Designland
Press Conference
Thursday, 1 October 2009
What’s the situation in the field of design 30 years after the so-called Forum Design Case? How can we characterize design in Linz and Upper Austria today? What’s up in the zone of tension and interplay where regional identity meets strivings to achieve international recogni-tion? What forces drive and confront designers today? World-class stars including Gijs Bak-ker, Rolf Fehlbaum and Konstantin Grcic will be addressing these issues in Kepler Salon. And outstanding designers working in Linz will showcase some of their greatest hits from October 29 to November 4.
DESIGNLAND’s point of departure is THE “CASE” OF FORUM DESIGN running in Landes-galerie Linz from October 15, 2009 to February 28, 2010. This exhibition deals with an inno-vative event that put Linz at the focal point of the international design scene briefly in 1980 and left behind traces in the city and the region. This exhibition during the Capital of Culture year provides a fitting occasion to scrutinize the current status of design in Upper Austria. After all, the radical, innovative impetus imparted by Forum Design made nary an impact on Linz, while design and design-related fields where developing into high flyers elsewhere in the 1980s and ‘90s. The DESIGNLAND lineup includes offerings meant to foster deeper consideration of the meaning and repercussions of these phenomena.
