieterjan Ginckels, Niek Hendrix, Design Displacement Group, Mischer-Traxler, Tina Roeder, Louie Rigano & Gil Muller, Mirka Laura Severa, Studio Swine, Oskar Zieta, Florian Ziller & Fatemeh Naderi, Jiri Pelcl, Martino Gamper, Deborah Bowman, Cyril Porchet, Os & Oss, Silo Studio, Nick van Woert, Robert Stadler
– Show II, This Is Today, 16 Dec to 18 February 2017
Work by Maiko Gubler, Jiri Pelcl, Martino Gamper, Jochen Holz, Stephanie Baechler, Tymek Borowski, Dimitri Bähler, Jonah Takagi, Soft Baroque, Jakub Berdych, Martin Chmarosta, Jörg Boner, Victoria Willmotte, PlueerSmitt, New Tendency, Lucas Maassen & Sons, Nick van Woert
– Show III, Domestic Appeal, 3 March to 22 April 2017
Work by Raw Color, Carle Emil Jacobsen, Bertille Laguet, Soft Baroque, James Shaw, Edgar Mosa, Andy and Dave, Florian Milker, Ferréol Babin, Tom Hancocks, Dimitri Bähler, Jochen Holz, Chen Chen & Kai Williams
– Show IV, Room With Its Own Rules, 4 May to 22 July 2017
Work by Ana Kraš, Ania Jaworska, Åsa Jungnelius, Buro Belén, Claudia Caviezel, Gun Gordillo, Hilda Hellström, Johanna Grawunder, Katie Stout, Kiki van Eijk, Lindsey Adelman, Liz Collins, Marlène Huissoud, Mimi Jung, Mira Nakashima, Pieke Bergmans, Sabine Marcelis, Sarah Zapata, Sigrid von Lintig, Studio Berg, and Zohra Opoku

For each of the four exhibitions Matylda Krzykowski commissioned a visual artist to produce a collage: Sasa Stucin, Wang & Söderström, Koos Breen and Builders Club.

“Room With Its Own Rules” is an example of what is clearly not yet happening. It presents a parallel, post-patriarchal reality in which an all-female show is a normal phenomenon, rather than a specially planned “affirmative action.” – Matylda Krzykowski

Images
1) Frederike Berg, Ana Kraš and Gun Gordillo in Show IV, Room With Its Own Rules, image by David Brandon Geeting
2) Sabine Marchelis and Johanan Grawunder in Show IV, Room With Its Own Rules, image by David Brandon Geeting
3) Collage by Saša Štucin for Show IV, Room With Its Own Rules
4) Tom Hancocks, Edgar Mosa and Andy & Dave in Show III, Domestic Appeal
5) Bertille Laguet, Jochen Holz and Raw Color in Show III, Domestic Appeal
6) Collage by Wang & Söderstrom for Show III, Domestic Appeal
7) Jörg Boner, Florian Ziller & Fatemeh Naderi, Soft Baroque, Tymek Borowski, Victoria Willmotte, Maiko Gubler for Show II, This Is Today, image by Fran Parente
8) Martin Chramosta and Stéphanie Baechler for Show II, This Is Today, image by Fran Parente
9) Portrait for Yabu Pushelberg’s book ‘Drive’ by Dan McMahon, March 2017
10) Collage by Koos Breen for Show II, This Is Today
11) Exhibition View, Show I, This Is Today, image by Lauren Coleman
12) Mirka Laura Severa for Show I, This Is Today, image by Lauren Coleman

FORUM FOR AN ATTITUDE

Exhibition & 5 Forums

16.10. 2015 – 14.02. 2016
Vitra Design Museum Gallery, Weil am Rhein, Germany

Curated with Depot Basel
Forums organised at Depot Basel
Scenography: Matylda Krzykowksi, Nela Weber
Exhibition photography art direction: Matylda Krzykowski
Exhibition photography: Tomas Soucek
People on the pictures are either Vitra Design Museum staff to visitors of the Vitra Campus
Website: Christophe Clarijs (not online anymore)

What is the ambition of designers today? Why did they become designers? What kind of social influence do they hope to achieve? What image of design is conveyed to society? And how can an attitude be expressed in design? The exhibition Forum for an Attitude considers these questions and presents answers and positions on the topic. Through a presentation of the works, objects, texts and infographics, it analyzes what drives contemporary designers and how their attitude is reflected in their creative output. In addition to the exhibition at the Vitra Design Museum Gallery, five multi-day events will be held at Depot Basel on various focal themes.

The exhibition describes design as a versatile discipline. Works are shown by 24 contemporary designers who are just starting out on their professional career. The exhibition organizers wanted to know from them as well: What are the convictions that compel them to act as designers? What are the underlying motives behind their investigations and suggestions?

With: Pablo Calderón Salazar, Charlotte Dumoncel d’Argence, Julien Carretero, Annika Frye, Fixperts, Jasmina Grase & Nils Chudy, Tove Greitz, Joanne M.Hakkert, Jing He, Jesse Howard, Daniel Klapsing, Lina-Marie Koeppen, Myriam Marti & Nando Schmidlin, Lisa Ochsenbein, Alicia Ongay-Perez, Giacomo Piovan, PROOFFLab Magazine, Tobias Revell, Nektar Solomon, Michaela Tomiškov & Jakub Janďourek, Marjan van Aubel, Julia Van Zanten, Bob Vos, Mugi Yamamoto, Will Yates-Johnson.

Five multi-day forums taking place from November to January at Depot Basel, each dedicated to a different topic, offer a platform for amicable, professional exchange among designers, non-designers, practitioners, thinkers and amateurs. The titles of the five forums are »Solidarity«, »Visibility«, »Intuition«, »Knowledge« and »Tools«. A small publication coming out in April 2016 will document the most important findings and highlights of »Forum for an Attitude«.

The Vitra Design Museum presents the »Forum for an Attitude« in association with the major exhibition »The Bauhaus #itsalldesign« (26.09.2015 – 28.02.2016), which explores the Bauhaus concept of design – while also considering the influence of the Bauhaus on the work of contemporary designers and their own attitudes and understanding of design.

Depot Basel – a place for contemporary design was launched in June 2011 as an independent initiative and is now based in the St. Johann district of Basel. Today the organisation is directed by Matylda Krzykowski and Rebekka Kiesewetter with the regular support of partners and helpers, designers and non-designers. All participants share a belief in the importance and urgency of the theoretical and practical engagement with design and its presentation, mediation and promotion as a topic relevant to society.

FORUMS

Discursive Format

16.10. 2015 – 14.02. 2016
Depot Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Graphic Design: Christophe Clarijs
Furniture: Bench Exercise bu Sebastian Marbacher
Window Display: Matylda Krzykowski, Nela Weber

Forum for an Attitude takes place in two places: In form of a series of five Forums at Depot Basel in Basel, Switzerland, and as an exhibition at Vitra Design Museum Gallery in Weil am Rhein, Germany.

The Forums at Depot Basel provide the frames for professional, yet amicable exchange, for the development of ideas and for experimentation. With the Forum’s topic as object of matter, a program of lectures, workshops, field trips, book salons, gatherings around a meal or a table and exhibition visits evolves. Participation by open call.

