MARIJKE DE BIE / CICADA STUDIO

At MOTI’s symposium I DON’T KNOW WHERE I’M GOING BUT I WANT TO BE THERE we shot the first of what will be a long series of ‘MOTI talks’. We met up with fashion designer Bas Kosters, the MoMA’s senior curator of architecture and design Paola Antonelli and artists Dan Pekjovschi, Peter Kennard and Matthieu Laurette for an intimate heart to heart on the how and why of the image in contemporary culture. Or as MOTI’s director Mieke Gerritzen defines it: the age of visual obesity.

MOTI Talks: Bas Kosters is a Dutch fashion designer who’s colorful and slightly anarchistic approach to the so-called luxury field has had a fresh protest-ish feel to it, from day one. Surpassing the cut and dry submissive aesthetic approach that could so easily have been fashion’s crisis state of mind, Bas likes a bombastic struggle.

MOTI Talks: Paola Antonelli is senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Some of her projects for the MoMA include Safe: Design takes on Risk at MoMA, Mutant Materials in Contemporary Design and Thresholds: Contemporary Design from the Netherlands. She taught and lectured Design Theory at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design and University of California, Los Angeles and contributed to magazines such as Metropolis, the Harvard Design Review, I.D. magazine, Paper and Harper’s Bazaar. She’s also trying to get a Boeing 747 into the collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

MOTI Talks: Romanian artist, writer and cartoonist Dan Perjovschi works his commentary in response to current events in seemingly naive, impulsive drawings. He exhibited at the Museum of Modenr Art in New York, Institute for Contemporary Culture of ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) Toronto, the 9’th Istanbul Biennial, centre Georges Pompidou Paris and galerie Michel Rein, Paris. He published the artist books I draw – I happy, A book with an attitudes – Dan Perjovschi in Geneva, and I’m Not Exotic, I Am Exhausted.

MOTI Talks: Peter Kennard is a British artist that uses photomontage artwork, photography, installations, and exhibitions as a political weapon, hoping to instigate debate about art, politics and society. Because many of the left-wing organisations and publications he used to work with have disappeared, Kennard has turned to using exhibitions, books and the internet for his work. He is senior tutor in photography at the Royal College of Art and has works featured in many major collections, including Tate Britain and the Victoria & Albert in London. His works were featured in numerous publications including The Guardian, The Observer, Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The Independent and Time Magazine.

MOTI Talks: Matthieu Laurette is a media and conceptual contemporary artist who works in a variety of media, from TV and video to installation and public interventions. His works have been exhibited at the Guggenheim New York, the 49th Venice Biennale, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA New York and Centre Pompidou. Paris. In 1993, Laurette declared himself an artist in a French TV gameshow called Tournez manège (The Dating Game). When the presenter asked him who he was he replied: ‘A multimedia artist’. Laurette had sent out invitations to an art audience to view the show on TV from their homes. Since this first television appearance, Laurette has been developing an ongoing series of what he calls ‘Apparitions’ on TV and in the media. In a diverse series of actions and interventions, Laurette has since demonstrated his findings of the absurd bueaucratic orchestrations of contemporary western culture and it’s many comical flaws and contradictions.

The ‘talks’ are now in post production. Expect them featured here soon, and of course at the MOTI website.