Design Moneyfest 2012
BY KAJ KALIN – Nobody needs design.
Globally thinking, design is a rare need.
It’s hard to know anything about it.
In a designer hotel, someone died of designer drugs.
Design: A class trip and status picnic.
The latest cell phone model upgrades a consumption worker.
Design: The rank of nobility for products.
Design: Products whose existence is motivated by looking and talking.
Design:Well-planned desires realized in a disciplined manner.
Good manners are not enough; we need laws.
Imagination is not enough; we need business.
Realism should not be confused with rationality.
The most important things in life don’t require nuclear power plants.
Everyone needs well-designed and safe products.
Especially if you can’t walk or brush your teeth.
Or if you lose a leg, an arm or an eye. Things happen.
A deadly and fascinating combination: Technology.
Technology is not based on progress but on the power of the few,
novelties and greed.
Technology feeds boredom, rage and world-weariness.
Technology invents social styles.
Handwriting is disappearing.
We leave behind radiation waste.
In large companies, designers don’t struggle with their consciences.
Thousands of in-house designers are acting against their better judgment.
On summer vacation, everyone carves a bark boat with a birch rind sail.
Made in Nuremberg: They were only following orders and doing their duty.
Question: When does the age of design begin?
Answer: When a child learns table manners.
The goal of life is not happiness but other people.
No matter how seductive products may be.
In spite of it all, we are mortal.
Whatever appeals to emotions touches.
Half of memory is smell and skin.
Only touching can make the feeling of existence reality.
Touch is a fundamental sense; it anchors us to the world.
The strength of the squeeze of a newborn baby’s fingers is startling.
The first dialogue with the world takes place through squeezing and sucking.
Awareness of touch is the first mental capacity of humans.
There is no authenticity in the world of products and art.
Just authentic pieces of copies.
The painting guarded in the museum was a disappointment.
The colours were not the same as in the poster hanging on the wall at home.
Publicly authentic mostly means… how to phrase it… generally fasist.
When art is real, the person who creates or experiences it has a moment in heaven,
when no one else is around.
What makes something real can hurt,
and it may not necessarily be pleasant or beautiful but is absolutely good.
Esthetics is a question of belief. The only supernatural experience.
The only possible miracle. Successful resuscitation on the side of a highway.
Big and complex questions can be answered by simple means.
As long as the right preconditions exist.
It is a question of the human need for safety.
This means a state that strengthens concentration and allows
a degree of peace and quiet.
Made it, home.
Characters with Spaces:
Event is the space between two people, humanity.
Come closer!
Go through!
Kaj Kalin, Cultural journalist and design curator. Honorary member, Finnish Association of Designers Ornamo. Nordic Design Prize 1998. Kalevi Jäntti Foundation Literature Prize 1994.
ALVESALO