Solidarity, 16 – 18 Oct 2015
Visibility, 5 – 8 Nov 2015
Intuition, 19 – 22 Nov 2015
Knowledge, 10 – 13 Dec 2015
Tools, 21 – 24 Jan 2016

Image No. 3, group picture from left to right:
Martina Muzi, Michael Schoner, Michele Degen, Nela Weber, Mugi Yamamoto, Jan Lutyk, Daniel Klapsing, Matylda Krzykowski, Johanna Dehio, Gabriela Chicherio, Giacomo Piovan, Annika Frye, Jules van den Langenberg, Rebekka Kiesewetter

Image No. 6, group picture from left to right:
Bob Vos, Michaela Büsse, Rebekka Kiesewetter, Charlotte Dumoncel D’Argance, Max Bruinsma, Fabio Don, Lorenzo Figna, Eugenio Cosentino, Stefano Colombo

Image No. 8, group picture from left to right:
Will Yates Jones, Marjan van Aubel, Rebekka Kiesewetter, Jing He, Pablo Calderon Salazar, Lina Marie Köppen, Christian Schmidt, Matylda Krzykowski, Sibylle Stoeckli, Simon Mager, Orlando Lovell, Anja Neidhardt, Frederik Mahler-Andersen, Jasmina Grase, Nils Chudy

Image No. 10, group picture from left to right:
Tove Geitz, Fabio Don, Francisco Moura Veiga, Charlotte Dumoncel D’Argance, Paolo Patelli, Harold Dede, Jesse Howard

DISPLAY

Publication

2015
Display (14×20 CM, 143 PAGES), Edition of 100
Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands

All content is based on year-long research at Jan van Eyck Academie, designed and printed in intense 5 days with Kaspar Pyndt, Kaja Kusztra, Christophe Clarijs and Timo Demollin. Debut to Kaspar Pyndt’s typeface Dalat. Assistance by Charlotte van de Velde

RISO printed in an edition of 100 in the Charles Nypels Lab at the Jan van Eyck Academie.
Installation during Open Studios at Jan van Eyck Academie, card for installation by Anton Stuckardt

‘Matylda Krzykowski‘s work plays a role in integrating curating and exhibition-making within a larger discourse. With Display she explores how we design messages to the public in a collaborative mode. An extract of the project is compiled as a handbook, now serving as template for the designers and artists. It thus became a long-term exhibition format, a collaborative curatorial strategy, open to the public 7 days a week.’ Karin de Jong, PrintRoom

‘Display is a book that examines the notion of showing. It does so through contributed texts and images, presenting a wide variety of takes on the subject. The cover depicts the display-windows of Depot Basel in which the book launch would take place. In doing so, the cover displays the physical context in which the book is displayed creating a paradoxical ping-pong of references. While the initial and concluding pages of the book show full-bleed images of Depot Basel and its display systems, the main content is treated in a straight-forward way, dividing text- and image-contributions into separate sections.’ Kaspar Pyndt

Display handbook holds contributions by: Anna Bak, Bill Balaskas, Alexandra Bertels, Josh Bitelli, Isabelle Born, Gregor Brändli, Christophe Clarijs, Marta Colon, Klara Czerniewska, Timo Demollin, Workshop for Potential Design, EMYL, Tal Erez, The Farm, Studio Glithero, Veronika Gombert, Carl Haase, Rodrigo Hernandez, Maria Jeglinska, Kaja Kusztra, Moritz Lehner, Cedar Lewisohn, Bárbara Maçães, Agata Nowotny, Study O Portable, Stefan Pabst, Juan Palencia, Pedro Portellano, Kasper Pyndt, Ronja Römmelt, Vera Sacchetti, Alessandro Schiattarella, Michael Schoner, Theda Schoppe, Speedism, Jasio Stefanski, TEOK, Andrew Thrope, Basil Thüring, Bik van der Pol, Andres Wanner, Anna-Lena Werner.

Extract of the Interview with Artfridge:

Anna-Lena Werner: You showed a spatial installation during the Jan van Eyck Open Studios. Were strategies of communication involved in the one year that you spent in Maastricht?
Matylda: I am interested in the model of theatre, especially in contemporary theatre, such as the productions that Kaserne Basel presents. What strikes me is that there is a whole production led by one director and as a visitor you are being served. No description boards, no exhibition text, no curatorial speech, no images. Since I did a lot of research in choreography, theatre and exhibition making during my time at the Jan van Eyck, my work hasn’t been very visible. I mostly created databases that I saved on my laptop. Until the final exhibition my studio was empty, as I wanted to use the time to think for myself without feeling the need to communicate all I am doing. And then at the end you are supposed to make your work visible.

Anna-Lena Werner: What was the concept of the installation?
Matylda: It was about the display. An installation as a display of a display of a display. I wanted to alter the perception of the space that has been my clean and empty studio for one year.

Anna-Lena Werner: So that the act of presentation becomes the content of presentation?
Matylda: You could say that. I wanted to break the white cube mode in my studio and instead create a presentation that would bring methods of display together – domestic, cultural and commercial displays. The material comprised plinths, flagpoles, a flip chart and a laundry rack. I also borrowed a facial home solarium panel from Ron Bernstein’s workshop – once you switch it on it makes a sound like an egg-timer. Next to the auditive and the visual aspect, there was also smell: I used old cardboard from Charles Nyples the print lab to generate the smell of an archive. And I got these see-through plastic strips that you use for doors, in order to generate the smell of a factory. As the space is quite small, I wanted to construct a density, building a model of displays, both real and artificial.

Anna-Lena Werner: Although you say that you wanted to break the white cube, it still looks really clean and neat. How do you evaluate the role of visual aestheticism?
Matylda: Let’s say, I wanted to construct a spatial installation, a dense room. There is a language in my work that is certainly aesthetic, but I am not justifying the content of the work to reach that goal.

DEPOT BASEL

Place for Contemporary Design

Co-founder, artistic director, graphic designer
2011 – 2018
Basel, Switzerland

Depot Basel was founded in June 2011 on the initiative of designers and curators Laura Pregger and Matylda Krzykowski, process designer Moritz Walther and economist
Elias Schäfer. In 2012 design journalist Rebekka Kiesewetter joined the organisation. Their common interest lies in a theoretical and practical approach to the subject of design and its presentation, mediation and promotion.

First image: (left to right) Rebekka Kiesewetter, Matylda Krzykowski, Laura Pregger, Elias Schäfer, Moritz Walther and contributors. Image Christian Metzler

Depot Basel endeavours to remain independent and work prospectively, to appoint and process current themes with the ability to reach an audience of interested parties, professionals and people from different fields and encourage a mutual exchange between them. Since its foundation – and with the temporary and permanent support of partners and backers, designers and non-designers – Depot Basel has evolved into a centre and agency in the contemporary design discourse.

Website Depot Basel
Website Online Depot

DESIGN DATE

Format

2014 – ongoing
Various Locations

What kind of partner are you looking for? Working in design means constantly looking for opportunities that come through others. A designer seeks a producer, a curator hunts for a designer, a production company searches for a designer and vice versa. We all look for collaborators to define and anchor our creative ambitions. How can a compliment or adulation manipulate us to make a final decision to work with someone? And how do our ego and expectations deal with the impact and results of such actions?

By applying a critical twist to the entertaining and humorous format, Matylda Krzykowski wants to reflect how to charm and being charmed can be an active part of our professional lives.

