As the month-long 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial draws near, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts (İKSV) have revealed a full list of projects and participants. Curated by Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, the biennial—which is titled Are We Human? The Design of the Species: 2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 years, 200,000 years—will revolve around one pressing provocation: that design itself needs to be redesigned.
The 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, which will officially open on the 22nd October 2016 and last for four weeks, will ask the question: Are We Human? Encompassing a wide range of ideas related to The Design of the Species, from timeframes of 2 Seconds to 2 Days, 2 Years, 200 Years and 200,000 Years, the international show will revolve around one pressing provocation: that design itself needs to be redesigned. It will do so by exploring the intimate relationship between the concepts of "design" and "humanity."
Coinciding with the organization’s 60th anniversary this year, The Graham Foundation has announced the list of recipients of their 2016 Grants to Organizations, a total of $419,000 (USD) to be given to 31 exemplary projects from around the world. The Organization Grants are awarded to projects displaying “originality, capacity, feasibility and potential for impact” and are divided amongst four categories: Exhibition, Film/Video/New Media, Public Program, and Publication.
"Design always presents itself as serving the human," state Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley, "but its real ambition is to redesign the human." Their curatorial statement for the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial, which will open later this year and is themed around the title Are We Human? The Design of the Species: 2 Seconds, 2 Days, 2 Years, 200 Years, 200,000 Years, brims with reflective and often prescient statements such as this. All that will be encompassed by this Biennial, they say, will revolve around one pressing provocation: that design itself needs to be redesigned.
At a media meeting this morning at the Istanbul Archaeological Museums Library, the curators of the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial Beatriz Colomina and Mark Wigley announced the theme of next year's event, titled “ARE WE HUMAN?: The Design of the Species: 2 seconds, 2 days, 2 years, 200 years, 200,000 years.” The event, which will be held from October 22nd to December 4th next year, is intended to combine elements of both media documentary and archaeological project and according to the curators "will explore the intimate relationship between the concepts of 'design' and 'human.'"
The Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts have announced that internationally renowned architectural historian and theorist Beatriz Colomina and architectural historian, theorist, and critic Mark Wigley will curate the 3rd Istanbul Design Biennial to be held in the summer of 2016. Colomina, a Professor of Architecture at Princeton University and curator of the recent Radical Pedagogies: Architectural Education in a Time of Disciplinary Instability exhibition (Lisbon Triennale, 2013; Venice Biennale 2014) will join Wigley, Professor and Dean Emeritus of Columbia University's GSAPP and renowned writer and curator, in helping to cement the biennial's international reputation.