culturalboundaries

Right in step with Mercedes Benz Fashion Week, the Independent Fashion Bloggers  Conference takes place in NYC from 08- 12 February at Milk Studio. Want to know what’s next in fast paced landscape of fashion blogging then join IFB, they’ll bring together some of the best and brightest personalities in the fashion industry to discuss the issues, challenges and exciting future of fashion blogging and social media.

GLIDE’12: Consumed is accepting CFP abstract submissions for virtual conference to be held 07 November 2012. Be part of this major partnership with the GLIDE team and Iridescent, the Icograda Journal of Design Research. Audrey Bennett, will serves as guest editor, she’s the founder of GLIDE, and Associate Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.  For more about GLIDE click: http://glide12.org/

In need of some cultural nourishment, then head over to SVA MFA Design Criticism Spring Lecture series, starting next week February 14, the Spring line-up jumps off with an intimate Q&A with The New York Times’ newly appointed architecture critic Michael Kimmelman.  For more information on D-Crit’s lecture series click D-Crit.

Design Indaba: 29 FEBRUARY 2012 – 4 MARCH 2012 Interact/Design Indaba 2012. This year’s venue includes the Design Indaba Conference and Simulcast from 29 February to 2 March 2012, and Design Indaba Expo from 2 to 4 March 2012.

This is an excerpt featured on the Studio Museum in Harlem blog, it’s my first in a series of design articles.

London is one of the hottest and most creative cities, bristling with a multicultural community. Yet its Black artists and designers have remained largely untapped. That is until now. Just this past September, London was booming with design festivals showcasing innovative furniture, objects and fabulous fashions. Among them was the latest installment of the African and African Caribbean Design Diaspora Festival, a hotbed of new ideas, inspiration and creativity. This year’s theme, “?Choices!,” attracted some 22,000 visitors (2,000 more than in 2010). The AACDD festival took place from September 9 to 25, coinciding with the London Design Festival and constituted AACDD’s second successful year. It was the latest project launched by the British European Design Group’s (BEDG) three-year initiative, which is playing an increasingly important role in diversifying London’s creative community.

The festival director, Karin Phillips, Design Director Clemens Hackl, and Nigerian-born designer and curator, Emamoke Ukeleghe, orchestrated this production. The artists represented included roughly 100 graphic designers, multimedia artists, illustrators, industrial and product designers, and visual artists of African and African-Caribbean descent working in the U.K., Africa, the Caribbean, Japan and the United States. Hackl explained, “These artists and designers made a huge impact on visitors with their innovative works.” And thanks to funding from the London Arts Council, this year the AACDD Festival reached more people through a well-designed festival guide, website and social media platforms.

AACDD’s festival took place in three main locations: BargeHouse in OXO Towers in SouthBack, Hospital Club, and the Re-Loved Lounge at 100% Design. With 1,333 square feet of raw warehouse space, the BargeHouse served as the perfect blank canvas setting for browsing art lovers. It featured four floors of curated work by fine artists, illustrators, graphic designers, fashion designers, multimedia artists, and photographers. On one floor, Below the Surface, a photographic project by young black teenagers from London’s African and African-Caribbean communities, was a whopping success. The teenagers documented the colorful facets of everyday life, and produced an eye grabbing collection shot with disposable cameras given away through AACDD’s tweets and Facebook postings. For more click here>>

The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk: The first exhibition devoted to the designs of world-renowned French couturier Jean Paul Gaultier will make its U.S. debut at the Dallas Museum of Art in November 2011. This is an unprecedented look at the designer dubbed fashion’s “enfant terrible” from the time of his first runway shows in the 1970s and who has become one of the most important fashion designers of recent decades. Organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in collaboration with the Maison Jean Paul Gaultier, the exhibition premiered in Montreal on June 15, 2011, and will be on view at the Dallas Museum of Art from November 13, 2011, through February 12, 2012, before traveling to its final stop in the U.S. at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young, in March 2012. The exhibition will be on view at the Fundación Mapfre – Instituto de Cultura in Madrid, Spain, from September 26 through November 18, 2012, and to Kunsthal Rotterdam, the Netherlands, from February 9, 2013 through May 12, 2013, and then travel to Arkitekturmuseet, Stockholm in June 2013.