Read the story of Design Date 

‘Thanks to their network, Design Date – a spin off of a romantic television show put into a professional context- will be playfully moderated by Matylda Krzykowski. Each round, three participants will try to make a match with a mystery guest, a collector, museum curator or another influencer.’ Quote from the program of The Joy of Collecting

Previous editions:

– At V&A Museum in context of London Design Festival, 18 Sept 2014, with Brent Dzekciorius, Jana Scholze, Jacopo SarziLoris & LiviaStudio SwineOskar Wanless & Attua Aparicio Hilda Hellström Marjan van Aubel, Clea Irving, Reinier Bosch & Carolina Wilcke
– At TV Clerici during Salone del Mobile organised by Design Academy Eindhoven, 4 – 7 April 2017, with Ilse Crawford, Marcus Fairs, Job Smeets, Jurgen Bey and students of the DAE
– The Joy of Collecting organised by Current Obsession, 11 Nov 2017, with Gabrielle Kennedy, Marjan Unger, Jules van den Langenberg, Marjanne van Helvert, Hendrik-Jan Grievink, Martijn van Ooststroom and Alice Wong

Upcoming editions:

– At Designmarch, 15 March 2018
– At Soho House Berlin, 11 April 2018

Images:

1. Jacopo Sarzi, Loris & Livia, Azusa Murakami (Studio Swine), Jana Scholze and Matylda Krzykowski
2. Martijn van Ooststroom, Jules van den LangenbergMarjanne van Helvert and Matylda Krzykowski
3. Logo Design ‘Design Date’ by Sepus Noordmans

TALKS

Various

1) Poster of The School of the Art Institute / Art Institute, Chicago, 2018
2) Poster by Koos Breen , The Bumpy Road lecture Series of Academy of Art, The Hague, 2014
3) Poster Dizajn (R)Ewolucja, Dizajn Debata, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, 2013
4) Poster Prototyping Ideas, Domus Academy Methaphysical Club, Milan, 2017
5) Poster by Jens Schnitzler, Digitale Grafik Invites, HFBK Hamburg, 2020
6) Website Screenshot of http://www.easy-lessoning.com/ by Roland Früh and Corina Neuenschwander

THE EXHIBITION THAT NEVER HAPPEND

Exhibition As Editorial

2013
Issue #2
Current Obsession Magazine

Curated by Matylda Krzykowski
Photography Christoph Sagel
Scenography by Matylda Krzykowski and Christoph Sagel
First image by Matylda Krzykowski

The Exhibition That Never Happened is an exhibition you can hold in your hands. It is a two-dimensional representation of itself printed on paper. A two-dimensional show is an exhibition that a magazine can offer. The number of printed copies equals the number of invited guests, but they do not need to stand around in a crowded space, distracted by the buzz of the opening. Each gets an individual visual sensation and experience.

I am an exhibition maker. Current Obsession asked me to work with them because I can, to quote the editors ‘create images’. My view on jewellery comes from a product and object-related context. Through my blog Matandme I have been in touch with a fair amount of designers, many of which I’ve worked with and sourced for their ways of relating to design. This eventually lead me to co-founding Depot Basel, place for contemporary design, where I have curated numerous exhibitions.

For The Exhibition That Never Happened we’ve selected jewellery by designers focusing on the potential of each individual object. As curator I was aiming to find one piece that holds the attitude of each jeweller’s general work – a reference piece. The result is an overview of new, sometimes undiscovered work, for which the context hasn’t been fully defined.

The obsolete notion that jewellery is handmade in silver or gold and that the more you wear it, the more it defines you, has shifted towards wearable objects or small-sized sculptures that exist on their own. This certainly caught my attention.

The Exhibition That Never Happened is set in a black room, a darkroom with extreme light, allowing each colourful piece to shine. It is a presentation of formality – aiming to introduce the selection in full control. Christoph Sagel, still-life photographer from Berlin, a master of lighting, with whom I’ve been working since 2012, is the right person to give the pieces a dramatic editorial stage, where jewellery comes across as desirable two-dimensional objects.

Florian Milker – Digital Precision
GOLDSMITH, JEWELLERY DESIGNER
Kunsthochschule Burg Giebichenstein, Halle Saale, DE, 2015
Florian did an apprenticeship as a Goldsmith – a classic playground with its limitations. Soon he turned to 3D programs. The B_Serie is made by laser sinter process. “I like the gentle surface, the low weight possibility and the precision of the technique.” Florian will graduate in 2015.

Shana Teugels – Shaped Kitsch
JEWELLERY DESIGNER
St. Lucas University College of Art & Design, BE, 2010
Shana uses polypropylene, resin, plastic beads, and glitter glue – a combination of cheap materials that came from an intense research on kitsch and resulted in experiments of endless shaping options.

Nelly Zagury – 2D To 3D Fantasy
HANDS-ON ART DIRECTOR
Ecole Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs of Strasbourg, FR, 2011
Nelly creates a mythological world, where jewellery is a relic of her fantasy, a hybrid object, which looks like a whip or a penis. She creates ornamental objects playing with symbolism of adornment.

Ejing Zhang – Tradition Encounters Interaction
TEXTILE DESIGNER
MA Royal College of Art, UK, 2013
Ejing made an abacus out of essential materials and tools – bobbins and paintbrushes.
Abacus was the calculating method taught everywhere in China when she was little. The thread winding, the plastic, and the wood all came from that abacus. She is interested in jewellery as something interacting with the body and not having limitations of being soft fabric.

Patricia Domingues – Reconstructed Material
JEWELLERY DESIGNER
MA Hochschule Trier, Fachrichtung Edelstein und Schmuck, Idar-Oberstein, DE, 2013
Reconstructed material is a massive block, without anything, any line, any detail, and any imperfection. It does not matter the angle you cut, it will always be the same. Whatever you make will only add something to this naked block.

He Jing – Readymade Liaison
JEWELLERY DESIGNER
Jewellery department at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, NL, 2013
Jing appreciates normal-looking, mass-produced things, because they are simple, durable, and functional. They are full of hints in details. She imagines the reasons why people made them and how people treat them. When she makes the work with ready-mades, she is ‘collaborating’ with them.

Wei Mao – Right Material
JEWELLERY DESIGNER
BA fashion Jewellery at London College of Fashion, UK, 2013
The work is based on dessert-making and cream-piping. Wei researched the material that is soft and fluid enough to go through a piping nozzle, while not being too soft or too fluid to keep the shape. She tried plaster, jesmonite, resin, silicone and etc., eventually found polymer clay material. It is also pure white, which makes it easy to get any colour palette.

Maiko Gubler – Experiments Within Hybrid Spaces
ART DIRECTOR/IMAGE-MAKER
Visual Communication at The Berlin University of the Arts, DE, 2000
Maiko is interested in printing technology and 3D modelling. She experiments within hybrid spaces and explores the intrinsic qualities of three-dimensional computer-aided imagery and objects. ”The intersection where things are lacking definition and have a sense of unease is what I’m interested in. I’d like to invite people to think about the obsolete real/digital distinctions differently and to expand their notion of spatiality and things.”

Boris de Beijer– Artefacts From The Far Future
DESIGNER & DJ
Jewellery department at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, NL, 2011
Boris deals with historic context of jewellery, rather than it’s contemporary relevance. “Jewellery pieces are not even meant to be worn by humans”. Invents his own material by combining and excessively experimenting with existing raw materials and found objects – mixture of different resins at the base for each piece. Due to its unpredictable and aggressive behaviour, the outcome of the raw bloc is always a surprise, always unique and therefore it is impossible to duplicate a piece. “It’s a lot like alchemy.”

Marina Stanimirovic – Juxtaposition Of Sculpture Or Design Object
JEWELLERY DESIGNER
Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork & Jewellery department at Royal College of Art, UK, 2013
“Because even if you can’t wear it to go to work or go buy some food, the fact that it has been designed for the body, makes the piece the most intimate sculpture or design object.” Marina used Corian®, resin mixed with powder of stone, because when you touch it, it is a really cold and heavy material, but also really soft to carve: two antithetic notions.

Text featured in the magazine and on Matandme.

CRAFT & BLING BLING – FAKE

Exhibition

6 June – 6 July 2014
Depot Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Depot Basel, space for contemporary design and Current Obsession, contemporary jewellery magazine, present a collaborative curatorial effort in the context of Depot Basel’s ongoing exhibition series ‘CRAFT &…’. For CRAFT & BLING BLING ‘FAKE’ they commissioned work by twelve jewellery makers reflecting on the subject of ‘FAKE’ from standpoints of jewellery history, their own work mediums or contemporary art and society.

