24 Mar 2016

Call for Applications: Dutch Design Summer School Open Set

About Dutch Design Summer School:
Open Set is a two-week thematic program consisting of a series of intensive one or three day workshops, symposiums and film screenings, led by Dutch and international designers, artists and researchers. 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, 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.

Open Set is aimed at international designers practicing in the broad range of creative sectors, artists and researchers, and it is also open to non-designers who are interested in the research topic and can contribute from their professional perspective.

The Theme 2016 – Memories of the Future:
'Memories of the Future' explores how the notion and perception of memory can be used to stimulate alternative approaches towards the future. How are memory and the future connected? When we construct the future we are using the same process as when we reconstruct the past, because we can't imagine the future in a vacuum, separate from our own experience, and cultural and historical references. We re-contextualize our previous experience (as individuals and as collectives), give it new meaning based on the conditions of a present moment, and transform it into a future possibility.

We would argue, therefore, that memory should not be seen as an archive of references or stock of information, but rather as a verb, an action, a process, that helps us reach the future. But how do we activate memory? Is memory something set by our cultural frames of reference? Or are memory and heritage, as well as the future, concepts which can be brought to a public debate?

In this context, design and art can be seen as agents, while proposing visual narratives, experiences or group actions, through which the future and memory can be observed and discussed by large audiences.

Open Set invites Dutch and International artists, designers and researchers to contribute with simultaneous workshops and lectures: Jan van Toorn, Olia Lialina, Kyong Park, Joanna van der Zanden, Alice Twemlow, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, collective Åbäke, researcher Sebastian Groes, design critic Max Bruinsma, Els Kuijpers and others.

Practical Information:
The deadline for early birds in on the 1st of May and for the full course applications is the 1st of June, 2016.
Application requirements: portfolio, CV and motivation letter.
Send your application or any further questions at: apply@openset.nl

Tuition Fee:
Full course fee – €800 early birds (before 1st of May); €900 (after 1st of May)
3 days workshop fee – €300 early birds; €350


About Open Set Foundation:
Open Set is a design and education platform located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, that operates internationally. It was initiated as an independent summer school in 2012.

Our organization applies design thinking to education, while facilitating collaborations, knowledge, exchange of experience and building new networks of young creatives.

Open Set's programs introduce participants to different schools of design as well as broader cultural fields: from graphic design to performance art, urbanism, media art, curation and also academic research on literature, cinema, media, sociology, ethics and history. Through this the programs aim to create bridges between the debates inherent in the subjects of its annual investigation.

We see design as one of the cultural agents which shape and structure the world we live in. Design (wether it deals in imageries or processes) does this by first of all influencing relationships — between individuals, groups, environments, institutions and systems.

Open Set offers a perfect opportunity for young talented people to work closely with international multidisciplinary groups and challenge their definitions of contemporary design practice and their visions for its future.