N WIND |15 by N WIND

2019 June-August | Free magazine

DESIGNING CHANGE

WE DON’T OWN CHANGE. IN FACT, WE DON’T OWN N WIND.

Twenty-three years have passed since the publication of the novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, and we kept on ‘buying things we didn’t need with the money we didn’t have to impress the people we didn’t like’.* Actually, nearly a hundred years have passed since 1928 when Robert Quillen describes hardship as ‘a season during which it’s very difficult to buy things we don’t need’. We know this is true, yet somehow we keep doing the same things, as if trapped, despite the vivid, urgent rhetoric surrounding us: ‘I want you to panic. […] I want you to act as if the house is on fire, because it is,’ said 16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting earlier this year. So, what is change? And when do we know that real change is happening, not simply the same old thing in a new mask? How do we create change? We took a long pause to think about this and come back this year to bring the changemakers forward. Let’s ask questions and figure it out together. Change does not happen without exchange. Hence, we can never own change, only our actions and our willingness to exchange. We don’t own N WIND. The creative energy of the North is not to be owned, but to be recognized and shared. In this issue we ask: ‘What is designing change?’ You give us your answers.

N WIND is a platform for exchanges of creative Northern energy, created by all of us.

How do we recognize real change? When we feel it—the wind of change. When we feel that ‘us’ is growing stronger than ‘I’. Are you a change maker? Do you know one? Let us know.

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Yours, N WIND

Curated by: Giedrė Stabingytė Greta Milevičiūtė Founders: Giedrė Stabingytė Andrius Skalandis Designing Change Portrait of Marcus Engman, previously Head of Design at IKEA, now holding various positions as Creative or Design Director. Photography by Simon Larsson The magazine is distributed in public places in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and online at issuu.com/n_wind

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

ISSN 2351-647X 2019, No. 15 Circulation: 7 000

Communication: Kotryna Čalova

This issue has been created in partnership with The Nordics, a branding project for Aaland, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden commissioned by The Ministers for Nordic cooperation.

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Text editing: Anna Reynolds

Address: Vilkpėdės 22, LT-03151, Vilnius

Authors: Valentinas Klimašauskas, Kipras Šumskas, Giedrė Stabingytė, Rie Nørregaard, Victoria Dias, Fionn Dobbin, Alberta Vengrytė, Greta Milevičiūtė, Krists Feldmanis Design: Tadas Svilainis Greta Janutytė

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Tadas Svilainis

A photographer based in Stockholm, Sweden. After many years assisting many of Sweden´s most renowned photographers and studying History of Photography at Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Simon is now focusing mainly on fashion and portrait photography, heavily inspired by classic techniques.

An audio/visual designer collaborated with N WIND to create visuals for issue 15. Tadas suggested that when change is designed, uncertainty unfolds— this became the visual concept for the issue. Tadas manually decoded data from the images to discover unintentional changes. Artwork by Tadas Svilainis

For me, Designing Change is all about sustainable thinking. I’m tired of mass consumption, lowquality products, and materials that have a negative impact on the environment. We have to change how we think about the products we consume, the value of labour, and the resources we use. Good design is something that should last. One of my favourite cameras was handbuilt in 1895 and works perfectly today. That is what I look for when I consume, items that are either wellcrafted or produced with easilyrecyclable materials that have a small impact on the environment.

On the one hand I see ‘designing change’ as another fancy name for a new business plan, on other I see it as the inevitable future, even a duty, for all of us. We are all users and consumers in one way or another. I think it’s very important for us to understand that and at least start designing patterns of behaviour for ourselves and hope this leads to positive ‘change’. It may sound cliché but if you don’t at least try yourself, someone will do it for you and the outcome may be very different from your expectations. ‘Designing change’ always contains two ways of doing things.

Greta Milevičiūtė

Kotryna Čalova

N WIND cofounder & curator

N WIND cofounder

N WIND curator

N WIND communication

Giedrė is also cofounder of Black Swan Brands, bringing strategic insight and vision to brands that reach out to people from the Mediterranean to the Japanese sea.

Also cofounder and ideologist at Black Swan Brands branding bureau. Andrius is interested in human behaviour in extreme situations, the longevity of ideas, (good) literature, and mountain-boarding.

A student of language—not in the sense of verb conjugations or comma rules, but rather language itself. She translates language into ideas, brands, prints, and costumes designed for the Lithuanian National Theater.

Brand Strategist at Black Swan Brands. Her main interests include psychology, advertising, and using public transport as a platform for sociological observations and experiments.

I believe that thoughts are things— more corporeal than we could even imagine. I’m immensely interested in this theory. All of our thoughts are profoundly reflected in the realities we experience, one way or another. Let's presume we all live in personal realities of our thoughts. When we think—or maybe a better way to describe the process is that we dream it—we already design change for the future; it’s inevitable.

I am naturally drawn to debates from which I collect a broad spectrum of opinions, to find and synthesize answers as my own. One of the statements I hear frequently is the misconception that the world is getting worse and everything in the past was better. I am sure you’ve heard this at least once or thought it yourself: ‘My generation was better—the current one is toxic’; ‘Back in the day the world was safer—the current times are dangerous’; and of course, beer used to be four times cheaper. I find this way of thinking does not give justice to our present and to our future. But this instinct is ageless. I imagine the Romans bickering about it as much as people living on Mars! This suggests that CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT.

It has always been easier for me to understand things by first understanding what they are not. Since both ‘design’ and ‘change’ describe processes, ‘designing change’ can’t be something finite. Instead, it’s a never-ending transformation made of finite, micro-metamorphoses. Thus, ‘designing change’ does not refer to the transformation of an object, a piece of software, or any other easily comprehensible product alone. Such changes must be followed by changes in behaviour or conditions designed to impact our species, or any other living species, on a (relatively) large scale—a much greater effect!

Change cannot happen without exchange. In Lithuanian language the word mainytis means both to exchange and to change. There’s truth in this. You are an ecosystem—there are 38,000,000,000 microorganisms (mostly bacteria) living in and on you. So, any tiny change in your body comes from a crowd. In the universe, we humans are just one ecosystem among many, with a single mission—to exchange.* Whenever one stops to exchange, stops the change. We never truly own change. Any authorship is just a state of mind. And though sometimes I like to create alone, I know now that nothing is ever truly mine. *And idea exchanged by Adrija Čepaitė.

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

Andrius Skalandis

Giedrė Stabingytė

N WIND x Team

Photography by Linas Masiokas

Photography by Adriana Lucia Siljendal

Simon Larsson

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

N WIND x Kipras Šumskas x HumansApp

Gabija Grušaitė. Photography by Audrius Solominas. Transformed by Tadas Svilainis

Author Kipras Šumskas

AGAINST

Within the app, users can customise their profiles, and offer a few meeting options, for example, 'Let’s walk our dogs for 20 minutes', 'Why don’t we grab a beer at a pub of your choice for an hour?', or 'I can lead a brainstorming session at your work', etc. The Curious Human then pays the person he’s interested to meet via the app for the time spent together and knowledge shared, and the app automatically directs a percentage of those earnings to the charity, cause, or initiative of the Open Human’s choice. It’s all about bringing people together and giving back to society. We shared a cup of human fuel— coffee—with Gabija Grušaitė and Žygimantas Kudirka. Gabija has written two recognised books, the

second of which was translated to English under the title Cold East. Working with Gabija, who’s the bright Co-Founder of HumansApp, Žygimantas is the Head of Creative there, as well as a known artist, an award-winning senior advertising creative, and an overall impressive imaginator.

HumansApp will work like art, a technological innovation, and a human experiment. – Gabija Grušaitė

Žygimantas Kudirka (ŽK): As a copywriter, I’ll put it short. HumansApp will make humans curious about humans again. KŠ: Gabi, you’ve written a book about the life of your character Stasys. If he was on HumansApp, what headline would he choose for himself? What would he talk to people about? What advice could he share? GG: Well, he’s a media influencer and a total dick. He’d call himself an intellectual at first, but I believe he’d see himself differently later. In a meeting, he would offer advice about the ways to quit your job. KŠ: Žygis, you've also published a book, and the most recurring character there is yourself, Žygimantas Kudirka. What would you like to get out of this app as its user? ŽK: Well, it would be totally reasonable for me to have a few separate accounts, because I have quite different personalities. Perhaps in some time we will

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

Social networking apps that initially had to connect us have instead distanced us. Now it’s time to introduce a way to make people communicate more—it’s as real as it gets, and it’s not happening in the digital realm.

Gabija Grušaitė (GG): HumansApp is more of a community, but it’s also an opportunity. What I mean is, when you open this app you can see what people are doing most of the time, even if you look for your friends whom you know very intimately, still you can be like 'oh, wow, he has a hobby I had no idea about, how crazy is that!' The opportunity is that you can actually meet people you’ve never met before and talk about the things you’re truly passionate about.

HumansApp serves as an icebreaker— it makes people from different backgrounds meet in real life. You can purchase a priceless conversation with someone, or meet others yourself and get rewarded for that.

Kipras Šumskas (KŠ): Gabi, you're a writer, and Žygis, you're a copywriter. Can you describe HumansApp to me as a writer, and as a copywriter?

It’s easier to bump into a super interesting person on this app rather than search for him at the bar, where you end up talking with the drunk tourists. – Žygimantas Kudirka

of knowledge surprisingly quickly, knowledge you can never google, because it’s another individual’s experience and persona. I believe that HumansApp will help people to compete against machines. ŽK: But it could also become a main job for a person in the present day too—not for all humans on earth though. Just look at Uber drivers or Airbnb landlords: if they put themselves into it, they can actually use these systems as their main source of income. So if you carry enough valuable knowledge or if you’re so irresistibly charming that humans fight over you, then HumansApp could easily become your main job.

Open Humans on HumansApp

KŠ: It really seems like something that robots could never do. It’s actually a very human app. GG: It’s human knowledge and human experience. KŠ: Talking of robots, what unpleasant tasks would you already delegate to them now? ŽK: Washing dishes, even buying a dishwasher, cleaning the home... Although we have robot vacuum cleaners to do that, they’re not advanced enough, and I’m not comfortable with a maid at all. But I’d like to see better gadgets for doing housework. GG: I’ve recently heard that SpaceX is thinking of doing commercial long-haul flights with their spaceships. It means that the flight from London to Sydney would take us just 40 minutes. I’d like traveling technology to get better. ŽK: Also, a queue-waiting robot! We could put him in the queue instead of us.

N WIND x Kipras Šumskas x HumansApp

K.Š.: Could the essence of this app be referred to as 'intellectual prostitution'?

introduce new features for split personalities, for humans who are living multiple lives at the same time. I believe even my profile pictures would be totally different if I made a picture as a copywriter, or if I did it while in artist mode. KŠ: What about Vincas Kudirka—one of Lithuania's most prominent poets, national hero, physician, and author of the national anthem? How would he use the app? ŽK: I think his account would be almost identical to mine—he was a musician, poet, and journalist. Therefore, his account would look almost the same, but he wouldn’t use his profile as often as me, because most likely he wouldn’t be into smartphones that much.

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

KŠ: Gabi, what person (dead or alive) would you like to meet through your app? GG: Marcel Proust, definitely. My dream dinner would be going to The Ritz in Paris with Marcel Proust. In his book 'In Search for Lost Time' there are actually four or five scenes where he goes to The Ritz for dinner with different characters—quite strange conversations happen during those dinners, so that’s basically my fantasy.

KŠ: And Žygis? ŽK: Of course, there are plenty of humans. But to make things more interesting, I hope that later, when technology advances, we’ll introduce the possibility to meet those who are already deceased, in order to imagine what kind of dinners could we have with historical personalities using augmented reality. KŠ: There have been many talks about robots doing an increasing number of tasks that humans have now. In the future, when automation completely takes over, do you think that something like HumansApp could become the main job of people, since the most important thing would be sharing human knowledge among us? GG: Actually, that is one of the most fundamental beliefs that brought the idea of HumansApp. Artificial intelligence will take over a lot of the tasks that people are currently doing, except one—creativity. So basically, in order for humans to be competitive in a future market, they have to be creative, and in order to be creative, they have to access knowledge, which is very specifically human. I feel that HumansApp is a platform to exchange this sort

ŽK: If we’re talking about the question whether it is legit to sell your experience, let’s take teachers as an example then—should we call them that too? Will they work for free? Being a teacher is a prestigious occupation, but only a few countries acknowledge that and give them the respect they deserve. It’s one of the most important professions, because it builds a profile of the coming generations. Therefore, knowledge is the best possible commodity you can acquire, and it should be evaluated accordingly, so that its worth is properly reflected. My advice for the teachers of our region is to get HumansApp and spread the knowledge they have. KŠ: Has anything similar been done before, and if so, how is HumansApp different? GG: Well, there are many 'b2b' services. That means different consultants are consulting different businesses about best industry practices. But there has never been an open platform for common people to access that knowledge, or to be able to share that kind of knowledge for that matter. We’re different because we provide that possibility, and while we’re open and constantly sharing everything, we’re also a consumer app. ŽK: There are several precursors, but they were basically elite-orientated systems, and it was difficult to delve into any insider

KŠ: But if a user of HumansApp still wants a business type chat, he can still find it? GG: Sure. Another thing that makes us exceptional is that we’re the first internet company that allows our humans to give back to the community. The reason I know that is because our people had to design a new tool to make people able to decide what percentage of their earnings they want to give back to society, and there was no tool for doing that on the market. We’re the first ones to make it possible to decide how much do you want to give—from 5% to 100%.

Žygimantas Kudirka. Photography by Audrius Solominas. Transformed by Tadas Svilainis

circles. Now, all the elite humans are on board and attainable for everyone. This kind of exchange can actually be experienced by anyone. And the demand is out there, because sometimes you get an Uber driver with a luxury car and you see that he doesn’t need extra income for his well-being—he just wants to meet other humans who are out of his social circle.

ŽK: Also, if the person decides to give away all of his earnings, we’ll channel the money to a particular good cause, and this way HumansApp becomes a new age tool to support non-profit organisations without spending your own money. KŠ: Since both of you are artists, how would you describe the role of art in the world of apps? Is art adapting well? HumansApp seems to certainly have a touch of it.

KŠ: What could be the next step for HumansApp? A big new feature, development, function, perhaps a new form of use?

there. With HumansApp, you don’t have to sleep in a sleeping bag and wait for ages, you can reach many interesting humans from your field and out of it.

ŽK: Moving to new markets could also be good, because Lithuania is still a country of cousins, and it’s much easier to get in contact with a person here. More humans using the app would mean it’s far more useful. It would create a wide range of individuals that you don’t know at all, because it’s hard to meet the person who’s out of your circle. I know stories about humans who were sleeping near the doors of prestige advertising agencies just to get in contact with any managers working

ŽK: Global domination! But really, I would like HumansApp to become a normal, regular way to spend your free time. Meeting other humans outside your close circles is truly fascinating, and when you have a free evening with no arrangements or plans, you can just choose an interesting person to meet instead of going to the movies. It’s easier to bump into a super interesting person on this app rather than search for him at the bar, where you end up talking with the drunk tourists.

KŠ: What is your dream scenario for this app? What's the best imaginable end result? GG: Well, to become a global company that’s bigger than Facebook, but still an app that would be able to keep our initial morals, and not to be part of any horrible scandals like selling anyone’s data. Basically, I would love to be able to grow and scale without losing our vision.

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

ŽK: Artists were always at the forefront in a way. They were excited about technology in the early 1970s or 1980s, and boasting about concepts similar to apps that weren’t even created yet. Now, artists are talking about the Armageddon due to this kind of technology. But in our case, our app is translucent—tit just connects humans. For instance, instead of connecting us, Facebook distanced us from one another, so we’re reacting to it by adding a touch of humanity to it all. HumansApp will work like art, a technological innovation, and a human experiment.

GG: The next step is to grow geographically. We’re aiming to hit another five cities next year. Also, we need to make it possible for people to compose interesting stories about themselves, to create their own content inside HumansApp. This allows us to be transparent about who those people are and why would others like to meet them. For example, I’m a writer, but the person who wants to meet me has never read my book, so I could post articles about myself, or share an audiobook. That would allow people to know each other personally and professionally before they meet.