The design exhibition CRAFT & BLING BLING – FAKE discusses a model of doubt and truth along the interpretation of fakeness. Twelve international jewellery designers created specific art and design objects that are concerned with oscillating emphasis on materiality and appearances, authorship and duplication, adaption and replica, superficiality and preciousness. Presented inside a cube of blue velvet, their works describe reversed encounters with fakeness, in which the designers play with the semiotics of fake and transform its implied crisis of originality – the effect of doubt – into an art form itself.

Both, art and design, are premised on the necessity of an object’s originality. The original’s brand or its signature serve as functions conforming a status, they promise a temptation of ownership. For reasons of tangible quality and value, an original product of art or design is defined by its uniqueness – a fundamental feature that is fetishised by the consumer. It is this particular, almost religious connection between societies and products, that led Karl Marx to his critique on commodity fetishism and cultural theorist Hartmut Böhme to his definition of the modern fetishist consumption as driven by the products’ unrivalled aura, their charisma and their libidinous attribution. Therefore, the smallest indication of fakeness does not only rupture the customers’ and viewers’ belief in quality and handcraft, in the sublime and the ingenious, but it also forces them to trust in expert’s opinions, labels, stamps and institutions. A fragile antagonism between belief and doubt shapes the concept of authenticity. In this sense, the initial currency of originality is trust, which is – as in religion, relationships, money or politics – a precarious construction.

Once uncovered, fakes touch the art and design world’s tender spot: Their criminal economic success questions the horrendous amounts that are spent in auctions or for luxury design items. Opposite to design fakes, however, art forgery crimes are not only condemned, but also celebrated as heroic acts of exposing the market’s speculations. Frequently, art forgers become media-darlings, charlatan-storytellers. But paradoxically, one reason for their popularity is the fact that faking requires superior crafting skills, as the original’s crisis is based on a realistic illusion of valuableness – a manipulation that is employed by designer Adam Grinovich, who created glittering abstract objects with the appearance of gold leaf by means of a composite of cheap materials. Working with similar strategies, Florian Weichsberger approached the rustic and aged aesthetics of Stone Age rocks with casts of plastic, and Rainer Kaasik-Aaslav precipitates a failure of sacredness’ symbols by allowing artificial ruby and marble to substitute their archetypes. A fake always evokes mistrust, because it is the embodiment of a lie. In the contribution of Julia Walter, this counts for the materiality of her graphic objects, as much as for the facial patterns of emotions that they express. Also following the motif of communication, Florian Milker developed shiny and perfectly rounded forms that he casted out of a woman’s bra, as to pose a question on vanity’s visual nature.

The ambivalence of authenticity is also characterised by a contradiction of limited availability and fast reproduction. Artist and design labels demonstrate that it is first and foremost an idea, a style or a cooperate design that ought to be copyrighted. Meanwhile, the execution of products is often transferred to employees, assistants and factories to ensure not only quality, but also quantity. In this sense, only a small threshold separates an original from a reproduction or a copy. This unsettledness is also involved in Barbara Schrobenhauser’s collection of golden items, which she presents seemingly random, as to motivate viewers to engage with the material’s variety. In turn, Edgar Mosa dedicated his project to the dichotomy of commodity’s double-existence and subsequently recreated digitally reproduced images into haptic items, causing them to loose their purpose.

The exhibition CRAFT & BLING BLING – FAKE also establishes an emancipation of the fake: While Kevin Hughes’ “Enthusiastic Carrot” expresses the satisfaction of being exactly as authentically fake as promised, Sophie Hangart’s golden good luck charms “Fortuna” distance themselves from their primal form, casted from excrement, and use their new materiality to become more precious than the original will ever be. Designer Jing He delicately reworked an imitated Jade stone and relocated its material components, as to transform the effigy into an autonomous object. In that respect, also Mallory Weston refers to the aspect of fake’s beauty, by emphasising its garish and opulent characteristics with two golden objects, describing the shape of cactuses. Ultimately, Philip Eberle reverses the worthless status of the fake, by placing the letters “FA KE” on two handmade, golden signet rings and thus allows the fake to soar above its own fate.

Text by Anna Lena Werner from Artfridge

Commissioned work by Adam GrinovichBarbara SchrobenhauserEdgar MosaFlorian MilkerFlorian WeichsbergerHe JingJulia WalterKevin HughesMallory Weston, Philipp Eberle, Rainer Kaasik-Aaslav and Sophie Hanagarth. Additionally work by Manfred Nisslmüller, Suska Mackert, Johanna Dahm and Cloe Floirat

The exhibition was featured in the #3 FAKE issue of Current Obsession with photographs by by Thomas Albdorf. Exhibition photography by Gregor Brändli.

POINT AND LINE TO PLATE

Dinner

15 March 2013
Maastricht, The Netherlands

A memorable dinner, the first extensive event at Studio Valentin Loellmann, hosted by Matylda Krzykowski. Together with food designer Jacopo Sarzi a series of undertakings with edibles referencing the visual and perceptive research of Wassily Kandinsky become a synaesthetic dinner experience.

Menu:

Aparetivo
Noodle bum bum

First Course
Red crunchy orange

Second Course
Square, circle and triangle

Desert
Diagram 8

From the MATANDME article
‘Food in Diagrams, as an Assemblage in your Mouth’:

Where to begin? Valentin Loellmann asked me begin of the year if I would like to initiate an event at his beautiful space in Maastricht. I wasn’t up for a product or furniture related exhibition, neither was he. It had to be an evening that our guests will enjoy with all their senses and won’t forget. We both agreed it had to be a dinner!

From the Domus Online article
‘Point and Line to Plate’
:

A group of guests was invited to sit around a dinner table, while a culinary venture — based on the visual and perceptive research of Wassily Kandinsky — was undertaken by Sarzi and Krzykowski. Both designers attempted to contextualise Kandinsky’s experiments with the sense of taste, seeking to offer guests a synaesthetic experience. The four courses on the menu included an aperitivo titled Noodle bum bum (composed of Zubrowka, plum juice, udon noodle, and apple); a first course titled Red crunchy orange, a cold beetroot soup with carrot cubes; a second course titled Square, circle and triangle, combining risotto, polenta, and sweet potato; and finally, a dessert titled Diagram 8, combining feta, a mozzarella cone with ice cream, and caramelised onion.

The evening’s soundtrack sought to provide an unusual experience of food, and was provided by photographer Jonas Loellmann, who assembled a collage of field recordings around the food preparation, combined with frequencies and tones related to colours, specific moods and emotions.

On the walls, a series of images sought to add to the mood of the event. The Premature Dishes series, by Christoph Sagel and Matylda Krzykowski, presents simple and intriguing combinations of ingredients. These were composed after Sagel and Krzykowski inquired on the favourite food and dishes of six guests both wanted to have dinner with — graphic designers Deutsche & Japaner, curator Tulga Beyerle, journalist Sophie Lovell, graphic designer Mario Lombardo, design consultant Brent Dzekorious, and editor Felix Burrichter.

Concept: Matylda Krzykowski, Jacopo Sarzi
Client: Valentin Loellmann
Sound: Jonas Loellmann
Photographic Work: Sagel And Krzykowski, Christoph Sagel with Matylda Krzykowski
Thank you to: Maria Jeglinska, Rebekka Kiesewetter, Miryam Ziegler, Lena Berens, Julia Fischer
Work in Progress Food images: Matylda Krzykowski
Vimeo Video: Dennis Engel

ACHILLE IS WATCHING US

Exhibition

April 2011
Salone del Mobile

A self-initiated exhibition, an assortment of stories and memories, by Matylda Krzykowski and Marco Gabriele Lorusso.
Graphic design by Boy Vereecken and Marthe Prins.

