Insights Design Lecture Series 2021: Online Event
Expand your understanding of design with the Insights Design Lecture Series, presenting five leading designers from around the country. This year’s program takes advantage of our current digital reality with a few experimental formats, including pre-recorded designer-created videos and live-mixed multimedia Zoom events. The lineup includes LA multidisciplinarian Daniel DeSure, hyper-aesthete Hassan Rahim, information artist and biohacker Heather Dewey-Hagborg in conversation with Chelsea Manning, and Bon Iver collaborators and artists Eric Timothy Carlson and Aaron Anderson. All talks are free.
Interact with the Speakers
Each event offers the opportunity to interact with the speaker, but the lecture formats are slightly different so make sure to check out the details on each event page!
SCHEDULE
Tue., March 23, 7 pm: Daniel DeSure
Thu., April 1, 7 pm: Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning
Thu., April 8, 7 pm: Eric Timothy Carlson and Aaron Anderson (+ Friends)
Tue., April 13, 7 pm: Hassan Rahim
Daniel DeSure (Commonwealth Projects/Total Luxury Spa) March 23, 7 pm (free)
Can a juice bar rejuvenate bodies, minds, and communities? Can T-shirts create the future? With an emphasis on his local community and an expansive collaborative network, Daniel DeSure has created a multidisciplinary practice that skirts the worlds of art, fashion, design, and film. His many projects include founding the creative studio Commonwealth Projects, with clients such as Rimowa, Sonos, Nike, Olafur Eliasson, and Sundance, as well as Total Luxury Spa, a ridiculously hip fashion line dedicated to serving global community initiatives.
Originally scheduled as an in-person event for March 2020, but postponed due to the pandemic, this never-before-seen prerecorded talk will be streamed on March 23 at 7 pm (CDT), on the Walker homepage and on YouTube Premiere (the link will be posted here a couple days before the event). Audiences are encouraged to be in conversation with Daniel DeSure directly during and after the live webcast, via the YouTube Premiere comments section.
Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning April 1, 7 pm (free) (register)
Join us for a live conversation between Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning, exploring the intersection of art, design, and biopolitics behind their collaborative project Radical Love. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an information artist and biohacker who creates speculative projects that critique issues of technology, surveillance, and image culture. Her 2013 project Stranger Visions, currently on view in the Walker exhibition Designs for Different Futures, consists of a series of highly realistic, 3D-printed human face masks. Each portrait is predictively generated from DNA samples that the artist surreptitiously collected from random strangers in New York City, from sources such as discarded chewing gum and other saliva-covered debris. The project points toward ways that our genetic information is being weaponized as a form of surveillance. In 2015, while former US intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning was still incarcerated and any new images of her were being actively suppressed, Dewey-Hagborg used the same process to create DNA portrait masks of the noted whistleblower, with cheek swabs and hair samples provided by Manning through the mail. Two years later, the artist made 30 additional algorithmically generated portraits of Manning. Their continued collaboration examines our reliance on imagery and the imperfections of technology when understanding issues of gender and identity. Dewey-Hagborg’s work has been discussed broadly in the media, including the New York Times and Wired Magazine. She is an artist fellow at AI Now, New York, an institution dedicated to studying the social ramifications of artificial intelligence; an artist in residence at the Exploratorium, San Francisco; and a visiting assistant professor of interactive media at NYU Abu Dhabi. She has a PhD in electronic arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Chelsea Manning is an activist, former intelligence analyst, and whistleblower who in 2010 disclosed nearly 750,000 US military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks, exposing a range of governmental abuses. As a transgender woman and public speaker, Manning is now a highly visible leader in the movements for transgender justice and government accountability. Click here to register for this free Zoom event.
Eric Timothy Carlson and Aaron Anderson (+ Friends) April 8, 7 pm (free) (register)
How have artists and designers continued to effectively come together during the global pandemic? In what promises to be a visually vibrant media-rich experiment in Zoom dynamics, frequent collaborators Eric Timothy Carlson and Aaron Anderson will discuss many of their shared projects, including the visual system for Bon Iver’s recent album i,i, which has been nominated for a Grammy and a 2020 Beazley Design of the Year award. The two designers will also be joined in conversation by several friends with whom they’ve worked over the years. In addition to his position as creative director for music collective Bon Iver, Eric Timothy Carlson maintains an independent art and design studio, examining ideas of iconography and language often through highly nuanced collage work. He has collaborated with artists such as Peter Burr and Annie Larson and exhibited with institutions such as Printed Matter and Fisher Parrish Gallery. Aaron Anderson is a filmmaker, artist, animator, musician, and member of the band Beat Detectives. His work exists as poetic iterations of narrative space and movement, and has been presented in a variety of institutions including MoMA PS1, MassMOCA, and the Van Abbe Museum. Both artists graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Click here to register for this free Zoom event.
Rescheduled: Hassan Rahim (12:01) April 13, 7 pm (free)
Combining a deeply collaborative approach with a sophisticated understanding of style, Hassan Rahim is a meticulously obsessive visual artist and designer. His poetic output evokes an uncanny world in which historical references hide in subtle production techniques, childhood fantasies are laid bare, and the cultures of skateboarding, clubbing, art, and fashion collide. Rahim is cofounder of publisher Shabazz Projects and his clients include VSCO, Sony Music, Urban Outfitters, Warp Records, Willo Perron, and more. Originally scheduled as an in-person event for March 2020, but postponed due to the pandemic, this never-before-seen prerecorded talk will be streamed on April 13 at 7 pm (CDT), on the Walker homepage and on YouTube Premiere (the link will be posted here a couple days before the event). Audiences are encouraged to be in conversation with Hassan Rahim directly during and after the live webcast, via the YouTube Premiere comments section.
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