GG: I think that most technology companies, especially big unicorns, were designed mostly by business people and engineers, and there are few non-tech founders. But when you compare two similar apps like Airbnb and booking.com, you see the difference in design. Airbnb is very human and focuses on experience, because it’s not only about business but also about how people feel while using it. The fact that we have myself, Žygis, and other people from very different backgrounds working on that, makes us different as well.

A FIERCE DROP On the Edge. Photography by Art Vilnius

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

N WIND x Giedrė Stabingytė x Aurélie Faure

Author Giedrė Stabingytė, Aurélie Faure

Aurélie Faure. Photography by Louis–Cyprien Rials

How, and how often, do you think about your own potential? How do the thoughts play out in your mind? As a logical formula that you work out making use of the precious and few variables at hand, or as a source of power beyond yourself, destined for you and only you, yet somehow beyond reach for the moment?

1 ‘A friend reminded me of a tale about a forest caught in wildfire and a courageous hummingbird who would bring drops of water in his beak to quench the devastating flames. The other animals discouraged him. They asked what he thought he was doing. The hummingbird replied: I am doing what I can.’ 2 Simulacra and simulation is also the title of a philosophical treatise by Jean Baudrillard, published in 1981, in which the author seeks to examine the relationships between reality, symbols, and society.

For the first time in N WIND, Aurélie Faure is publishing a statement—a personal pledge to consciousness, a call to action from the hummingbird who cannot hang back and watch the fire burning down our mutual home, destroying our togetherness, but keeps bringing drops of water in her tiny beak to quench the wildfire:1 ‘The most important thing is who you are and what you do, not your appearance.’ Are we doing all we can? Dear reader, your beak is not too tiny! We all are the responsible, creative curators of what we accept into our lives and hang up on our walls. As Aurélie says: ‘To curate is not a job, it’s a way of life.’ So, read on. Aurélie’s statement, On the Edge, comes from a project of the same name born after ‘ten years of acting as expected’, after nearly burning out from working on ten exhibitions in a single year, a trip to visit a dear friend in the Balkans, a crisis, a Nuit Blanche, a reemergence.

3 Alain, given name Émile-Auguste Chartier (1868–1951), was a French philosopher, journalist, essayist, and professor. The quote comes from Alain’s Propos sur les pouvoirs, ‘L’homme devant l’apparence’, 19 January 1924, n° 139. 4 Quote from an interview with Aurélie in Abstract Stylist.

I first met Aurélie Faure, or Katarina Stella—her alter-ego and a name by which many know her, a few years ago in Belgrade and later again in Paris. She was in the company of her chosen family—artists and curators who were both her friends and collaborators. Kind, honest, fierce, gorgeous. In one gathering, at dawn, she ardently quoted French philosopher Alain:3 ‘To think is to say no.’ (Penser, c’est dire non.) This quotation has stayed with Aurélie since she was sixteen. This is not only a decisive stroke in her character (‘I could debate all night,’ she says), but also a universal truth: all change begins with resistance to what is immediate, obvious. Backed by the study of law and politics (‘There is something about Justice. Law is supposed to protect and defend people. But this depends on how it’s used and by whom. […] And everything is politics.’4), and by ten years of working in prominent galleries (Emmanuel Perrotin, Suzanne Tarasiève, Eva Hobert) and with art projects (Bourse Révélations Emerige, Nuit Blanche 2018), Aurélie’s resistance is equipped with experience. It is not ambiguous, but neither is it a strategically thought-out scheme—it’s an honest and loving act, a small drop of life-giving water carried by a fierce hummingbird. My conversation with Aurélie flowed back and forth, in e-mails and short chats, during the very busy Art Vilnius fair. I collected those thoughts that resonate with me most strongly—the fierce drops.

To Aurélie Faure, the French art curator who brought art works from multiple French galleries and the engaging On the Edge exhibition to the Art Vilnius jubilee fair earlier this summer, our greatest potential as humans lies behind our personal paradoxes—but only if is not a nonsense. One needs radical honesty to perceive the difference. Or people like Aurélie who at best show us how to disengage from the current narratives that are leading us to a cozy oblivion and for sure are unnerving.

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

On the Edge is a call to Resistance. The exhibition and program of performances had its debut at Art Vilnius this spring. It links paintings and videos from emerging French artists to the challenges we are now facing globally in the economy, the environment, emerging technologies, and migration. The selection of artworks—observant and refreshingly not selfobservant—was displayed on rude plywood walls in a dark environment ‘to explore how exhibitions could leave less waste’. This created an intense space, lacking comfort and leading the viewer beyond simulacra and simulation2 to address what the f*** we’ve really created in this world. Like ‘sitting on the fence’, you must choose—retreat or jump forward courageously. Not to balance with a glass of champagne in one hand. It was not nice. ‘For Art Vilnius, I wanted On the Edge to be between politics and art, exhibition and statement, economy and ecology, madness and engagement. I wanted On the Edge to be about The End! About us living on the edge, together or not at all.’ If anything, niceties are obsolete for Aurélie. She asks for reality, for honesty, for going all in—day or night, at work or partying. The artists and their audience could have been pushed even further, so On the Edge is to be continued.

‘I see art as a medium that could help us live together.’ – Aurélie Faure

Disappearance, Reappearance ‘The year before Art Vilnius was intense: after working on ten exhibitions as assistant curator I needed a break. So, in January 2018, I travelled to Belgrade to join my dear friend and artist Louis-Cyprien Rials, who was then residing at Hestia art residency. We crossed to Kosovo and back on a motorbike, taking dangerous mountainous roads in winter (!) for one of his movies. And I travelled to Sarajevo by myself. For me travel is a necessity, especially travelling alone; it helps me remember my priorities. When I returned, everything I had done before seemed excessive and meaningless. I began living in a tiny studio. I got rid of almost all of my stuff, keeping the bare minimum (mostly books!). I stopped dressing nicely, wearing make-up. At first it felt like a teen crisis but then I became an adult. Why should we dress nicely when we know the fashion industry is the second largest pollutant? The most important thing is who you are, what you do, not your appearance or what your taste is. Congruence and integrity are notions dear to my heart. Maybe that’s where Resistance begins. Especially when dealing with Mairie de Paris functionaries when organizing Nuit Blanche!’

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

N WIND x Giedrė Stabingytė x Aurélie Faure

Why I do what I do ‘Oddly, as other artists, I need it. I need to help, to protect, to reveal, to build. For a gifted child, living up to our potential sounds like magic. But it’s our duty to gift our potential to something useful in this world. And I see art as a medium that could help us live together.’ Together for Real ‘We are living at a time when all kinds of collaboration are needed to create solutions for our future. If you compartmentalize disciplines, it doesn’t work. When we connect disciplines that question the same concepts from different points of view, our experience grows richer and our knowledge more profound. This enables us to continue our work in directions appropriate for the future. It also leads to more realistic thinking. We need to reflect honestly on the meaning of what we do, why we do it, how we do it, for whom and with whom. It is easy to feel that artists don’t make any difference in the world as it is today. It’s necessary to decompartmentalize certain disciplines and make connections in others; movements in history were being made by all kind of thinkers. What we do as artists

On the Edge. Photography by Art Vilnius

and curators must be relevant to reach people, especially those who think art is for intellectuals or the middle class. We need to break all barriers and become one. We are in the same boat; we need to be a team. Keeping this in mind, I have been doing a radio show for more than a year where I talk to all sorts of people, using language, music, and humor to connect our ‘different worlds’, simply to play and ask questions. I don’t have solutions, I have questions.’

crisis to name a few. Or Michel Pinçon and Monique Pinçon Charlot, a pair of sociologists who have written a book on the violence of the rich (La Violence des Riches). Also, the French associations fighting for the rights of artists and workers in contemporary art, especially their rights to be paid; being asked to participate in projects “for visibility or opportunity” is a perversion of being passionate about your job.’

Looking for Hummingbirds

‘Together with Romain Poirier, I own the mobile radiophonic (pirate radio) project S.C.A.L.A.R.S.T.A.T.I.O.N. We have been invited to broadcast from an abandoned bunker in Marseille during Art-O-Rama in September, and from a Paris rooftop during JERK OFF—a queer festival. We will continue our collaboration on air, and I will work on research and residency projects for On the Edge, exploring more ecological ways to create and curate more radical exhibitions of video and paintings.’

‘Designing Change means being curious, asking questions and letting ourselves be surprised. To learn every day, to try, and to share. Discoveries often come from what is not obvious and from our mistakes. The path to it is experiment. To get it wrong is not failure, it’s experience. Let’s fight our fears. Let’s not allow Security and Comfort to lull us asleep, and make us into blind, passive cowards. I am doing what I can, like the hummingbird from the tale. And I see other hummingbirds, for example Julien Crépieux, an artist who has made the decision to stop his artistic activity due to the urgency of a certain situation—artists, curators, and gallerists disengaging from the pivotal issues facing our world, the French yellow vests (gilets jaunes) movement and the climate

What’s Next

katarinastella.tumblr.com @katarinastella Read more about Aurélie Faure in a conversation with our friends at Abstract Stylist. abstractstylist.com

Here and now.

Author Aurélie Faure

To curate is not a job — it’s a way of Life. Now, I am ready. I can’t stand the Nonsense anymore. Nonsense is not Paradox. Paradox is challenging, stimulating. Nonsense is ugly, revolting. It’s time to Resist. Time to think about what’s happening in this world. Time to say «Stop». Time to say «No». Time to make changes. There is no other choice to survive.

We trade Power and Money every day, caring nothing for the impact. — the Dictate of Immediacy. « I couldn’t resist ». « I couldn’t say no ». « I had no choice ». « How could I »? « I know, but… ». Everyone knows these « Gimmicks ». One day, we stop. Fight our fears. Reach the light. Rediscover hope. — I hope. Let’s be brave enough to Fail. Present is Future. Both are about US. We are not Animal. We are not Vegetal. We are not Robots. We are on the Edge. We have Conscience. We need Oxygen. We need Water. We need Light. We need Love. WHY is this not obvious?

to love. to give. to share. to protect. to understand. to learn. to experiment. to connect. to build. Dealing with myself. All the Time. On the Edge between Wildness and Wisdom. On the Edge between Madness and Serenity. On the Edge between Anger and Forgiveness. On the Edge between Instinct and Knowledge. I face the world — On the Edge between Death and Life. How can I survive? By being useful, helpful. Listening, Observing. For ten years, I acted as expected. To succeed. To protect myself. To prove my worth. To gain trust. Now I am bored. To sit on the fence. On the Edge between Loyalty and Rebellion. To bite the bullet. To deal with Ethics and obligations-expectations.

Resistance is Change. Resistance is Ethics. As a Human, first. — Philanthrôpia. Then, as a Curator. On the Edge between Reality and Ideals, On the Edge between Strategy and Sincerity, On the Edge between Logic and Philosophy. On the Edge between Work and Life, On the Edge between Lawyer and Manager, On the Edge between Coach and Friend. On the Edge between Useless and Useful, On the Edge between Material and Intangible, On the Edge between Meaningless and Powerful. On the Edge is everywhere, On the Edge is Temerity, On the Edge is NOW or never. On the Edge is about the End. On the Edge is about Us. We all are living on Earth. We all are living On the Edge. Together or Nothing,

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Paradox is Human. Nature is Logical. Are we the Virus in the system or the Solution? Both? Are we the Vaccine? The one that provokes Mutation(s)? What is the purpose of life? Why are we here?

I am in love. I am angry. I am in love. I am curious. I can’t let it go. I have no choice. I have to try. My Heart, my Blood, my Brain, my Hands—all need to act.

Nature is Mathematics. Humans are Paradoxical. Should we explore our paradoxes? Or eradicate them to be congruentvirtuous? Or accept/work with them. Live with them.

Author Valentinas Klimašauskas

VENICE 019:THE BALTIC At the 58th Venice biennale, popularly considered the Art Olympics, all three Baltic countries are represented by emerging female artists for the first time in history. This was one of the reasons to meet and start this conversation.

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N WIND x Valentinas Klimašauskas x Venice Biennial 2019

Lina Lapelytė, Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, Vaiva Grinytė. Photography by Andrej Vasilenko

Daiga Grantina. Photography by Toan Vu-Huu.

Meet the Lithuanian artists: filmmaker and director Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė, writer Vaiva Grainytė, and artist/composer Lina Lapelytė. These are the artists from the Lithuanian pavilion and opera ‘Sun and Sea. Marina’, who previously toured the world with their opera ‘Have a Good Day’. Their new work is about climate change, continuing the conversation in a subtle and surprising way. The Latvian curator, Inga Lace, who also curates for the Latvian Centre for Contemporary Arts in Riga, will talk on behalf of the Latvian pavilion (artist: Daiga Grantiņa). It is titled ‘Saules Suns’ [Sun Dog] and is a sculptural installation that is very much about the decentralised landscape that acts as an accelerator for our imagination of the past, present, and multiple futures. And Maria Arusoo, commissioner of the Estonian Pavilion (artist: Kris Lemsalu) and director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Estonia, (CCA) will talk on behalf of the Estonian pavilion. The installation is titled ‘Birth V – Hi and Bye’ and is a ritual-based performative installation considering the themes of birth, death, and rebirth. Valentinas Klimašaukas (VK): Imagine you need to describe the pavilion in one sentence—what would that sentence be? Inga Lace: A multi-centred landscape unfolding around several suns, several sources of light, material and synthetic bodies alike, open.

Vaiva Grainytė: The topography of consumption and its pleasures, spying on boredom, noticing the micro-gestures of daily life, experiencing temporality in a tactile way— as if it were a gentle breeze. Rugilė Barzdžiukaitė: The super-sensitive skin of the Earth beneath the towels of the holidaymakers. Maria Arusoo: BIRTH.

Inga: For Latvia it’s a double change because the artist Daiga Grantiņa has been living abroad and is more present in the international art scene. She only recently had her first solo exhibition in Latvia, whereas usually the artists chosen for the Venice Biennale pavilions first have to be very active locally. Other than that, I think Latvian society is still rather toxically masculine and conservative. Of course, the artworld is a small, a more liberal bubble, but I think there is some positive change happening.

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VK: We have all heard this question before, but maybe it’s worth addressing it here: does the fact that, for the first time in history, young emerging female artists were chosen to represent all three countries, reveal some tectonic shift in how our societies and our art scenes are functioning? Do you, as artists or as citizens, feel the winds of change?

Kris Lemsalu. Photography by Edith Karlson.

Lina Lapelytė: Ours is a dense, physical performance of 30 bodies and voices in the rhythm of sea waves, a broken bossa nova, or your favourite pop song—an ending that might be a happy beginning.

‘Sun and sea’, Lithuanian pavilion. Photography by Andrej Vasilenko Transformed by Tadas Svilainis

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N WIND x Valentinas Klimašauskas x Venice Biennial 2019

Vaiva: Yes, it feels as though the patriarchal monopoly and the figure of the solo male artist as the one and only genius is undergoing a process of detoxification due to these winds of change. Nevertheless, stressing the discourse of predominantly female artists of Baltic countries somehow (paradoxically) bring us back to the patriarchal mindset. That is to say—why should we be defined or distinguished by our biological qualities? I just happened to be born in a female body. I believe and wish that these ‘winds of change’ can blow further, so whether an artist is female or male would not evoke any surprise.