‘With Achille is Watching Us, we would like to shift the attention to another side of design that is sometimes forgotten: feelings. Objects have a value if we attach feelings to them; everyone is living in this world of colorful and playful objects, but only a few are able to surpass the limits of time and become memories. In a way, we could say that someone is looking over the shoulders of these ‘blessed’ ones to make sure they become great guardians of our time – people that inspire the minds of the creators and the designers of the precious objects that we introduce into our little world. Someone like Achille Castiglioni, for example.

He is one of the true geniuses of the design world, having designed beautiful artifacts that are still nowadays of a great value. As not so many may know, Castiglioni had a passion for collecting objects, particularly glasses. If you happen to have the opportunity to go and visit his studio, you can still find two big closets full of these ‘memorabilia’, little souvenirs that he collected during his travels and loved to show to friends to make them laugh. Castiglioni was the sort of man who would be sat in a meeting and, all of a sudden, would turn his face around to reveal that he was wearing a pair of springy eyeball glasses, astonishing his clients not only with his capacity for designing great products, but also with his playful nature.

This is the kind of attitude we like, and the kind of attitude we would like to underline: the particular penchant for little objects and the emotions that they can convey’.

Alissia Melka-Teichroew (US); Bcxsy (NL); Bless (FR/DE); Charlotte Dumoncel d’Argence (FR); Chris Kabel (NL); Danny Venlet (BE); Formafantasma (IT); Henny van Nistelrooy (UK); Jens Praet (BE); Jo Meesters (NL); Julien Carretero (FR); Kaspar Hamacher (BE); Laurence Humier (BE); Lee Broom (UK); Maarten de Ceulaer (BE); Mark Braun (DE); Nacho Carbonell (E); Niek Pulles (NL); Oscar Diaz (E); Oskar Zieta (PL); Osko + Deichmann (DE); Paul Loebach (US); Polka (AT); Peter Marigold (UK); Philippe Malouin (UK); Simon Heijdens (UK); Sylvain Willenz (BE); Tina Roeder (DE); Valentin Loellmann (DE); Xavier Lust (BE)

Via Laghetto 9
20122 Milan
Italy

More here or here.

Tina Roeder: “On a stroll through a flea market in Antwerp I came across this old picture frame with an original black-and-white photograph of an anonymous bridal couple. Back home, I overlaid the horizontal photo of this anonymous bridal couple with the slightly smaller, vertical wedding photo of my parents – a couple I’m familiar with. Every time I look at the picture now it makes me smile, since — if you take a closer look at the border — you can still recognize the unknown groom’s hairdo and the bride’s high heels.”

Formafantasma: “These are the two plates we use every day. We like them because they are similar but not equal, the surface is glossy but a bit stained, and the white of the glazing is not too bright. More than designed, they look as shaped by time. We have been using these two beautifully imperfect plates daily for four years during our dinners.”

Simon Heijdens: “This is a fish float which has been lying on my desk for a long time. I found it in a fisherman’s store on an island between Japan and Korea and took it back for my modest collection. I love the fact that with a life destined for dark oceans, meant to be seen by no one but an unfortunate octopus’s final gaze, not a single decision in its conception was made to regard aesthetics — yet it’s the most beautiful object. While it lies on my desk, it tempts me nearly every day to go fishing. Not that I’m a fisherman.”

Philippe Malouin: “The bird was given to me by my partner Alex. I once mentioned that I was obsessed with this object when I was a kid, and I received in on Christmas morning. At 28 years old, I still find the object as fascinating as before. Even though it’s ridiculously kitsch, it’s a pure exercise in balance and science. Its mechanism is deceitfully simple. Just like clockwork, a movement is created by dipping the beak of the bird into a glass of water. Afterwards, the water glass will fuel the bird to balance back and forth until the water runs out. It’s a great, simple, funny, and ugly object.”

Peter Marigold: “Since I was a boy I have always collected things, especially switches and buttons. So when I visited Castiligoni’s studio I was very happy to hear Daniella Gobberti say that one of his favorite objects he designed was a light switch! (Very kindly, she gave me this one.) This is one of my favorite switches in my collection. As well as being beautiful and having a perfect action, I think it reflects the notion that things in Japan are ‘the same but different.’ It’s familiar, but strange. A curiosity.”

Nacho Carbonell: “The crab and box belong together. I found the crab in the sea on top of a rock in Tenerife. It looked so real and full of life, I thought when I approached it, that it could run away. Then I realized it was dead and empty inside. I took it with me and protected this delicate empty shell in the box where I usually have my pens. I kept it safe during my entire journey until I showed it in an exhibition and someone touched it and broke it.”

Bcxsy: “We bought this rabbit butter box at one of our favorite secondhand shops. Being totally white is quite a nice balance to the ‘kitschy’ appearance, so we were happy to have it join our (mostly secondhand) tableware collection. Since it doesn’t have any stamp, we do not know where it comes from. It’s anonymous and imperfect because the rabbit-lid doesn’t really fit on top of the container, which is exactly the reason why we like it. Furthermore, we like the idea of having Q, our pet rabbit, under the table and another rabbit on the table.”Bcxsy: “We bought this rabbit butter box at one of our favorite secondhand shops. Being totally white is quite a nice balance to the ‘kitschy’ appearance, so we were happy to have it join our (mostly secondhand) tableware collection. Since it doesn’t have any stamp, we do not know where it comes from. It’s anonymous and imperfect because the rabbit-lid doesn’t really fit on top of the container, which is exactly the reason why we like it. Furthermore, we like the idea of having Q, our pet rabbit, under the table and another rabbit on the table.”

Sylvain Willenz: “This Japanese soda bottle is part of my small collection of glass objects. While visiting a temple in Japan, I bought a drink at a stall and was amazed by the bottle. Although usually consigned, the stall owner gave it to me. It is surprising because the bottle is sealed by a glass bead, which one manually forces inwards to open it. One should drink holding the bottle with the two dips pointing towards him/her; this will prevent the bead from rolling back and closing it as you drink. The bottle is used again and the bead also seals it over and over.”

Paul Loebach: “Given to me by a very special friend, Hans is a Steiff Tiger made in Germany between 1965-67. I like collecting German objects – I think they remind me that as an American I have no authentic cultural history, which must be very liberating. Another friend once described Hans as ‘in the Tiger Balm pose!’”

BORSTE & HORN

Objects

2012
Vienna, Austria

Designed for Passionswege, Vienna Design Week,
Produced by Norbert Meier, Bürsten- und Pinselerzeugung & Thomas Petz, Petz Hornmanufaktur

‘Two manufacturers at once are involved in this Passionswege project and both work in crafts that scarcely exist anymore. The brush manufacturer Norbert Meier is one of the last to possess a master craftsman’s diploma in this trade. The young Thomas Petz on the other hand is the last Viennese producer of horn ware. He is just 26 years old and took over the factory from his grandfather; combs, jewellery, egg spoons and many other objects made of horn form part of the production programme.

The artist with the pleasure of applying her talents to both operations is the Polish-born curator, designer and scenographer Matylda Krzykowski, who now lives in Maastricht. She is an expert not only for products but for telling stories as well; she has designed not only a small collection of objects bringing together the materials of horn and bristles, but contextualises them historically: namely, the two manufacturers had already worked together generations ago to produce the designs of Carl Auböck, then as now a highly esteemed designer from the early second half of the twentieth century. A small exhibition on (disappearing) materiality, on Before and Now, shown in a charming brushmakers’ workshop.’