Check out Jean Paul Gaultier, Fashion’s wild child on CBS Morning News

Live stream videos at Ustream

Sadly, I couldn’t fly off to Australia to attend this year’s Participatory Innovation Conference 2012′s (PIN-C2012), but I’ve been following the pre-speakers events online through Ustream. This is a stellar Keynote presentation all about play, indigenous design, and participatory process. And so far I’ve been very pleased with all that I have heard to date. In the video above Professor Sudarshan Khanna, former Principal Designer-Faculty, and Chairman of Education & Research at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, India. www.sudarshankhanna.com

Roger Tucker, educator and former graphic designer is setting his sights high, he’s on a serious mission to make visual artists work more accessible for everyday living. Recently Roger, launched his consultancy Tucker Contemporary Art specializing in the works by painters, ceramicist, photographers, sculptures and mixed media artist are just some of the artist he currently represents.  Listen to art critic Patrick Henry Bass interview with artist Margaret Vendryes as she talk about her latest series of 31 Divas. 

Below is cross section of works by other artists previously on display at Tucker’s private salon held last December.

I’m hooked on this: Actor/rapper Ice Cube steps into the world of industrial design, posing in a series of advertisements highlighting the innovative chair designs of mid-century design luminaries Charles and Ray Eames, for the Collecting Eames Collection. Held at the Pacific Time Standard, this event began this October to celebrate the Los Angeles art and design scene’s groundbreaking years between 1945 and 1990.

Besides the series of colorful ads, check the video of Ice Cube talking about the Eames House. You’ll be surprised to learn that Cube at one point tried his hand at architectural drafting while in trade school back in the 1980s.

In the video below, Cube says: “In a world of McMansions—where structures take up all the land—the Eameses made structure and nature one.” He strolls around the grounds of Eames House, rapping about how they were doing mash-ups before mash-ups even existed. Check out the L.A. Ice Cube knows and Loves!

My several pairs of Havaianas, from my travels to Brazil are like gold. And much like everyone else walking around in colorful Havaianas flip flops, I love mine to death. This year’s opening at Art Basel Miami 01 December, will be jamming with artistically styled Brazilian flip-flops brand recently commissioned street artist Finok to create some eye popping murals. Check out some funky graffiti art from the streets in Sao Paulo to Collins Avenue in South Beach at the swanky Shelbourne Hotel. And while your perusing buy a pair limited edition graffiti collection designed by the Brazilian artist Finok, Chivitz and Minhau for $28.00, it’s probably one of the few affordable art pieces at Art Basel.

New African Fashion Book talk @ NYPL: On Wednesday 30 November, Helen Jennings hosts a talk at the New York Public Library as part of its Design & Style book series. She’ll be joined by designers Mataano and Mimi Plange, model campaigner Bethann Hardison and Enyinne Owunwanne of Heritage1960, who will MC the round table discussion. It’s a public event, first come, first served.

The following evening the real fun begins for those lucky souls who snagged a spot at the invite-only NYC launch party for New African Fashion at private members club Parlour. There will be a guest performance by Philly artist Zakee and sounds courtesy of DJ mOma and DJake. Enyinne will preview some of the designers and market finds shortly to be for sale on her beautifully curated site Heritage1960. And there will, of course, be free booze. It promises to be quite a shindig.
Occupy WallStreet Group: Arts and Culture segment of the OCW group looking to open art studio space, until such time they find permanent space chekout OCW’s art installation on Printer Matters Window.

SUPERSCRIPT’s SECOND ART AND ARCHITECTURE BOOK READING: On December 7, join Superscript and MoMA’s senior curator of architecture and design Paola Antonelli as we delve into the world of Philip K. Dick’s classic text, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Most famously the basis for the 1982 film Blade Runner (and the vast majority of science fiction imagery from the last thirty years), this 1968 novel popularized the idea of the cyborg and has had a lasting effect on dreams and fears concerning technology in the public sphere. Guest: Paola Antonelli; Text: Philip K Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Venue: 15 Union Square West; Date: Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Time: 7pm Introduction; 7:15-8:15pm Discussion, Q&A