I believe and wish that these ‘winds of change’ can blow further, so whether an artist is female or male would not evoke any surprise. – Vaiva Grainytė

Lina: I could not put it better than Vaiva did. However tectonic changes? I would say these are still cosmetic changes. Female, queer, or…? If we start thinking about equality it can go pretty wide—race equality, age equality, species equality. Who are the people in positions of power that allow these changes to happen? In the Lithuanian pavilion not only do we have female artists, we also have curator Lucia Petroiusti and commissioner Rasa Antanavičiūtė! It is a truly collaborative work among all of us, as well as the amazing Italian, Brazilian, English, Turkish, Lithuanian, Russian, and American performers. Rugilė: I hope the determining factor is the quality of a particular project, rather than the gender of the authors. Maria: I have to say that in the Estonian case, the selection process for Venice Biennale has always been really bold. Many emerging artists have gotten the possibility to exhibit their work in the Estonian Pavilion. The projects are selected by an international jury together with local experts and CCA Estonia, and, so far, all eleven pavilions the CCA has produced have been really outstanding projects with strong belief in and support for the artists! VK: There was some talk about organising a Baltic pavilion for all three nations together as the Nordic countries did. What are your opinions about this? Inga: I think it’s definitely good to collaborate in terms of pooling our creative and financial resources, as well as working together towards certain kind of visibility in the context of Venice,

Kris Lemsalu, Estonian pavilion. Photo by Edith Karlson.

where there are so many larger or smaller individual pavilions and collateral events all demanding attention. However, I also wonder about the best way to do it. I think the Baltic pavilion in the Architecture Biennale 2016 worked very well because it was a collaboration between peers who had already been sharing professionally before; there was nothing forced in that collaboration. That’s why I also think that it’s a good idea to organise a joint opening event for all three Baltic countries this year. There are clear similarities in our approaches, the team members know each other, and some have even collaborated before. The Nordic approach is for one country to act as the main organiser every two years, and to include at least one artist from each country. This is a more pragmatic approach that perhaps brings more resources. And healthy regionalism could be an interesting response to growing nationalism. Vaiva: Having one pavilion for the Baltic countries means it would function as a space representative of our common psyche, i.e. more as a general picture of the historical and geographical region. While having separate pavilions provides a more diverse picture of the art scene in each country, which, I would say, is more culturally enriching.

Rugilė: The national identity is still stronger than the Baltic identity—I guess this is the way our minds are programmed at school, by the media, etc. (I don’t hear the word Baltic as often as I hear the word Lithuania.) I guess if there was some specific idea behind it—it would be interesting to test and expand the limits of the national ego. That would actually be in parallel with our creative trio at the Lithuanian pavilion—we are three separate authors, each having her own autonomy, just as the different states would have, but when we see the point, we come together and create a work together.

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Lina: A Baltic pavilion would certainly shift the brain towards thinking about what the three countries share. Somehow, if the Venice biennale competition would be held among the three countries there would be more competition then a sense of sisterhood. It’s good when proposals like this come from below, when the drive comes from the artists.

N WIND x Valentinas Klimašauskas x Venice Biennial 2019 #DESIGNINGCHANGE 16

While the magazine was created the Lithuanian pavilion won the Golden Lion award for ‘experimental spirit and unexpected treatment of national representation’. Congratulations to the artists and the entire Lithuanian team!

VK: What is the greatest challenge in organising an exhibition such as a national

pavilion for the Venice Biennial? What have you learned from the experience as artists, curators? What can the rest of us learn from it? Inga: Venice is a picturesque city with its own logic of waterways and routes connecting the islands. However, if one considers the logistics of transporting huge amounts of carefully crafted contemporary art, each piece with different climate requirements, it does not seem like the easiest task. It’s a very physical problem. No new technologies or any sort of development can change the fact that the artists need to physically cross the water with their bodies and with their bodies of work. Also, it’s very interesting for me to see so many artists together it the same year who, in one way or another, can find similarities in their projects or approaches—even though everyone is coming from their own place, representing their own country, there seems to be a red thread pulling it all together.

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Maria: I think the Baltic pavilion in the Architecture Biennale 2016 worked really well as the idea came from the grassroots level, from architects and thinkers who had already collaborated, so they had strong and elaborate project in Venice. If it were a top down decision, I don’t think there would be much benefit. We have been discussing Baltic collaboration this year as I believe our projects resonate rather well. Maybe we will end up collaborating—celebrating our great artists and amazing projects, we’ll see. I would like to see us collaborate more in the future but also, as our art scenes are somewhat different and all three countries want visibility, maybe it makes sense to continue with the model we have now. Although, it would be great to share one palazzo so we could have three different projects in one location!

‘Sun and sea’, Lithuanian pavilion. Photography by Andrej Vasilenko Transformed by Tadas Svilainis

If I transport myself to 2020, I want to find myself to be a better human, a better friend, and a better collaborator. – Lina Lapelytė Vaiva: I think our project—a live operaperformance—is already a big challenge in terms of finance, logistics, and human resources, not to mention collaborative emotional wellbeing. We have learned a lot by building a worldwide network among various experts from beyond the art scene. We have also improved our patience skills and mastered our wishful thinking.

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N WIND x Valentinas Klimašauskas x Venice Biennial 2019

Lina: This question is difficult to answer as we have less than a month until the biennale opens. If I transport myself to 2020, I want to find myself to have become a better human, a better friend, and a better collaborator. Maria: This is the 4th pavilion I have produced, and I have to say it is always an insanely intense process and almost with no repetitions. Venice is amazing but has a logic very different from any other place. It constantly throws up challenges, but still is so special! It is a long process: almost a year of preparations in Tallinn and internationally (as we often work with an international team), then weeks of intense work on the installation in Venice, a crazy opening period followed by seven months of exhibition, and then returning to Venice in quiet, foggy November to pack it up and send the artworks on to new destinations. Working so closely with artists over such a long period, you create a sort of family or community with the entire team. I love it! VK: Will you please share some keywords you think might be important for creating more positive scenarios in the future? Inga: Openness, more diverse spaces, more possibilities for taking different paths, mobility and movement, aesthetics and physicality embodied in art, as well as in our society, and in our future co-habitations. Lina: I think I have the only one—listening, in a very broad sense. Vaiva: Being in polylogue, which is about hearing, exchanging thoughts in a respectful way. What else?... The keywords of all keywords would be love, friendship, and hope… And sanity! Maria: Sustainability, critical awareness, collaboration, less competition and over-production, reducing the footprint, and being open to and inspired by the world. labiennale.org sunandsea.lt latvianpavilion2019.lv Valentinas Klimašauskas is a curator and writer. His novel Polygon was recently published by Six Chairs Books, Kaunas. He is co-curator of the Latvian national pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2019.

Daiga Grantiņa, detail of ‘Saules Suns’, Latvian pavilion. Photo by Toan Vu-Huu. Transformed by Tadas Svilainis

olegsnikitins.lv

Human beings tend to build heroes, individuals separated from the rest of the collective. Ironically, these individuals are the ones who maintain a better connection with the core of humanity. Designing change doesn’t mean deciding on the next step in the life of our civilisation. It only means making a proposal, one of thousands that are made every single day. It’s up to the human collective to choose to embrace it or not. The only merit of a successful change designer is to be able to read what the collective mind is asking for better than others. bechtlemilz.com clandestinosfilms.com tagvilnius.lt

bewithclothing.com

N WIND x Profiles

Creative director at Bechtle & Milzarajs and head teacher of creativity at The Atomic Garden Vilnius. Literature is and will always be his main passion. His interest in music, advertising, and filmmaking are just derivatives of that.

Some 4–5 years ago I experienced a crisis in my marriage and my professional life, which resulted in a divorce from my business partner but luckily not a divorce from my husband. After we (accidentally) managed to heal our relationship, I started reading about what makes a relationship last. I see that divorce rates are higher than 50% in the modern world and that the media show us role models who have disposable relationships, supporting the idea that whenever the old one is broken or not perfect, we should just get a new one. I decided to go against the flow and talk about the longevity of relationships and how to maintain closeness, trust, and bonds in the long run. As an entrepreneur, I have built a product around the need that was most unmet in my marriage—the need for everyday physical contact. And science supports this: touch releases the bonding hormone oxytocin. For me, social change is based on putting my personal experience together with research and science. But change needs more than that! It needs persistence, beauty in the execution of an idea, and appeal on a more general level. Few people in our society are really interested in what is underneath the surface. But they need love too!

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The diversity of things I’ve done in life couldn’t have been more beneficial to my current enterprise. Although my degree is from a business school, for a long time I worked in creative fields such as film production, clubs, and event management. After fifteen years of that I started applying my experience to corporate environments. Although the industries are different, human needs and emotions are quite similar. When I did events, I was always fascinated by how people’s behaviour would be influenced by the space they interacted with. You turn the music louder, they start to dance, you make an interior too much like a boudoir, they act chill and quiet. For me designing change is figuring out what kinds of behaviours will make people into better versions of themselves, and then giving them the surroundings that spark these behaviours.

ANTONIO BECHTLE Photography by Augustė Kauliutė

Workplace strategy consultant with a focus on design management for commercial interiors. Olegs helps businesses leverage workplace environments to increase collaboration and engagement within the organization. In 2017, working with RE developer Hanner, Olegs launched the award-winning coworking space Teikums in Riga.

I am an entrepreneur, mom, and wife, and I like to build social movements. I established a coworking space for designers and developers, and co-created several NGOs: Riga TechGirls, homoecos, and Libido of Life. Currently I am focusing on “be-with”— clothing for hugs that promotes physical contact in our everyday life.

Photography by Mareks Gaidamovičs

Photography by Kosh'UMM

OĻEGS ŅIKITINS

WHAT IS DESIGNING CHANGE?

ANNA ANDERSONE

#DESIGNINGCHANGE Author Fionn Dobbin Dâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Souza and Louise van Hauen, founders of Carcel. Photography by Petra Kleis.

CARCEL: DESIGN THAT BRINGS CHANGE

We continue our series of exchanges between creative professionals with a conversation between two social entrepreneurs, Veronica D’Souza, founder of Carcel, a sustainable fashion brand that employs women jailed for non-violent, poverty-related crimes, and Fionn Dobbin, founder of the transformation design agency Age5. We featured Carcel in the N WIND New Editors issue, so we’ll be looking at how their brand has developed in this conversation about the company, their production process, and social business.

‘It’s such a privilege that we have in our age, we can just go over the whole world, make friends and explore, it is possible to see the world as one,’ says Veronica. She always knew she wanted to participate in creating a better world but didn’t know how. She was very into music and played in her own rock band in Berlin back in the day but made a bold decision to go to business school because of her desire to change the world and solve issues for good, as she didn’t see the NGOs or multilateral organisations as sufficient in order to move the needle on global issues. She thought ‘If I could infiltrate capitalism and understand it, instead of just saying no to capitalism, I could make it work for good.’

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The idea was hatched by D’Souza when she was living in Nairobi working on her prior social business venture. D’Souza comes from a multi-cultural family with a humanistic background. When she was 15, she applied to United World Colleges, an international secondary school, to experience two years of high school with 250 young people from different countries living together at the school campus in

Italy. Befriending other young people from around the world was a groundbreaking experience for her and showed her how close and accessible the world is.

To catch you up, Carcel is a Danish fashion brand founded by Veronica D’Souza and Louise van Hauen in 2016 to empower female prisoners first in Peru and later in Thailand, effectively transforming the production system of clothes manufacturing. This new social business combines the Danish design elements of simplicity, functionality, and elegance with providing women in prisons the opportunity to earn a fair wage and learn new skills.

N WIND introduces Exchanges—a series of conversations between bright minds.

Photography by Carcel.

If I could infiltrate capitalism and understand it, instead of just saying no to capitalism, I could make it work for good.

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N WIND x Fionn Dobbin x Carcel

Photography by Carcel.

– Veronica D'Souza

Fionn Dobbin (FD): I’d like to start out with some general insight into your entrepreneurial ventures. Have you always had an interest in sustainable business? Veronica D'Souza (VD): Indeed. I believe my impetus stems from my background. I come from a family that strongly believed in humanistic values. I spent my last two years of high school in UWC (United World Colleges), an educational movement with a multinational and diverse base of students with a mission to encourage students to lead the path to a sustainable future. This experience gave me the inspiration and belief that I want to be a part of a movement that creates a better world. I decided to enroll in business school to better understand how we can use capitalism for good. Luckily, this was around the time that corporate social responsibility was merging into social businesses and they started to blossom, which aligned with my own personal values and led me to foster my own ideas and products. FD: Interesting. It’s worth noting that Carcel was not your first adventure in the world of social business, rather, it started out with a product called the Ruby Cup. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? VD: The idea really started with a small group of friends during my university studies. We were obsessed with the idea of socially valuable products. One of my classmates was using a menstrual cup and wondered why menstruation was such a problematic issue in the developing world? This train of thought led to the creation of a low-cost, environmentally sustainable cup that empowered women and could be used for up to 10 years. Menstruation was creating absenteeism from school and work and the cup was an easy solution. It was a very simple idea, but it was effective and gave me the

VD: Ruby Cup is a now a sustainable business having a positive impact on the lives of schoolgirls in many different countries that has shown that a menstrual cup is a sustainable and desirable solution for young girls. I consider it a success. FD: Let’s return to Carcel. How did that journey start? VD: While I was living in Nairobi and working with women and girls from lower income communities, I had a thought: how do women from these socioeconomic classes end up in prison? What happens to them during their imprisonment and afterwards? I became very curious but could not find any information. I made a phone call to a prison to ask them if I could come and investigate and, surprisingly, the answer was OK! The prison experience was enlightening. For instance, the women that I met there were just like any other women I might meet in Kenya. Their circumstances led them to commit nonviolent crimes to provide for their families. Their imprisonment created a negative chain reaction—they would become estranged from their families, they were ashamed to talk to their children, the men would disappear, and the children were left in a spiral of poverty. Even after release from prison, it was difficult to find employment and societal stigma they carried prevented social rehabilitation. FD: It certainly sounds like a terrible ordeal, but how was the idea of a fashion brand born from the experience of prison life?

FD: As a designer, I’m especially interested in sourcing materials. I imagine it’s hard to market a product, even if it has a good social cause behind it, if it is made of materials that are not comfortable or suitable for clothing. Where and how did you find the resources? VD: This is exactly what I was thinking about when launching the brand. As soon as I returned from Nairobi to my family in Copenhagen, I started mapping the world and looking for correlations. Where do you find the best quality materials for couture and which areas of the world have the highest levels of crime committed by women? This led me to Peru, a country with a long tradition of knitting and an abundance of Alpaca wool—a fantastic and durable material—but also a very bleak history as a crime-ridden country where more than 70% of imprisoned women are convicted of drug-trafficking-related crimes. The women enter into this dangerous underground world because they are not able to satisfy the basic need to feed and care for their families and have no other means of employment available. Next, I turned to Thailand, which also had a long tradition of silk production and similar issues with crime.

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FD: What is the current status of the Ruby Cup? It’s an excellent idea. Did it take off?

VD: Again, this came through observation. The prison guards mentioned that one of the main issues surrounding the inmates was depression, and this depression often stemmed from inactivity. The prison set up workshops, the women received materials, they would knit or manufacture clothing and sell their products in the prison’s visitors’ shop. Unfortunately, the materials they used were of low quality and they didn’t exactly have access to a market. So, while the idea was good, it lacked sufficient ‘push’ to have a real impact. We thought we could transform these women into providers who were earning income for their families while imprisoned.

knowledge and experience about how to run a company and help it grow.

Photography by Carcel.

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N WIND x Fionn Dobbin x Carcel

FD: What, from your perspective, is the impact that you create? On the one hand, you are making use of time that would otherwise be lost while the women are in prison, but do you see transformational effects in other areas? This is interesting, as it is a problem many social businesses encounter—how to effect large-scale, lasting change. VD: Yes, I believe there is a strong economic impact. We pay the women the same wages that they would receive for being a seamstress or tailor in the outside world beyond the prison gates. Education in prisons is not new but setting up production facilities that are educational and pay fair salaries is new. Of course, this lets the women send money home to their families and helps them save money for themselves as well. However, I believe the largest impact is on the mindset and culture within the prison. Carcel gives the women a chance to learn a new craft, it also reinforces a positive mindset and creates community. Surprisingly, this has also led to excellent quality control. The women producing the garments care about their product and become very skilled in their craft. The care and passion they activate creates a safe space for these women, which also gives them the opportunity to excel. FD: How many women do you employ in Peru and Thailand? Are you planning to grow the workforce? VD: Our total current workforce is 25 women. We are planning to expand that number this year. It’s clear that the company is growing, and we will need more employees.