Text: Tina Thiel
Photos: Matylda Krzykowski

Winner Wallpaper Design Award Best Finished Objects 2013

DADDY WOULD BE PROUD

Objects

2011
Various Locations

Extraordinary wood carvings can be found when you visit native Polish markets. Some of the most interesting are carved in the Beskids, a series of mountain ranges in South Poland. The wood carvers from there take their wares to the market, where they present their objects. My Father is from this region. My Mother has always said that he is a true ‘Goral’, a boy from the mountains. Influenced by these crafts from the country of my origin, I interpreted my own woodworking skill into a series of small objects using pear tree wood.

From the interview with Maya Dvash, Chief Curator of the Holon Design Museum:

Daddy Would Be Proud is a series of wood-sculpted tools haphazardly arranged in a simple wooden box, and look as though they were carved by an unskilled hand, as if hewn from the distant memory of a child. The piece belongs to the exhibition’s “Arts and Crafts” category that deals with crafts such as carpentry and weaving that have been handed down the generations from father to son and from mother to daughter (in this instance, from father to daughter). Even in Central Europe these crafts are dying out today due to the lack of interest displayed by the younger generation. It is actually post-industrial contemporary designers who consider them a source of inspiration and are preserving traditional skills that are no longer valued. Matylda Krzykowski is one of these designers, but she is not only preserving the vanishing skill of wood sculpting, she seemingly carves her father’s tools from her memory, early memories that connect her to a distant country.

Why tools?

This piece is very personal. You can see the limitations of the craft in it, but they are my limitations. When I was approached before the exhibition in Milan in 2011 and asked to create something limited in size that could be easily transported, I thought about woodwork. At around the same time I visited one of my teachers and saw wooden clothespins that were about thirty years old. All this connected with a memory I had of visiting my homeland, Poland. When I was little and visited Poland, I liked watching the craftspeople in the market who made wooden toys for a living. This piece is a tribute to them too.

Exhibitions:
Common Roots, Design Museum Holon, Israel
15 Nov 2012 – 23 Feb 2013

SAGEL AND KRZYKOWSKI

Art Direction, Photography

2011 – 2013
Various Locations

Sagel & Krzykowski is a professional collaboration between Bureau Matylda Krzykowski and still-life photographer Christoph Sagel. Since 2012 they work on self-initiated and commissioned projects that they stage and photograph together.

Website Sagel & Krzykowski Core 77 Food Award 2013
CI of Sagel & Krzykowski by Matylda Krzykowski

Developed the Premature Dishes series for the ‘Point and Line to Plate’ Dinner Matylda Krzykowski initiated at Valentin Loellman’s studio with food designer Jacopo Sarzi.
Favourite foods by Brent Dzekorious, Felix Burrichter, Tulga Beyerle, Deutsche & Japaner and Sophie Lovell were photographed for the occasion.

Images

They Both Endure Time, look-alikes, self-initiated

Personal Content, Clemence Seilles for Craft & Scenography, Depot Basel

Personal Content, Emilie Pallard & Rachel Griffin for Craft & Scenography, Depot Basel

MATANDME

Blog

2008 – 2016
www.matandme.com
Online (inactive)

The internet gets blamed for a lot of things. One is the uncontrolled copy and paste of original content. That then turns into an explosion of suddenly free content whose reception is then shaped by the attitudes and the social network of the duplicator. Paradoxically, it is my believe that in such age the value of originality increases.

MATANDME is an independent host of experiences and encounters, conducted by Matylda Krzykowski. It aims to build a monumentum on current issues around design, visual arts and their creators that often fall through the cracks of the pressroom floor.

All images and text is composed by Matylda Krzykowski and are courtesty of MATANDME.

matandme.com
facebook.com/matandme

In 2012 redesigned by Christoph Knoth. Thank you to Matthaus Krzykowski for the never-ending birthday gift. Glad to be the president of the Matthaus Krzykowski Appreciation Club.

CLASH PROJECT

Initiator and curator

2009 – 2016
Fashionclash, Maastricht

A project where people from various disciplines produce work for the catwalk. Fashion By Non-Fashion Designers

Text for the 5 Year publication of Fashionclash, 2009–2015:

50 A4 sheets of paper hang on the wall in my bureau, all nicely lined up and separated in five lines of ten. On each of them you find a name of one of the Clash participants and the title they choose for t their outfit, such as: “questioning the established’, “Foamboy” or “Don’t hide your pride”. The wall is a helpful reminder of 5 years of Clash Projects for Fashionclash. Some might think you enter a room that belongs to someone who has a liking for international names and abstract titles. But it is a representation to what the fashion world is announcing as “Monstres de Mode” or “Fetishism in Fashion.”

It has been almost 6 years since the conversations between Branko PopovicNawie KuiperLaurens Hamacher and myself. They had the courage to pull an event off that became their full-time job and their life. One that obviously has the potential to shape the career of others.

Looking back there are always issues, frustrations and unfortunately budget problems. But at the end everyone we ask to be involved had a choice. In fact there are many who wanted to get hold of an opportunity like that. In 2009 I wanted that too. I was a product design student who longed for an opportunity to initiate a project. Again, Fashionclash had the courage to give that possibility to me. The consequence was that the Clash Project was born. It is a direct reference to the Fashionclash attitude, blurring all lines between art, design, knowledge and experiment. All aspects brought together to a project that asks non-fashion designers to make a wearable piece of work, preferably made from the material they use in their profession.

In 5 years we worked with Severafrahm, Christoph SagelLonneke van de Palen and Muller3000 who have photographed the outfits. The people we asked for a contribution are international non-fashion designers like Hermine van Dijck and Britt Helbig from Belgium, llot llov and Christoph Knoth from Germany, Natalia Kacpar Mleczak and Tymek Jezierski from Poland, Fabia Zindel from Switzerland, Loris & Livia from London and many Dutch professionals like La BolleurAgata KarolinaDik ScheepersInge DevorNiek Pulles and Tanja Ritterbex.

The results are unexpected, experimental bodysuits that are different in colour, shape and material. None of the 50 outfits look alike. They are a reference of each participants work, each telling a story and showing a very personal intake in their way of working in an unacquainted fashion context.

By Matylda Krzykowski for the 5 year publication of Fashionclash, June 2013

Image by Peter Stigter

DRAWN INTERVIEW

Format

2009 – 2015
Various Locations

The concept of asking a designer 3 questions with their answers submitted as brief sketches first emerged back in 2007, when I was a student. I have been collecting them ever since. Establishing the blog MATANDME could maybe be viewed as a naive approach: a playground I am able to manipulate. I photograph objects, projects, places and exhibitions, but my main interest are people. 

For many years now, I have been asking designers, artists, architects and cultural contributors from all walks of life to (1) draw themselves (2) draw their favourite objects, and to (2) describe themselves. Once I evolved from my early student days to someone who took charge of her own professional identity, my ‘Drawn Interviews’ also shape what I do. In the future I would like for the ‘Drawn Interviews’ to be collated into a book and an exhibition.’

Image by Jeremy Liebman exhibition view Wonder Cabinets of Europe ICFF, New York, 2013
Drawn Interview no. 100 with Martino Gamper

PUFF PUFF

Exhibit

17th – 25th September 2016
Workshop for Potential Design
London Design Festival
London, UK

#DESKTOPREVIEW

Puff Puff – Where review to ranking takes place

“We want our app to be a safe place to manage expectations, while enabling anyone to dismantle the idea of a singular reviewer”, would the founders of Puff Puff say if it would be real. Puff Puff refers to the term ‘Puff Piece’, a journalistic form of puffery that aims to flatter and is usually written from a subjective point of view and is driven by a reward.

Puff Puff reviews work. Four types of reviewers accept the payment of bitcoins in order to apply review factors, to evaluate benefits and to estimate global ranking. In ‘write a review, leave a rating’, times the question if the judgement of everything around us (via Apps like Peeple, Uber, Lulu, Yelp) is only a requested systematisation that is not able to produce an unbiased review. When it mainly aims to increase customer engagement and to build a community around a product promising rewards how genuine can it be?

