06 May 2015

Open Set 2015 - Graphic Design Summer School Rotterdam

The Dutch Graphic Design Summer School Open Set is a two-week intensive series of workshops, lectures and studio visits emphasising on the interaction between noted Dutch and International graphic designers and artists. Our goal is to promote and enhance the social value of design by facilitating debates around the chosen theme from a rich diversity of perspectives, design trends and traditions, and cross-disciplinary cultural practices. The event aims to offer international participants a studio environment where they are inspired to step out of their comfort zone and question the conventional ways of working, experiment with different strategies, techniques, ideas and cross-sector collaborations in order to develop their own practices with confidence.

The Open Set 2015 edition under the theme 'Designing Experience: Moment, Stage, Memory' examines creative strategies of staging new experiences and their capability to provoke and influence the construction of individual and collective identities. The program identifies four inter-related angles of experimentation: Body, Environment, Interaction and Medium.

The focus of the Open Set 2015, is to look at the design discipline as an experiential one within the larger cultural context. During these two weeks, the international group of participants will reflect on the ethics and experiment with the strategies of how to stage new experiences (moments) and incorporate them in the gathered and shared experiences (memories) of the community.

This year we invite designers, artists and researchers to contribute to the event with simultaneous workshops, public interventions, film-screenings and lectures, representing various kinds of expertise as: graphic, interactive and critical design, curating, participatory design and art. Open Set 2015 tutors include: Max Bruinsma, Florian Cramer, Studio Dumbar Martijn Engelbregt, Prem Krishnamurthy (Project Projects, USA), Anab Jain (Superflux, UK), Annette Krauss, Els Kuijpers, Bruno Listopad, Jan van Toorn and more to be announced...

The deadline for applications is the 1st of June, 2015.
Application requirements: portfolio and CV
Send your application at: apply@openset.nl or opensetschool@gmail.com

Within one week after the application you will receive a confirmation email only if you are admitted. To be officially registered as a participant, you must pay the enrolment fee. A maximum of 25 participants for the full program will be accepted for this year's edition.

Open Set is hosted by Kunstblock Rotterdam , – a cooperation between different cultural institutions located on the Witte de Withstraat (Showroom MAMA, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, TENT, WORM, V2_Institute, CBK Rotterdam).

The independent summer school Open Set, has been initiated in 2012 by Vlad Butucariu and Irina Shapiro, both co-founders and designers at Studio Squash. Open Set has the legal form of Foundation, or Stichting in Dutch, with the following board members: Max Bruinsma (chairman), Joanna van der Zanden, and Vlad Butucariu.

Open Set 2015 is made possible with the generously support of Creative Industries Fund NL and Kunstblock Rotterdam.