FD: Can you say that the Carcel business model is sustainable? Are there any numbers or achievements you could share with our readers? VD: We are in the midst of our second year and growing. We expect to reach the break-even point within the next two years. Our mission is not to grow rapidly, but to build a healthy, sustainable business that grows responsibly. FD: My wife and I take the same approach with our company MAMMU—a family business with a design focus, employing mothers. What is the design focus for Carcel? VD: Our aim is to unlock existing resources to create a better society. Real changes in the fashion industry have to come from the big players, so our role is to make a crazy testing ground—to throw ourselves out into these crazy waters, to go into the super-complex prison environments and establish an ethical production line. We are finding out if it is possible to create high-quality products that can compete and attract customers. If it is, we can be a part of the movement for social betterment and, hopefully, accelerate it—but the question is how fast? We are running out of time for the planet and need the big companies to get courageous, but they won’t do that unless there are more companies like us. So, my dream is to create something that can serve as an inspiration and can speed up the future of sustainable fashion. We want to share the knowledge to prove that it is possible to create businesses that are good for everyone. Simply put—we need to help each other.

FD: What a good point! As a social entrepreneur, what other untapped human resources are you looking at?

Carcel, I identify ways to grow and improve the product and brand. The company could grow faster, but then I would have to sacrifice my work/life balance. It’s interesting to see these contradictions, as it’s both important for me to empower women and to be the mother I want to be. It’s a conversation I’ve had a lot, but the main priority is to have a clear balance, to not overburden yourself and to know the limit of your ambitions.

VD: I am still too immersed in Carcel to come up with the next thing—but there are people all across the planet in need of jobs that give them dignity and financial/social inclusion. I would like to invite another company into the prison to see the status of what we do and the skill of the workforce.

FD: To cap things off, let’s talk about the future. What will be your focus over the next six months? Do you see any obstacles that must be overcome?

FD: Have you encountered any bad situations or negative effects from Carcel?

carcel.co @carcelclothing Fionn Dobin is wearing several hats as designer, social entrepreneur, educator and cofounder and creative director of Age5, a transformation design agency with offices in Riga and Berlin. age5.com

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VD: Definitely. I have two daughters. Having small kids while trying to grow a business is definitely a challenge. For me, it has been about finding the perfect balance. When I work on

VD: We are expanding our markets beyond Europe and growing our team in the prisons. We are also investigating how we can increase the positive impact of our company inside the prisons. Let’s not limit ourselves to just one project. I want to do as much as I can! That’s the spirit of Carcel.

FD: When you create social impact, do you also notice changes in yourself? This is something I feel when I do something good. It’s like an inner change of mentality.

Photography by Carcel.

Photography by Marcis Rukis

VD: There’s always a see-saw effect when you’re trying to create changes in a system. For instance, since there is no electronic communication in the prisons we work in, we have to fly to Peru or Thailand to communicate with the prisoners directly and hold workshops. We are looking for ways to offset the carbon emissions created when flying these long distances such as planting trees. At the same time, it’s impossible to stay confined within your apartment and be directly engaged in production. So, I believe that for now we must accept these negative environmental costs and at least try to offset them and doing good elsewhere.

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N WIND x Rie Nørregaard x Doberman

– Lisa Lindström Lisa Lindström. Photography by Simon Larrson

‘…the journey or the transformation starts from day one…’.

In coversation with Rie Nørregaard

DOBERMAN: FRONTIERS OF CHANGE

Our mission is to shed some light on their ambitious plans. We asked the inspiring Rie Nørdgaard, proponent of life-enhancing design, to facilitate the interview, squeezing a meeting into the full agendas of these three leaders on the frontier of design. Rie met with Lisa in New York city, while Marcus joined the call from Mexico. This hard-to-get interview turned out to be an exciting conversation about connectivity, transparency, and changing power relations with the people who are leading us into the future of design.

Rie Nørregaard (RN): I am honoured and happy to be here with both of you, Lisa Lindström and Markus Engman, at this time, because the Doberman agency is pretty well known in the international design community and recognized as highly innovative, topquality group of people from Stockholm in Sweden that have been doing fantastic work over a long period of time. Markus, you come from a large, well-known design and retail organization—namely IKEA. So much of what you created prior to joining forces with Lisa is stuff that we actually live with every day. How did you, as individuals and as organizations, decide to work together? What are you learning? What’s surprising? Lisa Lindström (LL): We started working together because of our values. We are connected to what we believe, and we share the ambition of wanting to make an impact. Markus’ extensive experience from working globally and designing for IKEA at a large scale and my experience from the Doberman agency gave us a place to start discussing how could we collaborate for greater impact, not in terms of co-workers, but in terms of influence.

LL: Coming back to your question about learning, I think one of the things I have learned from our recent collaborations is to be transparent about how I use design and how I can be part of the change we want to make. Broadcasting what we do in the design process is one of the things I’ve learnt from Markus—how impactful that can be. If you do that, the journey or transformation starts from day one, not only when you have something out there in the market. That inspires me. And it makes so much sense in a world where marketing doesn’t really work anymore. That is one of my key learnings. ME: That’s the way to be. If you really want to make change, you have to engage people. Then they end up being involved in part of that change. I think transparency is the only one way. Working with IKEA taught me that the design process goes hand-in-hand with the communication process, and that it has to be that way from the very beginning. You have to set the themes around which you communicate from the very beginning, so everyone can see the way they work from the other people’s perspective. LL: You challenged me around communication. We did not think of it as part of our skill set—it was like a separate capacity. But being transparent or value-driven or co-creative has always been part of our system and it was pretty easy to start sharing the process. Another important thing is to be super brave with your intentions in the beginning, to really go out there and have a point of view. When you broadcast the future you are aiming for, you instantly start transforming peoples’ view of where you are going and how you are going there. That is the notion we have been exploring together, and that has also been fascinating.

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Designers have now begun to incorporate historical design experience to advance their field. To discover where the field is heading, prominent designer Marcus Engman (IKEA’s former Head of Design) began collaborating with the Doberman design company and its distinguished leader and CEO Lisa Lindström. Doberman has a far-sighted strategy with the mission of transforming business and society by reinventing themselves and re-designing design!

Markus Engman (ME): I have been following Doberman from the beginning. I was working with another agency but was always impressed with the things they were doing. They achieved so much in value-driven design and, despite their great success, they remain independent, choosing not to sell out. That’s part of it. We met somewhere, started talking. At the time, I was working at IKEA. We had the same mission—to create designs that create change. That is what united us.

From the first tools in the hands of primates to communities, organizations, and cities improved by applying the logic of neural nets— each step of the way humanity has employed what we now think of as design. Design-thinking can be used as a platform for imagining new things and for setting our sights on new possibilities.

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N WIND x Rie Nørregaard x Doberman

'Many agencies declare the importance of prototyping, but not many trully prototype'— Lisa Lindström, at Doberman's prototyping room

ME: It is actually more efficient if you do it that way, because if you say you will do it, you have to do it. People work harder. RN: There is something about declaring an objective that makes you stick to it. How is that related to the culture that does not necessarily make big proclamations about themselves as designers? What does it mean to be essentially Swedish, or Scandinavian, when it comes to transparency? LL: Swedes are makers. We do things but are not so good at talking about them, or selling them, or showing them off. Six years ago, I opened an art studio in New York. New Yorkers were like: ‘Oh my god! What have you done that nobody knows about?’ I learned that if you want to become established there you have to be vocal, otherwise you are a nobody in the US. In New York you can’t survive just by delivering, you also need to make a lot of noise. For me it worked perfectly as I am naturally loud. At least my attitude was normal. For me as a person this collaboration has been a beautiful experience. I love being able to speak out, to be as bold as I am in my personal life. But for the designers in my organization, who are trained to deliver first and to never say something before delivering, it has been a journey. The only thing Markus and I can do is lead by example. So, if we go out there and dare to be bold and show others that this is OK, we are proving to be who we say we are. We deliver such great things that we can afford to be a little bit louder. I think it would be beautiful if Swedish companies could be a little bit louder in general. What do you think Markus? ME: I don’t know about that actually. I think what they are doing right now is fine. I agree that proposing an idea and standing by it is a good thing.

RN: You often collaborate internationally. You cross cultures and communications styles a lot. I would like to hear about that and about what you are learning together in this new environment that makes people want to come back? LL: I would like to add that Doberman is a typical Swedish organization, but at the same time I don’t think we are typical at all. When I was hiring an American managing director, we started to discuss how we run Doberman. He said: ‘Lisa, is this a Swedish way of running a company? Is this the Doberman way? Or is this Lisa’s way? You do everything the opposite of what I am used to.’ I think that the deeper and more important a decision is, the more co-operative we need to be. If there is a simple decision to be made, the manager can take care of it. But I still don’t know if it’s the Swedish way or the Doberman way. What I do know is that our non-hierarchical way of leading the company is very design-ish. It resonates with what we as designers can do, and that’s something other companies can benefit from. If you believe that design can create change, hiring a couple of Swedish managers can actually be a way to fast forward the impact of change and multiply the value of implementing transformative design in your organization. RN: There is a deep belief that nonhierarchy produces the best results when it comes to big and complicated matters. When there are clear choices or the decisions are pretty straight forward, they can be made by individuals. Does that spark something in you, Markus? ME: It has to be a holistic approach. Actually, there is nothing you can keep to yourself. You want as many people as possible to jump onto the journey, even get other

Everybody is talking about creativity and wants to be creative, but to actually be creative you have to be curious from the beginning.

Marcus Engman. Photography by Simon Larrson

– Markus Engman

LL: Yes. Everyone is talking about AI, machinery, automation, and digitalization. That’s when it’s even more important that the designer in the room really takes on the responsibility of being a non-linear person. There is great value in ensuring that we create multidisciplinary teams of people who come at a problem from different angles. Innovation will not come from thinking about all the data we can produce and how efficiently we can do it. Innovation comes from opposition, from weird and different places. It’s increasingly important that designers don’t just sit at the table, but also take on the responsibility of having that seat at the table. The creativity they bring can sometimes have more impact than the data. Even if being able to calculate everything is fascinating.

ME: Really good ideas come from nonobvious places. We talked about taking an idea-driven approach to digital design. That’s when it’s important to protect the art of the co-designing process that combines creativity with efficiency—that makes very different products. LL: I agree with you. Co-creation is one of the things I have been preaching. Maybe I am influenced by Markus, but I also like all these topics. On the other hand, it’s important not to fall in love with co-creation. Sometimes it is great, sometimes it’s not. As organisation leaders we need to be able to lead in different operating systems. We have a linear production operating system and then maybe we have this co-creative operating system. Sometimes we may need a primadona operating system. RN: That is an interesting way of looking at it—you don’t want too much cohesion because ultimately that won’t get you to produce something unexpected. ME: On the other hand, one topic people don’t talk very much about is creative leadership. How do you acquire creativity in this field? You can’t go to university for it. Usually it comes from experience, but the question remains—how do you go about dealing with friction? At the end of the day you want some good friction that creates energy. How do you manage that? RN: That’s an untapped area, but very interesting for design leaders. It seems to be a mystery in the business world. There is a quality of knowing that we have not codified. We aren’t really sure how to teach an organization, or even an individual, how to become a creative leader. What do you think needs to change so we can scale the impact?

LL: Another thing you can do sometimes is leave out some of the managers and go directly to the designers. You want your designers to be designers; you aren’t asking them to be someone else, like a business person. This is an important part of creative leadership. Now that we have more power, we shouldn’t get flattered by it and try to become business people. That’s not why we were asked to be in the room. That’s something I learned from you, Markus. You let the designers be designers and leave out some of the others to make sure that designers get the space they need, and that people listen to them. RN: I love that! And it does fly against our current idea of being in an organization. I suppose having confidence requires a high degree of trust in the organization so everyone can use it to their advantage. LL: And trust comes from openness. Trust comes from having a sense of what is okay to be transparent about. You can’t ask another person to trust you. That’s not a realistic request. What you can do is reveal a little bit of yourself, lower the barrier so the other person can see who you are. Then that person can give back with trust. That’s when vulnerability becomes a foundation for trust-making so we can dare to be ourselves. ME: But there is complexity to this question. How does it work in a big company like IKEA? Not everybody can understand or have the same approach. Showing your work and sharing your ideas from the beginning develops trust, and there is value in it. To be creative is actually understand the value in this and try to do this. LL: Yes. And this goes back to what we said at the beginning. If you start by being transparent and show things much earlier, you don’t have to sell as hard in the end. But how do we encourage our designers to put unpolished things out there. They are not used to being appreciated for the process. They’re used to being appreciated when everything is polished and done, presented beautifully, and ready to go to market. That’s the linear production way of doing things. How do we dare to use design to

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RN: Making data products is not something you can do by yourself. That requires a large team of highly specialised people with very different capacities, right off the bat. As we transition from a product-based culture to a data-driven, aware culture, we can know the inputs and our intentions, but we cannot know the exact outcomes, or what results the products and services will make. Design becomes very important, and it sounds like that is really the thing that you personally are very co-operative.

ME: One thing I know is that you have to work with empathy at the core. You have to be tactical, but also know who people are—what they have done before, how they are right now, and how you can lead them in this moment. But I am a bit old school and try to live by example. If you show that it is possible, it becomes possible for more and more people. So, I take big risks myself.

companies to start working on it. We want to address a big topic. If we want to create change in many areas, in the government for example, we want more companies to join us because the more of us there are the faster the big changes will come. Generosity plays an important part in trying to change things. The approach I used in my work at IKEA is based on curiosity. That means bringing non-obvious creativity to different areas. Mixing that approach with an invitation to be generous sparks interest in other areas, and that can make change come faster.

LL: I can’t foster a culture that allows friction if I don’t start by showing my vulnerability. Instead of conflict, I need to start by showing who I am and what scares me. The purest form is to create a safe zone where we dare to have frank conversations about what we really need to talk about and sometimes it isn’t comfortable. If you are seeking your identity as a leader, go into the room and reveal who you really are. For example, yesterday I had a session with a management team in New York and the topic was how to foster leadership for growth. We started by checking in and one of my colleagues said: ‘Lisa, there is sadness in your voice.’ And I said ‘Yes’. I shared why and that actually led to friction. You never learn this anywhere; this is against every system. Creative leadership used to be about showing the northern star or about creating big ideas. Now I start by showing my sadness. That is intriguing and we have to start with ourselves.

Creative leadership used to be about showing the northern star or creating big ideas, now I start by showing my sadness. – Lisa Lindström

provoke, to see if there is interest, if the product could encourage a behaviour change? How do we encourage our designers to broadcast that? If they believe that they’re in a culture where they are allowed to be imperfect, it works if you know someone is going to back you up. I had an interesting conversation about designing artefacts for culture, which is something that we never done before. The designer in the studio said: ‘I’m willing to try it just because I know you’re going to back me up.’ That is also creative leadership. If we really want to use design as a tool for innovation to solve some of the critical problems we are facing, we’re going to have to use design in untested practices. We need our fellow designers to be there, doing it for us, so we can’t ask them to know it all or to create most perfect thing.

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N WIND x Rie Nørregaard x Doberman

RN: What are some rituals from your culture that you can share, either from your past work at IKEA or things you’re doing together at Doberman? How can people find their own style of leadership and discover how to teach others along the way? ME: There are four tricks of the trade that I have learnt. First, the mission, which is not about technique. In fact, for every project in every company where I’ve worked, we had some sort of mission, a goal to be achieved. Secondly, the curiosity approach. Everybody is talking about creativity and wants to be creative, but to actually be creative you have to be curious from the beginning. How do you make organisations, customers, everybody curious? What are the tools you use and how you go about it for each and every project? Third, using language that is compelling for the whole organization, not just the designers. That was what I tried to do for the different societies of people in the company. For each and every product you have form, function, quality, sustainability, and low price. And you have the accessibility of the product. These qualities are not equally important for all people, but they are incorporated into all organisations such as IKEA, or anywhere you work. That means that it makes the sign important to everyone and everybody has their fair share of the creative process. I think the language of design in the company is super important. And, finally, transparency, where design and communication go together. RN: So many great topics here! But let’s end with the future. You both work in designing and executing but you’re also looking at entrepreneurship and funding design in different ways. Where does that take you? What are you excited about?

Lisa Lindström. Photography by Simon Larsson.

