Li Edelkoort (Trend Forecaster & Curator of Design)
I first became aware of Li Edelkoort when listening to a talk entitled Soft Futures. The future visions presented and the ideas of ‘futurenauts’ bringing back items to the here and now proved quite fascinating imagining what future journey’s might look like. Li’s insights for the products of the future included wellbeing, tactility, food more important than fashion, being together & spirtuality and Google realised some of these in the accompanying softwear exhibition. In March 2020 she expanded on those thoughts and redefined this as a world vision in the article 'Coronavirus offers “a blank page for a new beginning” that proved to be the most read ever on Dezeen and at VDF she discusses this in more detail.
She believes that the article has become so popular because she dares to say things and it resonated with people. The Coronavirus is forcing us to do things we already wanted to do - working less, buying less, using less (no-one knew how to jump off the band wagon and how to to make it happen). Society is now changing while we are inside - the planet is happier and we are happy to be stopped. At the same time we are scared about the future and need to plan how we will return. She argues that we now have the opportunity to go back differently - slower to be more precise and more beautiful and only produce essential items. This will give rise to new ideas of how to make and create. The key question seems to be: “how do we take this opportunity for a better world?”. She gives the example through fashion - high end before Covid-19 was fast, no time to create, just mass produce. Now we can start again, albeit with less, to create less but better - more creative, more considered, more value. The current situation is very painful, overwhelming but the hope is the victims are honoured by creating a better society. Li has put forward an open source Hope manifesto to grasp this moment and aims to create ambassadors to share in the future. She envisions that creative forces will come together to make new proposals that put people and planet first through a collective of happiness of making and creativing, by putting the soul back into design.
Beatie Wolfe (Musical Weirdo & Visionary)
In her Dezeen article ‘Music is core to our Humanity’ and subsequent interview at VDF Beatie Wolfe discusses tangible formats for music in a digital age and how it has the power to transform lives. Commenting on the lockdown she sees it “as a chance to celebrate the little things that are so often overlooked”
She discusses a research project about the power of music as medicine, a desire to create albums that have a basis in ‘worlds’, and the importance of storytelling and ceremony in music to prevent it just being perceived as a digital commodity. Her work centres around concerns that digital is replacing the physical and how to connect the two. “Art is core to our humanity: Because music IS core to our humanity. We are a musical species more than anything else and music imprints on the brain deeper than any other human experience”.
3 core ideas that will enable music to be imprinted: Tangibility (grounds us in present reality through a physical touchpoint); Storytelling (tell a story through their work to engage and transport us somewhere else); and Ceremony (space around and within the experience that allows us to go deep, to be fully immersed). “The digital era created access, it presented solutions but it also created an idea that we could fast track a lot of what defined us as humans to begin with and without the true cost or value reflected in the process” & “Music, and art, have become part of that constant background chatter and we have forgotten why they are so much more”. The potential is there to reconnect ourselves and it was explored in her recent exhibition at the V&A and through creations such as The Raw Space Beam. At the VDF her piece Orange Juice For the Ears that explores the relationship between music and the human mind was screened and proved be a powerful piece about the power of music to lift us out of potential depression.
Ron Arad (Visionary Architect & Product Designer)
Launched a face mask for the Smaile for the NHS campaign with the aim to add art to peoples faces in the light of gallery and museum closures. During his interview Ron discusses his latest and unfortunately cancelled exhibtion Don’t F**k with Mickey that is a series of works based on the big easy chair that he designed for Moroso that is often nicknamed the Mickey chair. The exhibition is curated from the production of a hand made Mickey chair created every friday and has been created to mark Mickey’s 90th birthday.
Image Credits: Dezeen, VDF, V&A , Beatie Wolfe, Ron Arad
