The Future of Design
The word future is referring to something which is not yet present. Writing about the future of something is indicating and extrapolating a development. If the word future is used for design than he current notion of design is seen in change. Design of the present will clearly not be the same as the design in the future. A School of Art and Design has the task to prepare students for this future, while working with teacher designers of the present.
The fact that design has changed is easily inferred from documentation of design exhibitions of the past. For instance the Rotterdam Design Prize Exhibition of 20011 showed works of autonomous art (Matthijs Munnik, Microscopic Opera), shops selling bread (Vlaamsch Broodhuys), fashion, and design on equal footing.
Around 1990 when I was a student at the Rotterdam School for Art and Design, now Willem de Kooning Academy, this miss mash of art, sculpture and design would be unthinkable. Painting and Sculpture were the main subjects of study, with small groups of students of "Publicity" and "Fashion".
During my study at the Art School critics declared Painting "dead". Although Art was declared dead already by Hegel in the 19th century nobody could deny the success story of the Art and Painting in the beginning of the 20th century. In the years following my graduation painting was indeed slowly disappearing from the attention of the public. Instead photography, video, drawing become popular. But as fast as this became popular the popularity disappeared again. Leaving a very small group of autonomous artists, very much working in a small niche of autonomous art.
Nowadays architects are the rock stars of design. Art is just a part of design. Already during the first decennium of the 21th century autonomous artist were going "social", even in Rotterdam. Although Rotterdam as a city is not insignificant, and 'art" is very much global, which means practically the same in every country, Rotterdam is following the trends, more than leading. Social projects, working in the neighborhood, people as your medium was becoming normal, rather than working in a studio.
Ten years later the curriculum of the WdKA, School for Design and Art has students "design" becoming socially engaged. Not designing a chair, a dress or making an illustration is leading, but a social problem. Preferably a social problem which cannot be solved - called a "wicked problem".
The difference between the autonomous artist working with people and a designer working in the social domain is that the former is still living his or her own dream, while the designer wants to signal problem. Solving a design problem is not fashionable anymore.
But if solving a problem is not the main point, when you are in the social domain problems can be found very easily. Everybody not living an average life can be called a problem. Handicapped people, older people, younger people, pregnant young mothers, the deaf, the blind, prisoners are easy targets. But don't underestimate the inventively of these socially engaged design students. Also when you don't own a TV set, don't read a newspaper, don't have a relation, are not divorced, are beginning to get older (which is easy from the perspective of 22 year olds), you could be called a wicked problem.
The WdKA teaching curriculum is based on research about the future of design. The school don't want to educate students the way this was done when I was a student. Not teaching painting and drawing when indeed very few people can earn a living with these skills. The WdKA curriculum is apparently foreseeing many possibilities for social design and the contributions which can be made to society coming from young designers, illustrators, advertisers.
This task of a school to foresee the future can be seen in the light of other developments. Abundant at the moment are exhibitions and publications around fashion and textiles containing the word "future". For instance "The Future of Fashion is now" 2014 in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Fashion has a future. This seems trivial. But the same cannot be said of "art', more specifically "autonomous art", like painting. Language is a tool and this tool is shaped by the users. The word combination "the future of art" is used only a few times and the video's of Erik Niedling called the Future of Art are mainly documenting contemporary art, art galleries, collectors.
Art has become contemporary, as most of the exhibition showing recent art are called (Dutch: eigentijdse kunst, German zeitgenössische Kunst).
If Google Image search is used to find images of "future art" you get science fiction views of cities in a gloomy apocalyptic style.
Modern Art is referring to art of the middle of the 20th century. Modern id followed by postmodern before the collapse of the system of naming and identifying currents in art. This collapse occurred at the same time as the waining of general interest in contemporary art. The public is still interested in art, as can be seen in the booming of muse and exhibitions an all cities big and small, but this interest is for the architecture, e.g. Bilbao, with the building of Frank Gehry, which by the way could be called the future of architecture, and subject matter of the "modern art" period, or even more older art. Future is of course a notion which resides in language. Stating the word language on it's won is dangerous because it suggest that language can be separated and even isolated, for instance to use language as different from and maybe even opposed to "the visual". Language and certainly text has a tendency to find itself superior to everything else. Writing about something is dominating it. Writing is criticizing, while doing, acting painting, designing is the victim of this writing. Writing itself becomes creating and can be written about. Much more difficult is it to design for instance a dress criticizing a text, although it can be done, and is done.
In a moment of despair about the dominance of text over the visual arts and also very much in admiration of famous texts I once made a drawing which shows a figure eaten by a book with the title "You are text". Philosophy was seen as so elevated and much more important than visual art. Looking back at this drawing I realize that it is outdated already. Even the notion of the superiority of text has disappeared. Philosophy seemed to have lost its charm but for a very few experts, Derrida, Foucault, hero's during my study are totally unknown by current students. Theory on the art school is trying to save some of the old canon, that which has happened after 1990 - so long ago! Theory as study subject is replaced by what is called research.
Coming back to this drawing mentioned above, if I would make this drawing again it would probably be called "You are a project". Everything has become a project. Calling building a museum a project seems natural, since there is a client, you have to prepare, to organize and the museum is delivered, opened for the public, and the project is finished, the bill can be sent. But everything nowadays is a project. Painting in the old sense was developing yourself, showing change, slowly molding your style, opening new vista's while keeping up with a always recognizable signature. Nowadays if a designer wants to "do" a painting you organize the production of this painting in China. But not only that, raising a child is a project, marrying and separating. Nothing can exist outside this project timeframe. Nothing is allowed to develop itself without a goal and a bill. It cannot be a coincidence than that sooner or later everybody will become a project of a social designer.
Coming back again to this drawing, which wasn't a text, nor a project the title of this drawing would be "you are a wicked problem".