LL: I’d like to go back to when I was seven years old. I wanted to be the principal of a school I thought about changing the school. When I was fifteen, I wanted to be Secretary General of the UN because I really wanted to change the world. I kind of stumbled across design. I’ve always nurtured that little sevenyear-old’s wish to make an impact. I have been practicing for 20 years together with a collective of designers, not only at Doberman but also in the industry. What I foresee is that now is the time to take on bigger issues. We’ve been practicing making companies a little bit more successful, making a product more attractive. Now we combine all this by using design for real problems. We have earned a position by taking on responsibilities and I’m happy to lead. We have to connect these things to entrepreneurship. Of course, the UN is really good at making the world safe and not corrupt, for making sure that we care about other people’s rights. But speed for change will come from companies and entrepreneurship. It will come from making sure that companies are changing their business models towards a more circular economy. This is where the

change could happen. Actually, being at the intersection of companies and design is where I think we can help accelerate our progress towards the UN’s global goals and help use progressive technology through design to really bring about change. I’ve been practicing being some sort of a leader in this. I just want to use this kind of leadership and find out where it is going to take us. For me, the best destination is not the UN, for me it’s the design firm. Rie Nørregaard is a managing Creative Director of SY Partners, a consultancy firm based in New York and San Francisco. She believes that, at its heart, design is an act of service—the work of solving problems for the benefit of others. During her career she has designed for Lego, Nike, Samsung, Cisco, Microsoft, American Express, Neutrogena, Vogue, and many more. In addition to being a frequent speaker for the international design and design education communities, Rie hosts a podcast—Designing for Humanity—that explores how we can design a future that’s made for all of us and for the best in us.

Lisa is the founder and CEO of the global design firm Doberman, with offices in New York and Stockholm, and a think tank in Berlin. Doberman is shining a light on how to bridge the gaps between services and customers. They help their clients envision the customer experience of tomorrow, moving the journey forward with great execution using design as a central force. Focusing on innovation and customer experience has made Doberman a top digital agency, ensuring partnerships with clients such as Bonnier, Google, IBM, MoMA, SEB, Urbanears, Volvo, and many more. Lisa’s unique leadership style demonstrates the kind of impact an innovative work culture can have on a company’s success. Lisa has developed new ways of addressing management by empowering employees. Her work has put Doberman among Sweden’s top three firms for nine years running. No wonder Lisa Lindström was named Sweden’s strongest voice advocating the power of innovative business and leadership to positively impact society. She is current chair of the Swedish Design Awards jury and current chair of the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company. Lisa has been named Sweden’s Service Innovator of the Year and is listed as one of Sweden top ten female leaders. Highly charismatic, Lisa Lindström frequently gives talks about innovation, design, digital transformation, and leadership for change, sharing her perspectives on bold new challenges and daring objectives. I thought approaching Lisa was a ballsy idea, but she proved me wrong. She is easy to talk to and comes across as someone with a powerful capacity to spark creative visions in others and push action forward. She inspired us to reach out once more and explore the way she does things—joyously, emphatically, and successfully!

Greta Milevičiūtė (GM): Most people who start a business focus on managerial structures. How would you describe Doberman’s approach towards the status quo? Lisa Lindström (LL): Optimism, naivety, and resilience. Since the start we have been driven by an elemental force—never quitting and continuously on the lookout for ways to become better. Our focus have always been on ambition and vision, rather than structure, hierarchy, and right or wrong. We also try to emphasize our collective ambitions and collaborations rather than individual accomplishments, as we believe that true innovation comes from co-creation. There are no lone geniuses at Doberman, we craft our success together. GM: How did Doberman’s founders manage to break free of typical business thinking more than two decades ago? What characteristics led to these decisions? LL: At Doberman we have always taken the perspective of the underdog. Even today, when we are an established firm with clients all over the world and nearly 100 coworkers, we still see ourselves as David in his battle against Goliath. We have a strong fighting spirit, even though we do not always know who our opponent is. We want to show the world what we can do—that has shaped us. We don’t really care what others think of us and don’t listen to what others say we should do. We do what we believe is best and, most importantly, we do things that bring us joy. Doberman is built on a foundation of joy and playfulness, something that is reflected in everything we do—from building our budgets in Lego to hosting love bombing sessions at some of the largest corporations in the Nordics. This is what has made our organizational culture so strong, and what allows us to dare to be truly innovative. I believe that far too many companies forget the importance of having fun together.

GM: Lisa, you’re now a spokesperson for employee empowerment and you also host breakfasts for women founders and investors. Could you share the vision behind this project and why it’s important?    LL: Only two percent of capital investments go to female founders. At Doberman our hypothesis is that male investors primarily invest in male innovations. This is something we want to change. By hosting female founders’ breakfasts, we enable women to connect with fellow female entrepreneurs and investors and to grow through these connections. I hope and believe that this is the start of creating an ecosystem where women empower women. Short answers:   A book recommendation? Factfulness by Hans Rosling. Chaos or structure? Structured Chaos. Who came up with the name Doberman? One of the original founders had two major fears, starting a company and Dobermans— he decided to face them both at once. Would you come to Vilnius to host a breakfast for women founders? I would LOVE to!

N WIND x Doberman x Lisa Lindström

WE CRAFT OUR SUCCESS TOGETHER

LL: As I mentioned earlier, we focus on collaboration, collaboration, and collaboration. We don’t rely on numbers or technology to drive our business forward but keep people in the center of everything we do, whether it is working with clients or improving our own organization. We also continually embrace change. For example, the changing landscape of competition within design and innovation has forced us to revise and rethink our business model to be able to meet the new and changing requirements of our customer base. The recognition we have gotten for the way we embrace the learning society and cocreation has actually led to many new business opportunities. Many of our clients come to hear more about this way of working and to get help in establishing similar strategies in their organizations. Being nominated for and winning Sweden’s best employer award has not only been beneficial for us but has also inspired others to follow our lead!

Favourite city? Mexico City. Favourite Swedish band? Seinabo Sey. Favourite tradition? Swedish Midsummer. doberman.co @ lindstrom_lisa @Doberman

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Author Greta Milevičiūtė

GM: You have been repeatedly nominated as the best employer in Sweden! What social and cultural changes have these nominations encouraged in the Swedish work ethic? How does Doberman keep on outdoing itself?

LISA LINDSTRÖM:

Author Giedrė Stabingytė

MARCUS ENGMAN: ‘WE SHOULD TALK ABOUT CURIOSITY’

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N WIND x Doberman x Marcus Engman

Marcus Engman. Photography by Simon Larsson.

It’s early morning in Södermalm, Stockholm. The absence of cafes close to the Doberman office must mean we are sleepwalking: Swedes swear by fika, their famous coffee breaks. Even so, Greta and I are at the door precisely when agreed: we have a narrow time slot for meeting Lisa Lindström, CEO of Doberman design agency, and Marcus Engman, their new Global Executive Creative Director. Especially Marcus, who is always catching something (this time the plane) since leaving his omfg position as Head of Design at IKEA after six years. We have just enough time for portraits and very little time to talk. This is too bad because Marcus drops headline-worthy phrases every second sentence. He is curious, like a big creative kid. Many fascinating questions are left unanswered, but generous internet sources help us connect the dots. Marcus is on a mission to ‘redesign design’. Why? His reason is no less than improving life for people and for the planet—this is where he sees momentum for leadership. But this is not the only journey he is on: while tapping into Doberman’s ‘unique blend of capabilities that span strategy, software, hardware, brand and experience design […] with a vibrating and purpose driven design culture’, Marcus has also started a consultancy of his own called Skewed Productions—a hybrid design studio/ad agency. Its goal is to create marketing moments for companies through product design itself. ‘Design will kill marketing,’ he says. Marcus has openly stated that he does not believe in

marketing, but rather in sharing what’s valuable. While at IKEA he encouraged the company share its creations and production processes. A one-man show, Skewed Productions will hire collaborators on a per-project basis and share profits (send your resume), allowing Marcus to choose projects, big and small, more flexibly and hire crew as needed. During our photoshoot, he tells us that he is also working on a magazine, Skewed Conversations, which is based in Dakar for the time being. The magazine boasts that it is curated by creatives from the most exciting parts of the world, but not from Milan, Paris, or New York. Later we discover that Marcus has also been appointed Vice President of Design at UNYQ, a company producing medical wears— prosthetics, braces, and digital design programs. The flux is dense. We wonder how much he is involved in all his many roles: ‘I’m not a maintainer guy. I am a startup guy.’ Even though he is no longer a young man and complains about backpain, Marcus radiates ‘can do’ energy. He seems impatient to get on with his next project, and curious and excited too. Although he doesn’t reveal his personal life online, he has one. He has no time for emails (a rare personal profile about him in The Guardian is titled ‘I answer emails with one word’) or for cleaning his desk, but makes time for family, for friends, for getting hurt in different sports, and for riding a KTM 350 bike and breaking some bones. He can fall asleep anywhere (again, like a kid) and handle ten meetings a day—he must be driven by something!

What is that something? I ask Marcus why he left IKEA even though the answer was obvious. ‘For curiosity’s sake,’ he says. ‘To be able to keep it.’ He goes so far as to say that we shouldn’t talk about creative industries, but rather curiosity industries. This is a more accurate description of the creative tribe, spanning many different industries and driven by curiosity. A curious person is always interested in others. While working at IKEA, Marcus often reached out to creative groups and individuals so as ‘not to create in isolation’. The reserved Swedish furniture and houseware giant found itself in the middle of creative explosion—working on a collection with Design Indaba in Africa, collaborating with zeitgeist designer Virgil Abloh from Off-White, and designing products with Solange Knowles’ creative team Saint Heron, to name drop a few. Marcus and his team launched IKEA festival in Milan and created Space10 innovation lab. Thanks to him, the company has become more transparent about its processes. This is no longer a flat-pack thinking. It’s a movement. ‘I like to move stuff.’

skewedproductions.com @skewedproductions @skewedconversations

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N WIND x Profiles

JONAS GRINEVIČIUS Photography by Gintarė Antipirovičiūtė.

A Peruvian living in New York who works as a Creative Director at Saatchi & Saatchi. Daniel still believes in advertising and the power of ideas. It’s a Tide Ad or How to Design Change in Perception

Head of Design at Vinted, the world’s largest marketplace for second hand lifestyle goods. Change is constant. Designing for change requires the ability to notice and support it. I believe that great products are designed to aid an ongoing or an inevitable change. At Vinted we intend to counteract the negative impact of consumption by making second hand the first choice worldwide. The driving force behind this change is a community of individuals who choose to trade second hand goods. To them our mission is a reality. We design for change by listening to people in order to equip them with the best services and tools. We’re accelerating change by widely communicating the values that our community holds. linkedin: Jonas Grinevičius vinted.fr

I hadn’t seen the movie Inception in years. So, a few weeks ago, bored on a Saturday night, I re-watched it and stumbled on this quote ‘An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious. And even the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.’ So as a Creative Director in advertising it obviously resonated. Is that not what I do for a living? At its core my job in advertising aims to change consumers’ perceptions. We teach them how to see a product or brand from a different angle. Not just creating a monetary exchange, but an emotional one. A year ago, we did a campaign for Tide, America’s #1 detergent. It was called ‘It’s a Tide Ad’ and it ran during the Super Bowl. The premise of the idea is that in the perfect land of commercials everyone wears clean clothes. Therefore, every commercial is a ‘Tide Ad’. We hacked every other commercial, but we also taught people to see commercials differently. The seed of an idea: notice the clean, it’s everywhere. Suddenly people were tweeting how everything clean was a Tide Ad. The new Star Wars trailer? Tide Ad. A commercial by the competition? Tide Ad. The Royal Wedding dress? Tide Ad. We designed a change in perception and people played along with us. Maybe that’s the key. In order to design change, we need to design a change in perception. Then change can be like a virus, highly contagious. daniellobaton.com

DIĀNA ŅIKITINA Photography by Inga Plūme

WHAT IS DESIGNING CHANGE?

DANIEL LOBATÓN

Branding consultant, amateur urbanist, creator and curator of a virtual co-working space for freelance moms/women. Interested in bringing brands and cities into a more meaningful and beneficial co-existence with people. Change, ideally, comes as a smooth transition towards new ways that you couldn’t have imagined, didn’t exist before. Bringing together wishful thinking with a deep-rooted desire to live life to the fullest, helps design changes. I can’t thank enough the person who invented wheels for travel suitcases. There are still so many things to improve in the things we consume and the environments we live in every day. Why aren’t there nursing rooms in every large shop dedicated to children? Why don’t cities plant more trees if it’s a known fact that this helps reduce temperatures on hot days? For me designing change goes hand in hand with the belief that when everyone is doing better, everyone is doing better. linkedin: Diana Nikitina

The distinction between past, present, and future is an illusion. To explain this, Carlo Rovelli writes about heat in his book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. He gives the example of a spoon that is placed in a cup of hot tea and becomes hot. Heat moves from hot things to cold things, but not vice versa—there is an exchange of heat over time. As soon as there is heat, the future is different from the past.

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Author Giedrė Stabingytė

N WIND x Giedrė Stabingytė x Designing the Future with Bespoke #DESIGNINGCHANGE 36

We want to inspire people to create their own futures. – Rune Toldam

1 Foresight is the act or power of foreseeing.

And in every case where there is no exchange of heat—no friction—the future behaves exactly like the past. The future exists only when there is heat, when you create friction, motion, action, you create change over time. The future is created where there is motion. Interesting? This idea comes from the Book of Futures by Bespoke, a Copenhagenbased Strategic Foresight1 and Experience Design studio, in short—futures design. I journeyed there to speak with founders Nicolas Arroyo and Rune Toldam. Bespoke is phenomenal in many ways. Successful in business without putting business acumen first. The two friends met at Kaospilot, a hybrid design and business school, and soon after started the company. Just five short years later, their team, now twelve, engages with global clients and institutions. They are exploring future of learning with IKEA, planning digital transformation with Electrolux in Sweden, and researching future landscapes of beauty with the Pola Orbis Group in Japan, to name a few. The team also teaches Futures Design courses in Japan, Denmark, Dubai, Brazil, and Spain, and occasionally gives lectures at schools such as Kaospilot, Hyper Island, and the University of Copenhagen and Gothenburg. In between projects they also engage in artistic collaborations. What’s more, being eager dreamers and curious cats, but also a purposedriven, systemic team, Nicolas and Rune

entirely reinvented the futures design domain from scratch by themselves. Curiosity is like quicksilver. It creates a non-linear, expansive mindset. And Bespoke has it in person. We had two conversations—one over Skype (always a bit awkward) and one in person (‘You have to come to our studio to feel the vibe’). In that meeting we shared a lot unconsciously, through being here and now. The meeting struck a chord and gave me a feeling of what makes this collective genuine and successful. Throughout the two conversations Nicolas and Rune always came back to the same ‘non-negotiables’, key insights, and methods that serve them and their clients as a compass. Their decisionmaking ethos showed a lot of integrity, like their rule of defining the life model before business model. Curiosity with Integrity. Virtuously guiding these two opposing energies and mindsets is at the core of Bespoke and of futures design: ‘Being a future designer means becoming curious explorer, but it also means designing systemically, with purpose. Initiating action today to create a desirable tomorrow.’ I came to the meeting from Stockholm where N WIND met with global leaders in design at Doberman. Many of the same words were reappearing—curiosity, designing better for planet and people—but I discovered a surprising new paradigm at Bespoke.

Come As You Are We met outside the Bespoke studio. Rune and Nicolas were coming back from looking at a four-storey building they may move their playground into. The mood was high. It was immediately apparent that they are a great duo—they create a warm space in the room, continue each other’s thoughts, and play around with zero inhibition, demonstrating that theirs is indeed a loving friendship and a business partnership. They ride their bikes hand in hand for a picture, or act like two blondes—Debbie and Denise—on social media for the fun of their team, followers, and clients. Nicolas runs marathons around the world and is more soft-spoken. Rune likes to play and exudes dynamism. Not hiding behind a business persona and coming to the game as you are, with your own story, is a conscious decision. Giedrė Stabingytė (GS): I was listening to you guys last night. [The recording of the first conversation, Ed.]

Reach out to Bespoke to hire or collaborate with them. Get their guide Book of Futures. Here, I have attempted to set down the main ideas from our conversations. I believe this way of working could guide us to creating the more genuinely human collectives we need for a better future.