The work of XYZ and ABC, two Workshop of Potential Design exhibitions, are presented in Puff Puff.

It is the first edition of a series of critical desktop entertainment by Matylda Krzykowski in cooperation with Sander Molenaar. Puff Puff is three minutes long and can be reviewed continuously.

…ABC
with
Pete Collard
Matylda Krzykowski
Samuel Nyholm
Vicky Richardson
Oli Stratford
Soft Baroque

Following the same line of enquiry as XYZ……ABC invites 6 practitioners to review the original exhibition using various media and methods.  Each review will translate the original exhibition into 6 new versions, suggesting alternative ways of talking about the same set of objects and ideas.

17th – 25th September 2016
Fri–Sat,Mon–Wed 10am – 6pm,
Thurs 10am – 8pm,
Sun 11am – 5pm

1a Cromwell Place
(Entrance on Thurloe Place)
London, SW7 2JE
United Kingdom

With kind support from Brompton Design District

THE FARM

InLab

2015
Jan van Eyck Academie

By Van Eyck participants Matylda Krzykowski and Anna Bak with Christophe Clarijs

The Farm is an equal and temporary society that is focused on production. The Farm is devoted to the practice of making, discussing and organizing art & design through experiment. The Farm can be a holding of any size, and take place at any location. The Farm can be operated by designers, artists, theorists or writers. In fact by anyone. All knowledge harvested is to be used by everyone who joins The Farm.

The first edition of The Farm is taking place at the Van Eyck in the form of a 3-day workshop focussing on the topic of FAILURE.

I. Failure
27—30 October 2014
Jan van Eyck, The Netherlands

Any experiment or research project bears the risk of failure. The expectations for a successful outcome calculate the possibility of things that can go wrong. Every failure is a valuable fact and is a sure stimulus to continue seeking a satisfactory result.

Day 1 – Monday 27 October

‘Deconstructions’
Matylda Krzykowski & Anna Bak
Showcases about the things that can go wrong or that become serendipity, which will be conducted in an activity of construction and deconstruction.

‘The Promise of Failing’
Tal Erez
An optimistic exploration into how failure can set us free, and a ominous thought about the forces that stand between us and that promise.
Day 2 – Tuesday 28 October

‘Organised Game’
Ilke Gers
A game in which two teams move and negotiate their way through the length of a field of colours and twists.

‘From A to B & gave up B found C – It’s all about maybe, perhaps.’
Francois Dey, Anne Callahan & Egemen Demirci
Some destination will be proposed and people can choose red or blue, yellow or white, you know matter of taste, expectations. These runs can split themselves and reconnect some later moments. Later we meet again?
Day 3 – Wednesday 29 October

‘On the Gradual Construction of Thoughts During Speech’
Mariana Lanari
Self-designing the artist as a public intellectual. A model for an analogical dictionary.

‘The Reproduction of Age in the Work of Mechanical Art’
Timo Demollin & Christophe Clarijs
A working session on the practice of editing, aiming to explore the continuous alteration of meaning through the changing processes of reproduction.

‘Cedar’s drink and drawing class’
Cedar Lewisohn
This experimental drawing class will mix traditional life drawing with drinking games and perhaps some props.
Day 4 – Thursday 30 October

‘Open Farm’

Presentation and exhibition at the project space of different selected outcomes for each workshop. Followed by a final dinner with all participants of The Farm.
During I. Failure, The Farm was joined by Anna Bak, Anne Callahan, Christophe Clarijs, Martin La Roche Contreras, Egemen Demirci, Timo Demollin, Francois Dey, Ilke Gers, Matylda Krzykowski, Mariana Lanari, Cedar Lewisohn, Jack McGrath, An Onghena, Raya Stefanova, Nina Thibo, Sanne Vaassen, Charlotte Van de Velde, Huib Haye van de Werf and Katharina Zimmerhackl.

_________

II. Display
21—23 November 2014
Depot Basel, Switzerland

Where the purpose of the shopping window is to lure the consumer to wanting to purchase certain items, the designer or artist display has a different agenda that doesn’t necessarily want to connect to the viewers own personal desires and needs, but rather create a tension that will demand the viewer to reflect on what he or she is looking at.
Day 1 – Friday 21 November

‘Voom is … Voom’
Rodrigo Hernandez
It happens this way: the Cat in the Hat, suddenly hieratic, lifts his pointer finger in a dramatically Socratic gesture. He invokes the Little Cat, perched there in silence. We see nothing, and Little Cat never speaks. What he secrets in the hatband blackness above his crown is simply “Voom,” we are told. And Voom is… Voom: Now, don’t ask me what Voom is. I will never know. Voom vooms. Of it nothing more can be said. Painting on the window display.

‘Ways of (Not) Displaying’
Workshop for Potential Design
About how the way things are presented affect our ideas about them. When we see things we are unwittingly affected by how they are presented, and the context in which they seem to exist. The workshop will explore ways to present objects without projecting any subjective notions onto them. Is there a way to show an object without context? Taking a set of small arbitrarily selected objects as starting point, we will create a (non-) window display that holds the objects as they are and nothing else.

‘A plate full of opportunities’
Food & Lectures
“Perspectives through screens and frames” by Josh Bitelli, “Art, Design & Advertisement” by 
Anna Bak & “Die Diele in Zürich” by Livio Baumgartner
Together with a plate full of edible opportunities.
Day 2 – Saturday 22 November

‘Window, window of the city, who is the fairest one of all?’
Expedition
We are going on a expedition through the city of Basel in order to investigate different types of window displays and analyze the methods of exhibiting through a window.

‘Displaying the display’
Collective presentation
Everyone is invited to bring images of different forms of ‘displays’ and to present them on the beamer in order to discuss different strategies and methods of displaying. Any image goes!

‘Screens that are not Screens’
Andres Wanner
We have not left the era of the screen – a rectangular window opening onto an alternative reality, offering a link between a human subject and an audio-visual stream (Manovich). This hands-on workshop with Andres Wanner aims at expanding current uses of digital screen displays, and asks how screens can be used to even more directly interconnect physical with imaginary spaces.

‘The Internet display’
Screening
We will watch “They Live” a 1988 American science fiction satirical film written and directed by John Carpenter. Aliens are concealing their appearance and manipulating people to spend money, breed and accept the status quo with subliminal messages in mass media.
Day 3 – Sunday 23 November

‘Ein Ort ist das Ende einer Strecke, an der gearbeitet wird’
Performance by Ronja Römmelt and Alessandro Schiattarella
The dancer and choreographer examine the window display of Depot Basel.

‘Facts to know and facts to ignore’
Isabelle Born
A lecture about the fundamental principles of the promotional shop window. The approach is as follows: to know, to apply, to question and than to break the rules.

‘The Peep-show’
The Farm
With inspiration from Marcel Duchamp’s Étant donnés, his last major art work, (a tableau, visible only through a pair of peep holes), we will build a diorama on the inside of Depot Basel, only visible from the street at night.
During II. Display, The Farm was joined by Anna Bak, Livio Baumgartner, Isabelle Born, Stefanie Bräuer, Brigitte Clements, Ted Davis, Bernadette Deddens, Julian Denzler, Nathalie Geiser, Veronika Gombert, David Gregori, Rodrigo Hernandez, Patricia Huijnen, Rebekka Kiesewetter, Matylda Krzykowski, Giulia Mela, Tetsuo Mukai, Carina Ow, Stefan Pabst, Juan Palencia, Laura Pregger, Ronja Römmelt, Vera Sacchetti, Alessandro Schiattarella, Richard Trory and Andres Wanner.

