Second reading - An exhibition and symposium by graduating students of Design Academy Eindhoven Design Curating & Writing Masters, 2018

We tend to accept everyday matters at face value. Take, for example, the brightness of a technological future that’s sold to us by a handful of companies. Or the way a nation’s traditional architecture reflects its policies on identity construction. Or how bio design can help our bodies become more efficient and smart engineering can prevent bridge suicides. Or, how design is selected, documented and displayed in the form of objects within a museum.

But are these things really what they seem? What happens when you excavate the layers in these phenomena, subject them to critical questioning and examine them from different perspectives? Through rigorous primary research, reference to historical precedent, and engagement with theoretical concepts, the students of the MA in Design Curating & Writing at Design Academy Eindhoven were able to elicit new insights and understandings of these topics. In other words, they engaged in a second reading of designed matters.

2018 GRADUATES & PROJECTS

• Max Calabria, Blood, Sweat and Fears: Biodesign’s Complex Relationship with Guilt
• Delany Boutkan, The Rise of the Internet-Driven ‘Object-Image’ and its Uneasy Relationship to Design Museums
• Josh Plough, Facts, Factors, and Entities: A New Apparatus for Technology Criticism
• Kirsten Geekie, In Anticipation: The Role of Design in Mitigating and Indirectly Memorializing Complicated and Preventable Deaths
• Yasmin Aryani, Mapping the Way Home: The Role of Architecture in Constructing Contested Notions of Identity in Indonesia

Thesis publications have been designed in collaborative partnerships between Design Curating & Writing and graduate students at Graphic Design Arnhem, ArtEZ.