RT: I had a moment as a child rapper in 1998 when I participated in a competition for children rappers. I came fifth and performed at Tivoli for tens of thousands of people. At the time, I was doing a radio program for kids and was also a reporter. I rapped a message on the answering machine at my parent’s house and we had a discussion at the radio if one could rap without swearing. I still try not to swear... I wrote a song about my Dad fixing stuff at home but not being much good at it, so we were always hiring someone to fix things after him. It was a joke. People at the radio and the competition loved it and I got to record it even though I wasn’t a winner! It played on the radio for a few months. I peaked at fourteen and it has been basically downhill from there. [He laughs] I’m educated as Graphic Designer and worked in digital advertising for close to ten years. First designing online experiences, but later on also much more strategically as a Creative Director. The path I could see in front of me had something unknown missing. Spending three years at the Kaospilots became the answer to that. Nicolas Arroyo (NA): Rune is very good with people, good at creating relationships and entertaining. It feels very inspiring to be around him. A big part of our vibe here at Bespoke comes from Rune having an outgoing personality. GS: What about your story Nicolas? NA: My story? [to Rune] You could tell my story. Actually, we played this game with the team earlier. RT: Hi, I’m Nic, I come from Chile. I love biscuits. Wait, do I love biscuits? Oh yes, I eat them all the time. [He laughs] NA: Indeed, I am from Chile. I was really into arts and creativity since I was a kid, did street art at some point (Illegal graffiti?—Yeah). Learned a lot through it. There was this guy I really admired, who was a great street artist and still is. I realized he was also an architect. I chose to study fine arts and architecture because it seemed like a discipline that combined a lot of things and connected the arts with history and politics, which I was very good at (I had planned to study law). A lot of people said, ‘As an architect you can do whatever you want afterwards.’ True! At some point while studying, I ended up working in men's fashion brand, first selling clothes and later becoming the main creative director. So much trust was given to me, even though I didn’t have any formal training in fashion. When you think about it, the creative process is very much alike (architecture), only the materials are different. I took the opportunity and paused my studies. And even though I was earning a lot of money at that point and had a nice lifestyle while most of my friends were still living on noodles and coffee, I realised it was not a place where I could grow. I also kind of knew at the back of

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Their idea is to increase heat by placing humans at the centre of futures design instead of only solutions. If the future only exists when there is an exchange of heat, isn’t it the heat of our dreams—our genuine callings, our passions, and our values—that make the future ours? ‘We want to inspire people to create their own futures. We are not a trend forecasting agency, we don’t believe in: ‘Hey, these are the five trends you should follow.’ That would be following other people’s solutions and then you end up creating what other people have decided.’ The power of human heat should not be underestimated. Our visions and desires, growing exponentially along with the population, have moved the entire planet into the Anthropocene, a new epoch defined by human impact on the Earth’s geology and ecosystems. Directing our heat is essential. So how do we work with people to create the better futures?

GS: Indeed, it felt very private. Will you share something about your journey before you met each other and set up Bespoke.

Nicolas Arroyo and Rune Toldam. Photography by Rune Lundø

Rune Toldam (RT): On the radio? Thanks, I thought nobody was listening to that show. You are the only listener! (laughs)

Jacques-Yves Cousteau was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author, and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in the water. In 1950 he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns and leased a ship called Calypso from Thomas L. Guinness for the symbolic sum of one franc per year.

Mathew Lincez is now Director of Strategy at Gemic.

my head that I wasn’t really sold on the idea of continuing with architecture. I loved the discipline but not the work experience. And at that decisive moment I met my wife. She is Danish. We ended up coming to Denmark for vacation. She was finishing her master studies. We went to Aarhus and there I was introduced to Kaospilot and ended up studying business design and creative leadership there. GS: The first time you both actually studied business was at Kaospilot? NA: Yes. And I fell in love with the vibe, the energy, how welcoming people were. Also, telling the story of the school through projects was really inspiring. It was not one thing you could do, you could do anything.

I’d say most of the projects have an element of ‘we don’t know what we are doing’. But we have a structure to guide us through uncertainty.

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N WIND x Giedrė Stabingytė x Designing the Future with Bespoke

– Nicolas Arroyo

GS: At what point did you choose to work with foresight? Or did it choose you? NA: We met our now mentor and friend Mathew Lincez3 at Kaospilot, where taught an introductory seminar on design research and applied foresight techniques. Half the class left because it was too abstract for them, but we loved it and got hooked on foresight and on him. Mathew is a graffiti artist and skater who talks like a professor. He is totally down to earth even though he works with big brands. In 2014 we collaborated with him on the Creative Research Cookbook, a workbook for for a strategic foresight seminar. (He jumps up to get the book.) That was the first version of Bespoke’s Book of Futures.

NA: The very first project from Kaospilot was by a group of young kids who organised an electronic music festival in late eighties in Moscow. Many of the projects were about bridging culture, leadership, and business. That is where I met Rune. We became friends and ended up doing most of our projects together. That led to Bespoke.

We are not interested in predicting the future, but the idea for us to sense the context of what could possibly happen. As people we need new input to come up with better ideas. Thinking about creativity, we need to connect the dots but also, we need the dots. We saw in foresight the way for helping us to collect more various dots, that are not just about something that happens today, but has some sort of interest in the future. Otherwise you are just a follower. We call it futures design more and more in the couple last years. We need that design elements. It’s not only about doing the prediction; it’s about using it to design.

GS: Was it only natural that you continued the vibe in your own company?

GS: How did you put yourself on the map with foresight? How did you become needed?

NA: When I think of that time, the first year of Bespoke, there was a lot of trying things and then thinking, like, do we need to be more pro, in a traditional sense, ‘suit and tie’ kind of thing? But it didn’t work, so we pulled back and said OK, let’s be ourselves from the way we dress to how we communicate with people. That gives us a lot of confidence. If people like us it’s for who we are. We describe ourselves as a ‘blazer with a t-shirt’ kind of company. It’s stupid, but it serves as a good metaphor. You have to be authentic.

RT: In the beginning, we hunted for opportunities. Instead of thinking, ‘OK, so what’s the business model for this?’ it was more like, ‘Hey, what’s exciting there?’ We went everywhere, to all events.

RT: Yeah! One guy organised a football match between the Tibetan national team and the Danish national team. It was a political statement against China.

Experiment and Get Lost Bespoke turned out to be an experiment that worked. (In truth—many experiments.) While many would go for certainty, Bespoke founders went for the unknown. As Rune tells it: ‘In the final year at Kaospilot everyone had to do a business project. Most went with a single big one. Me and Nic were ‘we don’t know!’ [He laughs] We needed to experiment around to start getting some perspective, to put something out there in order to get something back. We didn’t know where exactly we wanted to take the business.’ ‘But we knew it was a business.’ — reassures Nicolas. They went on developing ‘as many projects as possible during that year’ with different names for the different phases they found themselves in. I liked the One Franc2 concept that captured the excitement of doing. That was important for the duo back then: ‘We did projects we would do for one franc or do for free anyway. We wanted to dive in and explore what we were curious about and train our muscles.’ As we speak, Nicolas gets up and finds the report they did for the final year at Kaospilot called At Our Studio. The opening says: The true method of knowledge is experiment.

NA: We said ‘yes’ a lot. We like building relationships before we even have any business motive. Starting and seeing where it goes. That comes from a place of genuine curiosity. We love people. RT: Also, we had a strategy that we need to make work that is going to sell our next project. We would push ourselves because we like to explore, always become better, do something interesting. It might be hard with a business model, but we are very long-term thinkers on that! (laughs) We are designing for the unknown. For us the content dictates the ending of the project. That is in our name. Every project is bespoke. GS: Is it safe to say it’s your choice to start from a blank page with every project? NA: It is. I’d say most of our projects have an element of ‘we don’t know what we are doing.’ But we have a clear structure to guide us through uncertainty. RT: Overprepared, understructured. We have a lot in the backpack. But we should get lost, otherwise it would mean we didn’t push ourselves enough. And we like the spirit of the artist. It’s very clear that a good artist is a good researcher. And a very curious experimenter. But in order to experiment, in order to work with something that doesn’t yet exist, we need something to hold on to. Methodologies can help do that.

Design Your Way The Book of Futures shares practices, mindsets, tools, and methods for futures design. The team has done many experiments to identify ‘the future industry we would have liked to work in ourselves’. Most of their methodology stems from that period. The team designed methodologies before they designed their business. ‘You could see an influence on this from architecture and design, we are very visual. We need to visualise our methods and ideas, we are always making tools, always making models to figure out the environment and ask real questions.’ Nicolas describes how methodology is the backbone of Bespoke, always researching, testing, and understanding. ‘Solutions are useless. It’s all about finding the right question or identifying a problem. Once you understand that, there might be hundred right solutions to it. On the other hand, it would be so sad to make the perfect solution for the wrong problem.’ Bespoke also has its own vision and methods for building their team of independent collaborators—they take seriously, creating a collective language around things. For Rune it’s not enough that we all speak English: ‘We actually need to create a common language, which is not only words—we should be able to lead each other and to follow each other and use the right words for that.’ Everyone at Bespoke goes through the professional Creative Leadership course at Kaospilot. My favourite quote is from Christer Windeløv-Lidzélius, CEO of Kaospilot: ‘In the end, it is not about the ability to stand alone; instead, it is important to be resilient while standing side by side with others.’

Bespoke puts people at the centre of futures design. People are at the centre of everything for Nicolas and Rune. Their warmth is all-encompassing and comes as a surprise, considering the generally techy vibe and competitiveness in the industry. Nicolas shares a beautiful story of their beginning: ‘There’s another element that has really been important for us—it’s relationships. The first thing we did—we wrote down a manifesto on a napkin about how we wanted to work together and what made our work meaningful to us and the world somehow. One of the most important statements is: ‘Friends before businesses.’ We shouldn’t do anything to jeopardise our friendship, but to keep it. We’ve been using the manifesto with the people we work with, most of our clients become our friends or we have some sort of connection beyond work. Those relationships allow us to carry out certain projects that otherwise wouldn’t be possible, because the trust needs to be there. We couldn’t just go out and sell, sell, sell. We go out to work with people, it’s fun!’

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Companies Don’t Exist

Companies don’t exist. It’s people. We wanted to work with people, sorry for my French, who were not assholes. – Rune Toldam

GS: You think of yourself as working with people, not with companies. It sounds very confident. RT: Companies don’t exist. It’s people. It is very confident. People make a big difference to how the project goes. We wanted to work with people, sorry for my French, who were not assholes. I don’t care if you are from NASA, if you’re being awful, sorry. We cannot work with you, because it’s the ‘with’ that matters to us. Not the case in the industries that are aggressive, and we made it very clear… NA: F*** that.

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N WIND x Giedrė Stabingytė x Designing the Future with Bespoke

GS: Brands don’t exist? RT: Theoretically, I wouldn’t argue that brands don’t exist. But in a way it’s just a structure for the people. At the end of the day there is always a human behind whatever we are experiencing. NA: From the beginning we talked about Patagonia as a brand we admire. The reason why is that the people who work there genuinely love the outdoors. They would close the store to go surfing. It’s the people inside the brand who make it unique and alive. GS: I must say I am moved by the way you speak about working together. How do you build those deep relationships with your clients and partners? NA: Acting like in an improvisational theatre, where we try to make each other shine on stage. Me trying to make you shine, and you trying to make me shine is going to create awesome things. We try to bring this internally, but also with our clients or partners, our job is to support them and make them shine, pull ourselves back. So, a lot of our work is really silent. RT: We are genuinely curious about them. It’s very important to really understand what they want instead of pushing what we want. We meet somewhere in between.

Futures Design is for the Courageous There is a lot of anxiety about the future and it’s hard to keep up with all the change. But Bespoke doesn’t sell false reassurance. ‘Most people immediately think that the opposite of uncertainty is certainty. But in reality, it’s curiosity and openness to navigating the unknown.’ Bespoke helps companies and organizations scan for opportunities in their landscape going forward, mainly through research projects and their methodologies. ‘We like the optimistic approach more. We emphasize ‘better futures’ in our work a lot— what our clients can do to make things be better for people and for our planet. Even when we find out that what they are doing needs to change, that it won’t be relevant. Even then we try to turn to optimism: what are the opportunities out there?’ From the business perspective, it is often about having a superior position in the future market, one that may not yet exist. When the project is more strategic, the team moves in to help develop the strategy, but always together with the people who will be embodying it: ‘Otherwise it becomes a pdf on a server or a poster in the canteen.’ On their website Bespoke says ‘for courageous organisations and people.’ Is courage important? ‘Yeah, that’s in regard to the need to work with people who are willing to enter that space of uncertainty. At some point we realised we need to work with people who need, want, and are ready for transformation. Sometimes companies are not ready, even though they want it. For us, there has to be a triangle of those three elements.’ Also, a culture of collaboration. Competition is not exactly good for foresight? ‘Nah, competition is not bad if it

is healthy. We see that companies that have culture of collaboration excel. We work with IKEA—they have a great culture, open and engaging. Non-collaborative culture can hinder some of the futures design processes.’ Futures design has two distinct words. I want to ask about design, is it about getting real? ‘Futurists show the way and designers pave the way. For us it’s both. Fun to do the far-out shots, but the more abstract it becomes, the less you can do today.’—explains Nicolas adding, that it was their conscious decision to stay though in research and experimentation ‘not to jump into building things’ and only design experiments and early prototypes. We discuss the distinction between certainty and uncertainty, forecasting and foreseeing. Though relying on the work that’s already done and out there—like trend reports, Bespoke carries out its own research: ‘Staying with one source is dangerous. You need to find information that goes against the trend.’ We discuss how trend reports are about selling certainty versus really sensing the environment. ‘Reports are with edges removed. We have to find out what’s interesting for the particular context we are working with and its future.’ Their clients are mainly people leading strategy, HR, innovation, and research departments. Rather than looking for certainty, Rune believes they ‘know there are things they don’t know’, they don’t fall for certainty. ‘No consultant knows. We are foreseeing, it’s about finding out what possibilities we have to create something new.’

Friends before business. Self-innovation always.

To Change is to Find What Remains GS: Our issue is themed Designing Change. What does it mean to you?

All photography shared by Bespoke

We strive to make each other, our clients, and our content shine. Bespoke is a constant prototype of the future working paradigm.

RT: I’m always a bit ambivalent about the word change as it doesn’t point to what one is trying to achieve, to make better. Businesses love to talk about change: ‘We need to become digital.’ Ha ha, sure. But when I hear ‘positive change’, I’m hooked, because that says change can be negative too. I'm in love with my girlfriend, I don’t want to change her, you know.

We are Playfessionals.

NA: Sometimes the most important thing is to find what remains. We need to transform. I think transformation is a much a better word as it means evolution. It inspires you to think forward. We need to know what we want to keep, what holds strong value, and transform it into the next stage. For that we need to know what stays the same and remove what we don’t want to have.

We work in the intersection between business, design, and art.

NA: Ha, curiosity killed the cat, but the new knowledge about the world brought it back! bespokecph.com @bespokecph @nicnaar @runetoldam

Giedrė Stabingytė is cofounder of N WIND and most like the magazine’s Editor-inChief. She is also cofounder of Black Swan Brands, bringing strategic insight and vision to brands that reach out to people from the Mediterranean to the Japanese sea. You can reach Giedrė at hello@nwindmag.eu

GS: There’s a saying ‘Curiosity killed the cat’. Should we just throw it out of the window?

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RT: If we are designing change, it should make somebody’s life better. There is pain in change, and it needs to be distributed in a good way, making sure the good stuff is highlighted and better.

Author Bespoke

Sharing one of the Bites—critical and imaginary reflections, regularly published on Bespoke website.

Big here & long now I. A monolith of rotating dials, gears, chimes and metal rods is being constructed inside a mountain in West Texas. It is a watch and it will keep time for the next 10.000 years.

III. How does music affect mineral or bacterial behaviour over a very long time? It is beyond our imagination, but by naming it, we are challenged to think ahead and outward further than we are programmed to.

Yes. The brain behind the idea is that of Danny Hillis. He was the golden boy of MIT, and built some of the fastest supercomputers in the world when he was young. While everybody was wanting to do things faster and faster, he wanted to slow down, stretch out and think on a different time scale than he was trained to do. That is what he wants to manifest with the clock.