About

Matylda Krzykowski works with space: objects within space and ideas outside of space. Her work has pulled peripheral threads into the centre, and has cast new light on ideas at the centre of the discourses she nourishes. Although these discourses cannot be reduced to conventional spheres of operation, they could broadly be identified as curation, design, architecture, art and performance. Krzykowski seeks to instigate conversations, works to maintain their energy, and thereby affects results. These results are almost always entirely born from intense and generous collaboration. Her work has resonated globally. Krzykowski is organically interdisciplinary. (It’s a way of doing, rather than a way of thinking.)

The tools she deploys include, but are not limited to: speech, instant messaging, archiving [see: Online Depot], art direction, theatre and performance [see: Design Date], scenography and choreography [see: Total Space], reportage [see: Things Might] and digital space treated as physical space [see: Desktop Exhibition]. The communication vehicles she employs include the exhibition, the intervention, the editorial, the public talk, and Instagram, to name a few. Krzykowski travels widely to develop formats, participate in juries, to give lectures, develop exhibitions, and to conceive and deliver workshops in the cultural field. Wherever she may be, she sees the visible and reformats the unseen.
 

Written by James Tyler Foster, 2020

 
Currently active in Basel (CH) / Berlin (DE) / Hallein (AU)
+49 176 712 111 60
 

In 2007, during her studies, Matylda Krzykowski started the independent blog Matandme.com, where she portrayed the work and life of contemporary practitioners. In 2011 Krzykowski co-founded Depot Basel place for contemporary design, Switzerland, which she co- and art directed until its closure in 2018.
In 2014/2015 she was a former participant of the Jan van Eyck Academy where she conducted research around formats of display. 2018/2019 Matylda Krzykowski was visiting professor in the Industrial / Interface Design department of the Muthesius University of Fine Arts and Design. Her seminars rank from Methods & Formats to Multiversum and Parallax. 2018/2019 she joined the faculty of The School of Arts Institute Chicago in the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects. Appointed the Mitchell Visiting Professor she contributes with her project-based learning strategies and her studio seminar Objects and Spaces for Angels and Machines to an interdisciplinary community of artists and designers. Since 2017 Krzykowski runs the annual course Show Your Work at MA Design, Research and Entrepreneurship, at the University of the Arts Bern (CH). In 2018 Krzykowski co-founded Foreign Legion, a globally active curatorial and spatial practice for systemic change. Since 2020 Krzykowski writes Things Might, a column about the designed environment for Arts of the Working Class Magazine and since 2021 she is advisor at Jan van Eyck Academy (NL).

Matylda Krzykowski is the artistic lead of CIVIC, newly established social infrastructure and digital & physical exhibition and discourse space at Academy of Art and Design in Basel (CH), tutor at The Critical Inquiry Lab at Design Academy Eindhoven (NL) and co-curator of the exhibition Institution Building at CIVA Brussels (BE).

In September 2021 Airtime, a ‘TV Show’ on (Swiss) Design scripted and hosted by Matylda Krzykowski, was launched on wantedesign.online and exhibited at Swiss Design Awards 2021, Halle 3, Basel (CH). On 6 October 2021 Workspace in Progress, curated by Matylda Krzykowski and developed with Stefan Diez, Wagner Living and Die Angewandte, opened at Makk Cologne (DE).

Matylda Krzykowski currently develops The Energy Show, an exhibition about designing with, for and under the sun, and how it relates to human energy, for Het Nieuwe Institute (NL), in context of the first Solar Biennale opening September 2022.

 

‘It’s almost impossible to capture the essence of Matylda Krzykowski in just a few phrases, or even a complete description of her job title for that matter.’
Source: Interview for Elle Decor by Bianca Felicori

 
‘Berlin-based impresario Matylda Krzykowski is reinventing the very foundations of design and architecture and its curation. Her transdisciplinary, geographically mobile practice includes installations, choreography, TV game shows, theater and many other experimental formats, always undertaken with an eye towards progressive principles.’
Source: Design in Dialogue by Glenn Adamson
 

‘We’re joined by this belief that design shapes the way we live, that it’s the reason we walk through doors and corridors with purpose.’
Source: Interview for Interview Magazine by Grace Banks

 

‘Who do you look up to?’ – ‘Mary Poppins. She appears when she is needed; she surprises and moves on once she’s done.’
Source: Interview for We are the Future by Ashley Hefnawy

 

‘If you would found an organisation dealing with design today what would you do differently? – I would propose a union of disciplines, herald the end of ‘design’, stress the importance of the irrational and call for an approach and attitude, which would synthesise topics like ‘home, family, money, health, work, youth etc.’.
Source: Interview No Space Is A Good Place by Nadine Botha
 

‘Many of the most influential design curators are female: notably Paola Antonelli at the Museum of Modern Art and Beatrice Galillee at the Metropolitan Museum in New York,  Zoë Ryan of the Art institute in Chicago; Catherine Ince at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London; Matylda Krzykowski in Berlin; and Cecilia León de la Barra in Mexico City.’
Source: Book Design as an Attitude by Alice Rawsthorn 

 

 

Clients & Partners

Institutional
Archiv der Avantgarden, Design Museum London, Jan Van Eyck Academy, Holon Design Museum, Kunstgewerbemuseum Dresden, London Design Festival, Civa Brussels, Marres Maastricht, Vitra Design Museum, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Makk Cologne, Van Abbemuseum Eindhoven, Victoria & Albert Museum, Z33 Hasselt
 
Educational
AA Architectural Association, Arizona State University, Bezalel Academy of Art & Design Jersusalem, Brno Design Biennale, Cranbrook Academy of Art, Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Design Academy Eindhoven, Die Angewandte Wien, Domus Academy Milan, FHNW Basel, Graphic Design Arnhem, HKB Bern, Institut Kunst Basel, Kingston University London, Maastricht Academy of Fine Arts & Design, Muthesius University Kiel, School of Visual Arts New York, Parallel School Lausanne, Pratt Institute, The School of Art Institute Chicago, University of Illinois Chicago, The University of New South Wales Faculty of Art and Design Sydney, Virginia Commonwealth University
 
Others
Adidas, Apartamento Magazine, Base Milano, Bonjour Baby, Chamber Gallery, C-Mine Designcentrum, Current Obsession, Design Indaba, Design Platform Limburg, Diez Office, Fashionclash, Female Design Council, Frame Magazine, Futu Magazine, Gallery Bolte Lang, Gothe Institut Chicago, Istanbul Design Biennale, Jerusalem Design Week, Kompetenzzentrum der Kultur- und Kreativwirtschaft des Bundes, Lodz Design Festival, Migros Engagement, Muto Heimatgastronomie, Pecha Kucha, PIN-UP, Stimulieringsfonds, Salone del Mobile, Soho House Berlin, Soho House Istanbul, Sozial Muscle Club Basel, TL Magazine, UBS Art Forum, Uncube, Vienna Design Week, Vitra, Wagner Living
 
Jurys  & Nominations
Dutch Design Award (2011 – 2016), Interieur Awards / Kortrijk Biennale (2014), Outstanding Artist Award (2016),  Limburg Design Icons (2016), Beazley Designs of the Year (Since 2018), Villa Noailles Design Competition (2018), Frame Awards (2019), Design Prize Milan (2019)
 
Awards
Nomination ‘Animator’ Designalive Awards (2012), Cultural Advancement Award Stadt Basel / Depot Basel (2013), Nomination Core 77 Food Award / Sagel & Krzykowski (2013), Wallpaper Magazine Award – Best Finished Object (2013), Swiss Federal Design Award for ‘Design Mediation’ / Depot Basel (2013), Alexander Clavel Kulturpreis / Depot Basel (2015), Swiss Federal Design Award for ‘Design Mediation’ / Online Depot (2017)
 
Landing page portrait by Katrin Greiling