Fellowship Programme 2021 // Artistic Direction // dieDAS – Design Akademie Saaleck – Naumburg (DE)
Having worked during the the past year on keenly designing, defining and organising the 2021 dieDAS Fellowship Programme, we cannot wait for it all to effectively kick off.
The 2021 selected fellows joining the programme on site at dieDAS – Design Akademie Saaleck, from 25 July to 8 August, will be Zeno Franchini, Pollyanna Moss, Birgit Severin and Daniel Tisch.
The large number of outstanding applications was reviewed by the dieDAS selection committee, composed of dieDAS Founding Director Arne Cornelius Wasmuth, Artistic Director Maurizio Montalti and Director of Program & Development Tatjana Sprick; by the chair of the selection committee, design critic Glenn Adamson; and by three external committee members, Curatorial Director at Design Miami Wava Carpenter, Beirut-based architect Adib Dada and Vice-President of Rehau Group Veit Wagner. Designer Eugenia Morpurgo is this year’s Assistant Artistic Director.
For its 2021 Fellowship Program, dieDAS invites the selected practitioners to delve into this urgent and layered subject both practically and theoretically. Together, under the theme of Symbiotic Habitat, we will study and challenge existing anthropocentric perspectives, confronting the ambiguous notion of Nature, as it relates to current ecological, economical, technological, social, and political developments.
The Program will explore opportunities that favour integration between the natural and the manmade, thus possibly revealing their inherent coexistence beyond any form of ruthless domestication. By using materiality and a multidisciplinary approach to design as tools for investigating a sustainably integrated future, the dieDAS 2021 Fellowship will serve as a space for critical, creative production, encouraging Fellows to actively engage in questioning dominant narratives and traditional practices through the collision of ideas, perspectives, and techniques.
dieDAS 2021 Programme Framework – MM 20210201
- How can we re-think and re-build our relationship to the natural world?
- How can we contribute to reveal the relational responsibility that we hold towards both human and non-humans alike?
- How could design be employed as the driving force serving people and planet, critically tackling the forces (e.g. exploitation, colonialism, geo-politics, patriarchy, etc.) that contributed shaping the world we live in?
- How to deal with the implications deriving from the adoption of processes rooted in transformation and transience (i.e.ephemerality)?
- Could design enable systemic change by triggering the emergence and adoption of effectively symbiotic habitats?
The program will feature hands-on workshops and debates, as well as theoretical and practical contributions by international and local guests from academia, design, architecture, crafts and arts. To bring an eco-systemic perspective to the material design process, and supported by the great expertise of Head Mentor Eugenia Morpurgo, the 2021 Fellows will also focus on Syntropic Materials, an approach that combines alternative agro-ecological models with the latest developments in natural material research.
Furthermore, under the creative direction of designer Maurizio Montalti, they will experiment with mycelium structures and, at the end of their stay, will present their collaborative creation – a temporary small-scale architectural intervention on the dieDAS grounds and a space for inter-species encounters.
DOWNLOAD HERE A SHORT ABSTRACT DESCRIBING THE FRAMEWORK OF dieDAS 2021 FELLOWSHIP
Press images can be downloaded here: Press Kit.
Further information is available at die-das.de