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N WIND x Giedrė Stabingytė x Designing the Future with Bespoke

Futurist Stewart Brand who is partaking in the project says, that there is a problem of people not believing in the future, and that the long term clock is challenging those short term civilisational stories. It is a symbol of the future, something we pass on to coming generations, something that asks us the question, are we being good ancestors? Hillis, Steward and the rest of the organisation—Long Now Foundation—believe their work is an investment in generational thinking, giving a sense of connection across an unimaginable time scale. They are optimistic about the future, not because our challenges are small, they say, but because our capacity to deal with challenges are great. Another member of the Long Now Foundation, musician Brian Eno, composed the never-repeating melody generator that rings the clock’s chimes. Ten bells ring in a different sequence each day for 10.000 years. The clock is synchronised with the sun through a huge lens hanging above at the peak of the mountain, and at solar noon every day the chimes begin to play. When Brian Eno was taking a break from pop stardom in the winter of 1979, he moved to New York and started to discover that people around him understood the here and now in a very local manner. He wrote down in his notebook: “More and more I find I want to be living in a Big Here and a Long Now.” Part of the reason why the long now attracted him, he says, was that it offered a justification for the type of music he was experimenting with at the time. A type of music that was suspended in an eternal present tense. Composing a 10.000-year long piece for the dark inside of a mountain, is to write the music composition into the Big Here, and think beyond that music only gives value to humans.

II. Cassandra was a princess of Troy in Greek mythology. The most common version of the story says that she was admired by the god Apollo, and that to win her heart, he offered her the gift of seeing the future. In return for the gift, Cassandra promised to be his lover, but after receiving it she broke her promise and refused him. In his rage Apollo placed with her a counter curse: Even though she would see the future and her prophecies would be accurate, nobody would believe her. Cassandra foresaw the destruction of Troy, but she was regarded as a madwoman by the Trojan people, and she was locked up. The cursed gift from Apollo became a source of endless pain to Cassandra. She was stranded in the present with the truth about the future. The painter Evelyn De Morgan finished a picture of Cassandra standing in front of the burning city of Troy in 1898. As the title implies, Cassandra is present at the moment in time where Troy is in flames. Before that point in time, it was already true to her, because she had already seen it, but it was only when it became visible to the people of Troy, they could believe it. The blockbuster movie Interstellar made the pages of science magazines in 2015 with its portrait of a black hole. A phenomena well described but unobserved at the time. Director Christopher Nolan, theoretical physicist Kip Thorne and computer graphics supervisor Eugénie von Tunzelmann collaborated to visualise a black hole by feeding 3D-animation software with theoretical mathematics. What emerged was a paradoxical moving picture of a black circle bending light, but according to the laws of physics it was visually accurate. This type of computer graphics is what artist Alan Warburton calls theoretical photorealism. The visualisation of the fictional black hole suggested new information to the science world such as how distorted space-time looks to an observer. It became a tool just like the 10.000-year clock to point beyond what is visible to the eye. And as for the destruction of Troy, the black hole becomes understandable when it becomes visible. The difference is that the black hole was actively made visible, and that sped up the process of understanding the phenomena.

Donna Haraway begins her book Staying with the Trouble, with this radiant passage: “Trouble is an interesting word. It derives from a thirteenth-century French verb meaning “to stir up,” “to make cloudy,” “to disturb.” We —all of us on Terra—live in disturbing times, mixed-up times, troubling and turbid times. The task is to become capable, with each other in all of our bumptious kinds, of response. Mixed-up times are overflowing with both pain and joy— with vastly unjust patterns of pain and joy, with unnecessary killing of ongoingness but also with necessary resurgence. The task is to make kin in lines of inventive connection as a practice of learning to live and die well with each other in a thick present. Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places. In urgent times, many of us are tempted to address trouble in terms of making an imagined future safe, of stopping something from happening that looms in the future, of clearing away the present and the past in order to make futures for coming generations. Staying with the trouble does not require such a relationship to times called the future. In fact, staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.” When slowing down the pace and acknowledging that humans are visitors of Terra, that time behind and ahead of us stretches so inconceivably far, the now and here becomes longer and bigger. A long or thick now, is a fragile now. A big here is suggesting we discover our relation to Terra and what Donna Haraway calls our companion species—anything and everything around us at any time. Responsibility resides in that way of being. Responsibility for the planet and the people that can shape the intention behind stirring up the present. Can humans only understand Troy is burning when Troy is burning? Are we only able to understand things through the limitation of our bodies? If so, how can we respond to our present and coming companion species? It could be composing for mountains. It could be by joining forces across fields to approach an understanding of our challenges. It could be looking outward, to deal with these challenges in an appropriate and sustainable manner. It could be to approach that which we do not yet understand, and thereby potentially open a portal to the unimaginable.

@lozuraityte_isora ail.lt

@momuziejus mo.lt

When I was a little girl, only a handful of adults had time for my endless curiosity. Nosy, arrogant, bubbly, impolite—you pick the word. Little did I know that curiosity is the beginning of any creative journey. I believe that most educational systems struggle as they keep shutting down innate human curiosity for the world around us. Instead of asking, they tell. Creativity is trust in advance, I say, and curiosity is fuel for the process. When raising a new generation of creative technologists at bit&Byte, meeting them before they lose their sense of curiosity is a must! twitter: tuttmala @tuttmala

N WIND x Profiles

MO Museum opened its doors with a clear vision to make changes in the cultural habits in society. Through engaging exhibition topics, events programming, and education based on dialogue and bold marketing, this museum appeared on the map as creative and cultural hub where all people feel welcome, and where interaction around the art is encouraged.

Co-founder and CEO of the creative technology academy bit&Byte in Lithuania, where her aim is to raise and nurture generations of courageous and curious creative technologists. Every week groups of 7–12 yearolds are mentored by technology professionals who help them deconstruct programming concepts and learn about virtual and augmented reality, 3D modelling, and app&web development as tools for their creativity.

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To redefine existing physical structures, to re-contextualise the references of products and reassemble the links between things and their expected uses. To un-expect and remix prescribed concepts. Descriptions are containers of meaning—relocate the references, replay the ready-made. Aesthetic positions derive from need. Inspect the need. The aesthetic follows the message. Engage if there is a need. Preserve what works well.

I changed my career entirely and started working in the museum sector with a view to realizing the changes envisioned by the founders there. In my opinion designing change is about care and sensitivity towards the others as well as openness to dialogue. It is also impossible without a sense of curiosity and a certain boldness and resistance to the system.

This creative duo follows an interdisciplinary practice, transcending the spheres of architecture, art, ecology, landscape. As an architecture studio they develop connections between environmental design, context management, curatorial and artistic expression, and research principles. Their studio is characterised by cooperation and collaboration with other practices or subjects in the fields of art and architecture.

MO Museum Director. She started working at MO Museum as a volunteer in 2012, took over the role of manager in 2016, and led the institution to its opening in 2018.

Photography by Linas Masiokas

Photography by Gedvilė Tamošiūnaitė

ISORA x LOZURAITYTE

MONIKA KATKUTEGELZINE

WHAT IS DESIGNING CHANGE?

Photography by Ugnė Vasyliūtė.

MILDA IVANAUSKIENĖ

Photography by Agnieszka Czapi Trzepizur

Photography by Jone

DADARA

Designer, researcher, and concept developer. She creates processes and experiences that allow brands and organizations to communicate the value they offer to users. She is passionate about sustainable development, humancentred design, & mindfulness. She is currently researching rituals & alternative ways of living. She co-founded the Change Pilots agency & is part of the Cohabitat Collective as a board member and coordinator of Modern Rituals. ‘Change is the only constant.’ This is how I often start conversations with entrepreneurs and designers in my daily work at the design strategy agency. We are all living in an era of rapid change that scientists have recently named the Anthropocene Era (where everything is touched by humans). I deeply believe that navigating the change is the best way to accept it, understand it, and not fear it. For me, change is like a muscle that you need to train systematically to get results (be patient). Change is a mind-set that cannot be obtained just by saying: ‘Ok, I am ready to change.’ The changemaker’s mind-set is about being ready to adapt in rapidly shifting circumstances. I found an allegory for change in preparing for a survival camp. At every camp, it is important to have the proper tools (to know how to use them and when the challenge/ change will come), a broad base of knowledge (about the context and surroundings), and the right attitude (solution-based psychology). Being well-equipped helps you be open to new things and upcoming changes. changepilots.pl designsafari.eu

Artwork by DADARA

WHAT IS DESIGNING CHANGE?

N WIND x Profiles #DESIGNINGCHANGE 44

MANTAS PETRAITIS

JUSTYNA TUREK

Dadara started as an artist at the beginning of the nineties designing flyers and record covers, and by creating live-paintings for the then burgeoning electronic dance scene. This, together with such projects as the crying Dadababy speakers and the Greyman Statue of No Liberty, marked the start of his impressive career as a painter, installation—and performance artist, designer, and cartoonist. In this millennium his focus shifted towards extravagant interactive performance-installations in public spaces, such as starting his own bank and creating a religion based on social media, many of which were built at the legendary Burning Man event in the Nevada desert. His work is a kind of tweaked mirror which reflects our society, blurring the lines between reality and fantasy. Perhaps a Black Mirror, but one that has a Rainbow at the end of the tunnel. I have often been asked while performing at Burning Man (as a banker, guru, or locked up inside a big black box in the desert): ‘But what do you do in real life?’ To which I reply: ‘Isn’t this real life?’ It often puzzles me that people make this distinction between life and work. It seems to me that this is one of the main reasons companies make so many profit-driven instead of humandriven decisions. But ‘value’ is not synonymous with ‘financial value’ and isn’t what we value most priceless? For me that’s the greatest value of art: not that some art is worth millions, but that art has the ability to touch our souls and can make us listen to ourselves amongst continuous societal distraction. dadara.com @dadara_art

Partner and architect at IMPLANT studio. He implements a design process based on extensive exploratiozn and search for spatial character and its relationship to the end user. Working with a team of collaborators including artists, artisans, and manufacturers his studio is achieving durable and long-lasting design in the physical, environmental, and cultural sense.

My grandfather, a structural engineer by profession, was a true advocate of progress. He would become especially excited when the presence of fences, cranes, bulldozers and other machinery indicated that a new building site was opening somewhere around the town. He would go for a walk to see whatever was being built— a new shopping centre, a multi-story dwelling, a bridge, or a school. He was part of the post-war generation that had experienced a shortfall of everything and was suddenly shifted into an era of abundance. How much more difficult it is for us—the current generation—to be so positive with regard to the production and accumulation of material wealth. We now know that the by-products were global pollution, and the collapse of biodiversity and the earth support systems on which we entirely depend. In this ambiguous situation we ask ourselves what should architects and designers like us do to make a positive change? As long as we are aware of the challenge it activates our mental alertness, curiosity, and motivation. We work hard but take a slow approach—observing and researching a lot. We question the supply chain and use local resources. We reuse materials wherever possible and we plant a lot of trees. We are the next generation of architects and designers who nurture a makers’ culture by treading lightly. implantarchitecture.com

Author Victoria Dias

I can hardly imagine my life without fashion and textiles. Can anyone? If you think about it, the role of textiles in our lives is immense and so is the impact of textile production on the planet.

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

Martina Rocca. Project Emovos. Series of objects imagining a future in which brands trade in emotions instead of products.

FOR THE FUTURE OF FASHION

N WIND x Victoria Diaz x Designing Emotions

DESIGNING EMOTIONS

H&M. Conscious Exclusive collection. Their new collection illustrates a conscious approach to fast fashion—becoming slower and up-cycling clothing. H&M transparency policies are more developed than those of many premium brands.

Archaeological studies have revealed that textiles first appeared in the Palaeolithic Era when the planet experienced a massive environmental crisis. Humans developed clothing in response to very clear survival needs but we were also displaying their attributes and signalling hierarchies. Now, in Anthropocene Era—the first geological epoch shaped by humans, rather than by nature—there is a new environmental crisis ahead. Once again clothing plays an important part in our survival. Human fascination with textiles and garments transcends function. The meaning of the clothes we wear is emotional, symbolic, and abstract. The body can be used for outrageous provocation or for quiet, intelligent protest against the system, paradoxically created by us.

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

N WIND x Victoria Diaz x Designing Emotions

Archeological textiles. Early weaving.

In pre-historic and ancient times, the materials and construction of a garment were symbolic of the status we claim, the ideas we wish we had, and the tastes we are proud of. Today brand tags have taken over this function. And just as before, the main quest today is not what to make, but what to make it from and how to produce it. Today, materials matter more than ever. Biotechnology, food waste, and the circular economy will shape fashion’s fabric supply chain by 2025. According to the Global Fashion Agenda, 73% of the world’s clothing eventually ends up in landfills. Less than 15% is collected for recycling, and, even worse, less than 1% is regenerated into new clothing. Fashion is a great contributor to our culture of garbage. If you think these proportions are crazy, wait until you read this: globally, on average, 36% of the clothes we produce are never sold and are literally ‘new’ garbage. Last year Burberry burned $37.8 million in unsold products. It is more expensive for brands to pay for warehouse space and transportation than to throw unused and unsellable goods into landfills.

The Care Label project. Images from a conscious campaign dedicated to educating the public about care labeling and clothing care.

James Shaw, Crafts Council. Chair from the Modular Mechanics series. Recycled materials. Inspired by John Ruskin and the Industrial Revolution, the series incorporates a modular system with a continuous series of joints for alternative configurations and aesthetic possibilities.

We often take the easy way out, blaming ‘fast fashion’ brands for all the negative aspects of textile production but, if we take the time to analyse the situation closely, reality is pretty different. Fast fashion brands such as H&M, Zara, Lindex, or even Ikea as a cheap option for interior design, are transforming their business structures and coming up with pretty impressive process & material cycling solutions, while luxury brands are still using failed production systems. If you think you are being a conscious consumer because you buy a pair of Balenciaga sneakers for € 750 instead of paying € 49,99 for a cheaper brand, you are not. To be sure the clothing your wear is consciously made, you need to know about the journey it took from sourcing the materials through production and marketing to reach the store shelves. Many consumers of fashion tend to think that if a brand is expensive and has small production volumes that it is consciously made. This is not the case. Just because a brand is expensive doesn’t mean its production policies are sustainable. Actually, most luxury brands produce massive quantities of their products because they operate in global markets. Many of them produce their goods in the same factories in China that the cheaper brands use, or in Chinese factories located in Italy using obsolete productions systems. Expensive trash is still trash.

How should brands react to the changes taking place on our planet and build more sustainable realities for the future? They must focus on alliances—the longterm process of building brand-consumer relationships based on transparency, consistency, accountability. Technology can help empower consumers and brands make smarter decisions and help us learn more from one another. Local culture and design inspiration, sustainable processes and materials, healthy commerce and innovation—these have a far stronger story-telling kick than an influencer’s post from a resort hotel. No? Fashion producers probably don’t look in that direction because everybody working in branding and marketing knows that emotion sells. Colours, packaging, and marketing campaigns are carefully chosen through a mood-based decision-making process. Across industries companies target customers’ emotions with the products they offer. Premium brands often ‘sell hierarchy’—the illusion of being better than others. But what if brands would consider emotions before their products reach the marketing stage? What if they would incorporate emotions from the beginning of product development? What if brands would invest their design-thinking resources into how they make us feel about the products we choose, rather than trying to make their products ‘more exclusive’? At the moment, society still prefers looking expensive and successful to feeling authentic, sustainable, and green. This makes me think of the curious Emovos project by Martina Rocca where she explores post-consumerism by imagining how we might engage with our feelings in the future. Her project explores a future reality where instead of products people will purchase emotions. She focuses on the ethical implications of direct brain stimulation and emotion-hacking. If we imagine emotions as the object of desire instead of products, we can experience consumerism from different angles and more holistically. Imagine a society that sees beyond the products it consumes, a civilization that not merely appreciates the present/presence of a product, but also its past and how it was

But the responsibility does not lie only with the fashion industry’s production and communication strategies, we also have to examine consumer culture and consumer values. We will change the world with our attitudes and behaviours, not brands. Many of us are now encouraging others to become more conscious and behave less emotionally when it comes to fashion. But fashion has always been an emotion-based industry. Don’t we confront our emotions and our consciousness through our fashion choices? Is it possible that the biggest change in consumerism could come from the demand for consciously designed emotions? The future of fashion needs authentic experiences more than it needs more stuff. We need new systems, new norms and narratives, and greater transparency, but most importantly the future of fashion needs more love. More self-love and acceptance, and more love for our collective future and the ideas we need to come up with to get us there.

