START_UP: Designer's New Projects

For generations of Austrian designers, the nature and meaning of designed surfaces has been an evolving dialogue about morality, revolution and truth. For this exhibition a new generation was challenged to contribute to this Vienna born discourse about “ornament and crime” by engaging with a series of everyday decorative acts. Activities like cake decoration, tattooing, hairdressing and flower arranging are vernaculars that stand outside high design culture. But these Loosian ‘sites of crime’ act as cultural expressions carrying intense forms of personal and social meaning.Adopting their techniques and materials, the question about design’s role as a social act is asked. Oscillating between high and sub culture, the special and the ordinary, the exhibition explores the potential of the decorative and ornamental as a new joy into the world.

Contributions by breaded-Escalope, bkm, danklhampel, Guerra Vanzetti, Nina Levett, Sebastian Menschhorn, mischer'traxler, Katja Nagy/Bernadette Krejs, Andreas Pohancenik, Patrick Rampelotto

Curator Sam Jacob

Project coordination Thomas Geisler
Assistance Karin Ferrari

The cooperation agreed upon for 2009 between MAK and departure aims to establish a new platform in Vienna for future-oriented projects that expand the concept of design. Also presented in the MAK DESIGN SPACE under the title "START_UP: Designer's New Projects", will be prototypes and innovative ideas by young Austrian designers.