Way back in December we were approached by curators Dan Rubinstein and Jen Renzi to participate in their ICFF offsite show, InDisposed. At that point the show seemed so far in the future, but lo and behold, we set up tomorrow!
The brief they put together is amazing. In their own words:
As environmentalism has infiltrated contemporary design, durability and longevity have become the buzzwords du jour… rejecting throwaway culture to prioritize permanence over the ephemeral—while trashing the very idea of disposability. That’s our loss. After all, are disposable objects inherently bad? Doesn’t disposability have some redeeming social value?
Provocative, to say the least. InDisposed will be on display at Studio X May 15-20, 10-6PM (closed Sunday).
Can you give us a sneak preview of some of the work on display?
Jen: We invited a lot of furniture designers, but people really surprised us by coming up with small objects. Though as we’ve moved along, bigger and bigger objects have come up that will create their own installation challenges.
Candlestrip by Design Glut for InDisposed (Photo by Ben Ritter)
Dan: Tobias Wong will be showing. He approached Paper magazine, and said, “Let me dispose of ten pages of your magazine, guest-edit them, and then put them online.” In the magazine it will jump from pages 150 to 160, or so, and say something to the effect of, “You are about to skip 10 pages of the magazine. They are being disposed of for eco-purposes, they are exclusively available online, and this is for the InDisposed show.”
Jen: It’s funny, because as a conceptual designer, Toby has conflicting ideas of authorship and responsibility. He almost wanted to unmake something that was already there. His medium is anti-medium.
Are there any trends across the work?
Jen: We actually have a lot of people using food and edibles. Which I guess makes sense, because its such a natural cycle of disposibility that’s easy to embrace. Jeff Miller, for example, is working with City Bakery, and molding old bread into birdhouses. Carlos Salgado is making planters out of used coffee grounds.
Dan: Andrea Ruggiero is doing plates made from birdseed and a super-secret potato starch mix that looks like ceramic. The idea is that you can eat off it, and when you’re done, you can throw it like a frisbee into the woods. It will naturally dissolve, and the birds can peck at the seeds. Then we have Takeshi Miyakawa, who is making molded plastic take-out containers. They look similar to lego blocks, and can be washed after use, and made into different things.
Jen: It’s provocative because it encourages you to use take-out containers. It encourages you to consume, then turn the waste into something functional.
It sounds like an amazing variety of pieces.
Jen: It is all so different. In the end, it’s a lot of designers, taking spare time out of commercially viable work to do these intellectual indulgences for us. I hope a lot of people come out. The show will be up for a week, so come out and take a look around.
How did you think up the idea for the show?
Jen: We actually started last year. We wanted to do something for ICFF, but it was too late to pull it off, so we used the extra time to plan out this year. We knew we wanted to do a show, something conceptual.
Dan: We wanted to do something that was timely and not so commercial. We knew since we didn’t really have a budget, we didn’t have to do a lot of what we saw at ICFF – new pieces being shown at some fancy boutique, limited in terms of the risks they take.
Jen: We weren’t sure if we were even going to be able to get a space. We had this idea that if we couldn’t find the gallery we wanted, we’d do it a little guerilla-style. Have a one-night happening at a bar. Instead of saying, “Are we going to be able to get a space?” We worked backwards and said, “Well, if we don’t have space, what are we going to do?”
How did you end up getting together with Studio X?
Dan: We contacted the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. They produce a lot of really cool events, find work spaces for artists and designers, and do lots of fancy things to boost this area culturally post-9/11. We told them we were doing a design show with mostly local talent, and asked if they knew a space someone would be wiling to donate. They told us about Studio X, and we went from there.
What exactly is Studio X?
Gavin: This is a satellite of the Columbia University which acts as an interface between the design school and the public. It’s also a space for research, exhibition, and experimental programming. The idea is that it can be a space for research, and work, then very quickly transform into an event space and back again. No one has shelves, all the desks are on wheels, and everything is mobile.
Sounds perfect. ICFF is an expensive show, which makes people nervous when it comes to taking risks.
Jen: Exactly. A lot of people complain, but it’s a trade show. I kind of wish someone would do an offsite show, of commercially viable products, for people that are just starting out. ICFF can be very daunting. I talk to a lot of designers, even those midway through there career, and they still have a hard-time with ICFF. They would need to get certain things out of it to make it worth the money, and thus they don’t do it. I also feel like the offsite shows are shrinking as people got further in their careers.
It seems like this year may be the year for offsite shows.
Dan: Since the economy has ground to a halt, you would think this would spur super-creative things by people who have no commercial interests. But instead, I have a feeling it’s going to be a lot of hum-drum showrooms, with everyone playing it safe. In all these other places in the world, people are doing incredible design for design’s sake.
Jen: Well, in those places the government funds design. You can’t really compare apples to oranges. We’re just creating a space where people can do something that’s not ICFF-ish.