For the last 17 years Victoria Dias has been helping designers and lifestyle companies build their brand identities, design sustainable processes, and develop more profitable collections. She also analyses fashion trends in the Anthropocene Era. victoriadias.com @veedias

I am convinced that love and creativity will always save the world because love and creativity created it.

As we search for ways to boost selfesteem, we increasingly celebrate the natural flow of things, defects in both beauty and design. I see extreme forms of self-expression emerging where the power of identity is more relevant than ever. Just as Salvador Dali once said, ‘I don’t do drugs—I am the drug’, the new fashion consumer will say, ‘I don’t buy luxury– I am luxury’! Textiles not only adorn us, they also connect people and cultures. In many ways, fashion is a mirror of the times, a platform that, just like an enormous lake, reflects the society we live in—its values and ideas, its rules and fears, its revolutions and victories. So, when we criticize fashion or the way the textile industry works—its impact on nature, its lack of sustainable solutions, and its superficial marketing campaigns—we are in fact facing the human condition and challenging our ability to react to it. We are challenging our demagogic nature. If the textile industry can change, it means we all are changing.

Camilo Matiz. Take a selfie, fake a life. Neon and mirror. Meditation on the superficial, egocentric (‘me’-oriented) values of pop-culture thinking and the strategies of fashion influencers.

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

The era of post-consumerism is on the horizon in mature markets. We are already setting new priorities, such as buying less and investing more in systems that transform the product life-cycle from disposable to renewable. When I talk about designing systems instead of stuff, I don’t just mean production structures, I also mean transforming the way we do brand communication. What if, instead of investing millions of euros in influencers and marketing, luxury brands would invest in more innovative ways of designing local economies and creating digital structures to build consumers’ confidence through transparency?

made. Imagine a society that not only wants to look expensive and feel superior to others but one that appreciates the feelings that arise from everything that goes into developing and producing the products we consume. Would that be the end of the luxury market as we know it today?

For centuries people have been very conscious that what we wear says something about us—our clothes advertise sense of style, level of income, group-affiliations. Today however, what we choose not to wear is even more important. Choosing not to buy and the reasons behind these choices are the new barometer. In this era of great complexity, authenticity is primary, and nothing is more authentic than the human right to say no! I often say that ‘not buying’ will be the ultimate form of luxury in the future.

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

N WIND x Alberta Vengrytė x Opera Beyond

Alberta is an art critic and historian, primarily researching contemporary performance. In the last years, she has been contributing to the public relations & coordination of various gallery-spaces and initiatives in Vilnius, as well as writing actively for local and international cultural press. In 2018 Alberta co-published “VAA Interview: Future Art School” – a selection of #longread interviews, discussing matters of contemporary art education. Alberta is currently working as project coordinator for the Artnews.lt and Artbooks.lt online platforms & the ‘Editorial’ gallery-project space in Vilnius, with a new cycle of ‘meet the artist’ events starting in July.

The main stage of Finnish National Opera and Ballet house Transformed by Tadas Svilainis

Author Alberta Vengrytė

ART

GOING

What senses come to life for you when someone mentions opera these days? High heels temporizing on the omnipresent red carpet, the droning, yet exalted chatter of the arriving audience, the chivalrous attitude of a student bartender offering you a glass of bubbly during intermission, or expensive perfume mixed with high expectations and muted tweets? Oh, that ever-thrilling moment, when the lights finally go down and the drama begins…

Lilli Paasikivi, an opera singer herself, is the Artistic Director of the Finnish National Opera, while Annastina Haapasaari, coming from the field of immersive art and technology, is the project manager. “Emerging immersive technology provides us with opportunities to reach out to new audiences and produce experiences that would not have been feasible or even imaginable just some years ago. We’re talking about elements that can give a new dimension for the drama, support the stories, build up the experience. We want to enrich the experience as a whole, rather than replace traditions. Live performance, the classics, and the traditional way of coming to the theatre— they’re still at the very heart of opera. But it is our duty to let new generations interpret it in their way, in order to let the heritage live on. That’s largely what Opera Beyond is about’, Lilli and Annastina both agree. Opera Beyond is an ongoing initiative set to unroll in several steps, encouraging not only the possibility of ‘re-designing’ the way opera functions today, but also providing its creators with mentoring and funds to realize their vision. And, let’s face it, the financial support is beyond generous—the winner will be given approximately 75k euros, as well as access to the Finnish Opera’s in-house resources, including the orchestra, artists, set workshop, and technicians. Audiences will be presented with a whole new ‘beyond the Opera’ experience premiering in 2020. ‘Opera Beyond also aims to open a dialogue between different opera and theatre houses internationally. We know that we are not alone in this quest; people in the field definitely share an interest in this kind of development. We do hope that Opera Beyond will foster collaboration between different performing arts companies getting together for this movement’, both women agree. ‘The

I decide not to go easy on my interviewees…

As we conduct our conversation between Vilnius and Helsinki, the Opera Beyond team is fully focused on their application, shortlisting candidates from all over the world. Idea fragments germinating from the ‘mission’, ‘vision’, and ‘goal’ of the project they are so passionately developing show up in our correspondence. The prize for the team behind the winning concept of the competiton is quite tempting – a co-production deal with 75k euros production budget and the in-house resources of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet, including the orchestra, artists, set workshop and technicians. The winning team together with world-renowned composer and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen, dramaturge Paula Vesala - also one of the biggest pop icons in Finland today - and the FNOB will realise the immersive art piece by 2020.

Lilli & Annastina: The dialogue between these two fields is something we find worth promoting in the project—they have a lot to give each other. Opera houses are often old institutions and relatively big organizations, as ours is. Their activities are largely site-specific, situated in the buildings themselves. The new mediums—virtual reality, augmented reality, and spatial sound—offer opportunities that can transcend this limitation. They can offer experiences on new platforms, not replacing live performance but enriching our repertoire, stimulating and sparking interest in new audiences. On the other hand, advancements in 3D mapping technologies, 5G, artificial intelligence, and AR bring new possibilities to realize fascinating effects and new dimensions within live performances. It’s entirely possible that in a couple of years, we will be creating also an immersive, full length opera piece for the stage within the Opera Beyond project. We want to explore the ways in which we can expand our territory and take over new platforms. This also enhances accessibility.

They already have a working title for their piece—Memories of the Future. But the concept for the piece has been left open on purpose. Lilli & Annastina explain: ‘It’s a competition concept—the piece must be easily transportable and max. 15 minutes long. It could turn out to be a virtual reality game, a smart glass labyrinth, a spatial sound installation, an AR application.’ Annastina also reveals some of their future plans: ‘Ultimately the outcome of this ‘Nordic art expedition’, as we like to call it now, will be a piece that can be showcased at festivals and a wide variety of different venues. Altogether we have received 193 magnificent entries for the competition from around the world. We will be shortlisting the most innovative, courageous teams, and inviting them to Helsinki to further develop their ideas with mentors and then pitch them to a jury at the end of the competition. We would simply love to see Opera Beyond grow and become a co-creation project, a sort of a collaboration and co-learning platform of forward-looking opera houses, dance companies, theatres, and other players in the field of performing arts.’ The list of Opera Beyond jury members and mentors includes many of the top names in this immersive field, such as Gabo Arora (Johns Hopkins University), Sarah Ellis (the Royal Shakespeare Company), Domhnaill Hernon (Nokia Bell Labs, Experiments in Art and Technology), and Luke Ritchie (London Philharmonic).

Alberta Vengrytė: Please correct me if I am wrong, but the conference emerging from your project will offer knowledge-exchange for professionals from many different fields: stageartists, performers, curators, visual artists, composers, even the technology-people. How will that be possible? Please elaborate on how you will be exploring trending contemporary technologies for the sake of re-designing the way we perceive classical arts, including opera itself.

The ongoing exchange between the artist and his/her audience on both the emotional and intellectual levels has always been the main characteristic of live performance. Until very recently the immediacy and non-repeatability of live performance was what gave it its authenticity. Today this is no longer exactly the case. Technology is piercing the ‘sacred sphere’ of authentic—live—performance, allowing us to play with what I call ‘virtual time’. The existence of performances that take place, not in the fleeting present, but in a repeatable, reproducible, documentable ‘virtual present’, is altering the essence of the creative ‘feedbackloop’ and opening new possibilities for ‘authentic performance’ and our experience of it. By merging the new possibilities of ‘live’, virtual’, ‘online’, ‘present’, and ‘future’ in hundreds of not-yet-articulated new ways, contemporary performance arts embrace familiar/unfamiliar ‘memories of the future’. Meanwhile, Helsinki’s Opera Beyond is freediving bravely into these ‘times to come’, ensuring that we—artists & audience—are hella ready for it! Opera is not dead, long live the Opera!

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

Some would say: ‘Come on! These images are “so yesterday”.’ And they would, partially, be right. 21st-century opera is much more than a social-ritual culture inherited from the elite circles of the Florentine humanists. Opera has opened itself up to the new mindset of the tech generation, enhancing the ‘authentic’ opera experience with VR, AR, smart glass or spatial sound installations, and turning the traditionally ‘site-specific’ event into something more and, significantly, virtual. What are these new developments? We engange in conversation with members of the Finnish National Opera and Ballet’s ongoing project—Opera Beyond.

Finnish opera audience is open-minded and curious’, adds Lilli. But when I ask about the general state of performance critique in Finland—whether there are any critical voices systemizing the effort, both Lilli and Annastina reply pragmatically, saying that ideally they would like to create an ecosystem that encourages creators to work together, share best practices, and exchange influences. ‘As a state institution, it’s increasingly important for us to be inclusive and open; that’s another reason we want this initiative—it’s a creative exploration together with the creators from different fields’, explains Lilli.

‘It shouldn’t become a protectionist art form.’

THE WEATHER DIARIES May 7 – Sept. 8 2019 Museum of Applied Arts and Design

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

N WIND x Events

Vilnius, Lithuania

In early 2012, artists Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer were approached by Nordic House in Reykjavik to curate the Nordic Fashion Biennale in 2014. Cooper & Gorfer instantly understood what the project entailed and were inspired by their objective: to showcase fashion from the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Iceland under themes of cultural heritage and sustainability. It was a project that immediately resonated with the pair, who employed their own specific methods and thought processes rooted in the narrative tradition of photography.

notably harsh in their own ways, with the weather as a constant, definitive presence, almost an entity of its own. The strength of its impact on one’s daily life, one’s emotional body and wider consciousness ultimately plays a significant part in defining the nature and product of one’s creativity. The Scandinavian design strives for a reduced, natural simplicity. The Icelandic aesthetic is more immediate and uncompromising, somehow designed less to please, with a less commercial and more moody, capricious vibe— like the weather.

With this established approach of articulating individual moments of unconscious experience, Cooper & Gorfer collaborated with 12 designers from the Far North to investigate questions of identity and rawness of Nordic expression. They wanted to reference the many layers of personal memories and collective experiences that shape the collective experiences of the West Nordic Islands. ‘(The) North has come far in its awareness of nature and our impact on the planet in an age of consumerism. This consciousness seems to translate into a Northern aesthetic that speaks to so many because it reminds us of a more immediate self‘ says Nina Gorfer.

This is what Sarah Cooper and Nina Gorfer had set out to investigate – how does the weather, the isolation of living on an island, the merciless seasonal chiaroscuro impact or even alter you? To quote Icelandic artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir a.k.a. Shoplifter: ‘The fact that you are living on this life rock in the middle of the ocean and feel the constant throbbing of the isolation – it affects you.‘

As the name of the exhibition suggests, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands have something that differentiates them from the rest of Scandinavia. All of these islands are

The Weather Diaries is a self-contained world conveyed through the symbiosis of photographic essays of large—scale photographs, wall-mounted quotes, documentary film and installations. It uses the work of North Atlantic fashion designers as the starting point to create dreamy scenes, the images comprising a nomadic and moments of high tension, where intricate craftsmanship and weather have found their analogies through a much darker, and more romantic lens.

LOUISIANA MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

NORRSKEN IMPACT WEEK

FLOW FESTIVAL

Mar. 1 – Sept. 22 2019

Sept. 16 – 19 2019

Aug. 9 -11 2019

Louisiana Museum is worth a visit all year round, but this summer takes a centre stage with works of Pipilotti Rist. Rebellious, freethinking and colourful, Pipilotti invites us to immerse ourselves in conspicuously researched, sensuous dreamscapes. Since the mid-80s Rist has explored, challenged and exploded rules, conventions and limitations. She frequently uses video technologies to bind and bend the perception of painting and space. This playful exhibition, created for Louisiana, transforms the modern art museum into what Rist describes as ‘a shared apartment where you can visit each other's brains and bodies‘.

A week in September is dedicated to celebrate the startups making the world a better place. On September 16th–19th 2019 Stockholm will be packed with sessions, performances and unique events to create excitement around the enterprises attempting to solve some of society’s biggest challenges, including famine, food waste, poverty and discrimination. To participate now, vote for the startup you think should win the grand prize. You can also keep track of the latest news and events open to the public at their website.

If you need another reason to visit Helsinki in August, Flow Festival is our pick. Flow is one of the world’s first carbon neutral festivals, with funds from ticket purchases supporting work to protect the Baltic Sea. This year the lineup features James Blake, Tame Impala, The Cure, Erykah Badu, Robyn and loads more. This trailblazing city festival features a mixture of pop culture and experimental arts ranging from street art to light installations, street food to a gourmet selection by Michelin-starred restaurants. The exciting programme is sure to satisfy the most artistic temperament and sets a thrilling precedent for the European festival scene. Finland, Helsinki flowfestival.com

MULTIMEDIA EXHIBITION

TOMMY CASH & RICK OWENS.

‘The Great Modernists. From Monet to Kandinsky‘

The Pure and the Damned.

May 10 – Sept. 10 2019

May 3 – Sept. 15 2019

May 2019 – 2024

If you enjoy art taking on a new dimension ‘From Monet to Kandinsky‘ is coming to Riga. After making a highly acclaimed debut in Berlin in 2017 the multimedia show brings to life the work of 16 pioneers of modern art and established diverse movements as Impressionism, Expressionism and Suprematism. The show screens 5000 works of Claude Monet, Paul Gaugin, Gustav Klimt, Kazimir Malevich, Wassily Kandinsky, Auguste Renoir, Juan Gris and more. The stunning presentation allows visitors to relive the art of the 19th and 20th century in a digital journey that provides a new perspective on the greatest work of the modernist age.

Estonian avant—rapper Tommy Cash and renowned designer Rick Owens come together for ‘The Pure and the Damned‘, a hotly anticipated exhibition at Kumu Art Museum in Tallinn, Estonia. The show showcases a variety of individual works from Owens and Cash alongside various pieces of art they have collaborated on and produced specifically for the show. Characterised by depraved humour, awash with pop culture referencing, the ideas are executed with a subversive, esoteric approach. The twisted new-gothic trend runs through paintings, photographs, and garments all captured in an animated video installation. The Pure and the Damned exhibition will run till September 15th.

Art in public spaces is very different to art in a museum. It is free, accessible, and allows visitors to make a more profound, personal connection with the work. In May, the city of Oslo is introduced the first OsloBiennial, set to run until 2024. OsloBiennalen provides a unique opportunity to explore and re-imagine the city’s public spaces through the production and display of art. Over the course of 2019, 26 projects by local and internationally based artists will be introduced to the public, while the expanding programme for the years ahead will be announced regularly on the Biennial’s website.

Riga, Latvia Modernisti.lv

Tallinn, Estonia Kumu Art Museum

OSLO BIENNALEN

Oslo, Norway oslobiennalen.no

#DESIGNINGCHANGE

Sweden, Stockholm norrskenimpactweek.org

Copenhagen, Denmark louisiana.dk

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