*Call for Papers: From De Stijl to Dutch Design: Canonising Design 2.0*
Annual Dutch Design History Society Symposium
9 December 2016, De Tuinzaal, Centraal Museum Utrecht, 09:00 – 17:30 (with
drinks afterwards)
Submission deadline: 1 October 2016
Tourism agencies, governments, museums, and design academies in the
Netherlands and abroad are already busy preparing for the widespread
celebrations of *100 Years of De Stijl – 25 Years of Dutch Design *next
year (2017). While De Stijl’s implied beginnings (1917) are relatively
uncontroversial, the proposition that Dutch design originates from 1992 is
much more so. This specific construction of ‘Dutch design’ as an
avant-garde phenomenon that started in the 1990s with Droog design and is
today centred around the Design Academy Eindhoven is a clear example of
design canonisation at work. In this process, what comes to count as (good)
design and the knowledge about it is selectively produced in line with
specific (cultural, political, economic, etc.) agendas.
However, this case also shows how today, the process of design canonisation
is no longer solely decided on by traditionally recognised authorities
(museum curators, design historians, high-end retail venues, influential
designers) but also by an unusually wide range of ‘non-expert’ actors
(tourism agencies, politicians, funding agencies). This dispersion of
design canonisation is boosted further by digital and participatory social
media technologies and platforms, which allow individuals and communities
to generate a multiplicity of alternative ‘mini-canons’ that operate
alongside and relatively independently from official or accepted ones.
Yet – and paradoxically – this proliferation of actors and multiplicity of
canons does not necessarily herald the end of established canons. Indeed,
the Dutch design ‘brand’ seems to become ever more established and
entrenched. In what different ways do contemporary processes of design
canonisation work, and what are the outcomes? What are the implications of
this contemporary condition of ever changing canonisation processes for
design historical knowledge? What repercussions does it have for
traditionally acknowledged actors on the one hand, and for
non-professionals on the other? Does it contribute to bringing into view
the material culture of otherwise underrepresented individuals and
communities?
*Structure*
The one-day symposium *From De Stijl to Dutch Design: Canonising Design
2.0 *aims to reflect on questions relating to the workings and implications
of canonisation processes – both traditional and contemporary, professional
and amateur – to knowledge formation and transfer concerning design. To
reflect the contemporary condition whereby design canons and knowledge are
created through and by actors operating in widely diverse institutions with
a variety of different agendas, the symposium is structured in two parts.
The morning session is structured according to a typical academic
conference format, comprising the presentations of four scholarly papers
followed by a response and discussion. In the afternoon session, five
keynote speakers will reflect on the contemporary processes of design
canonisation from their respective perspectives: academia,
politics/economics, the museum, and design practice. The day will conclude
with a roundtable discussion, where the different perspectives will be
confronted with each other so as to bridge highly compartmentalized
discourses that otherwise remain largely unknown and irrelevant to each
other. Ultimately, the aim of the symposium is to generate new academic
knowledge about design canonisation that is relevant to all actors involved
in the process. The event will be bi-lingual: speakers are welcome to
present and respond in Dutch or English.
*Venue*
The event is organised by the Dutch Design History Society in partnership
with Centraal Museum Utrecht, where it will be held. Centraal Museum owns
the largest Rietveld collection in the world, and was the first museum to
acquire the entire Droog collection and a broad range of Dutch Modernism
fashion in the 1990s. Since then, it has actively experimented with a range
of digital and participatory platforms to share and co-create its design
collection with diverse audiences. Being one of the initiators of *100
Years of De Stijl – 25 Years of Dutch Design*, in which economic
considerations of city branding and tourist marketing predetermined the
definition of the event’s content, Centraal Museum is eager to reflect on
questions concerning design canonisation in the past, present, and future,
and its role in it. As such, it provides the ideal institutional setting to
reflect upon the symposium’s theme.
*Call for papers*
For the morning session, the symposium welcomes contributions by academics
(junior and established) of design and art history, media studies,
museology, anthropology, and related fields. Potential themes to be
elaborated by papers include but are not limited to:
- The processes according to which design canons are formed, today
and in the past;
- The formation of alternative design canons and/or the breakdown of
canonical thinking, i.e. the ‘undoing’ of canonisation;
- The formation of design canons beyond the traditional national
framework: local/regional/global;
- The (different) roles that the media, museums, and
governments/politics play in these processes;
- The impact of contemporary online mediation and distributed
participatory processes, such as digital platforms, in the canonisation of
design;
- New actors in the canonisation of design;
- The role of museum exhibitions and (permanent) displays in
canonisation processes;
- The emergence (and the role) of new publics/new consumers of
design canons;
- The canonisation of De Stijl and/or Dutch design;
- The futures of design canons.
Note that papers do not necessarily have to reflect on Dutch cases.
The presentations will be considered for an edited publication, while the
results of the symposium and debate will become available from the website
of the Dutch Design History Society.
*Proposals*
Proposals for 20-minute papers must be submitted by 1 October 2016 as
detailed below. Please email the document as a Word document to
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Page 1
Author(s) full name(s)
Institution, address for correspondence, telephone and e-mail
50-word biography
Page 2
Title of the paper
Three keywords
200-word abstract of the paper in Dutch or English
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