Chapter 2: Self

23-24 Sept 2022
Grafill and Podium
Oslo, Norway

The newest iteration of the Post Design Festival unfolds across four chapters taking place between Spring 2022 and Autumn 2023. By digging deep into the theme of “entanglement,” we unravel the intersections, interconnections, and invisible strings that give shape to our visual and political surroundings. At Grafill and Podium in Oslo, our second chapter will think through how the body, personal identity and the situated knowledge of the self/selves can inform a creative, artistic practice.

How and why is entangled with who we are. We are complex, porous beings shaped by many types of forces, be it the social, cultural, technological, biological, or political. How can creative practitioners better understand their positions within the vast networks they occupy?

We hope to explore these question over two days with a workshop, exhibition, and symposium, bringing together local and international speakers, design professionals, students, organizers, and more. Digital participation is possible via live stream, and we’ll be sharing videos, workshop results, and other forms of documentation on this site—preserving our trajectory for when we pick up our theme again in the chapters to come.

Schedule

Friday 23 Sept

  • 11:30–12:00

    Registration

    Podium

  • 12:00–16:00

    Workshop pt. 1:
    Noam Youngrak Son

    Podium

  • 16:00–17:30

    Registration
    —Bar is open

    Grafill

  • 17:30–17:45

    Opening remarks

    Grafill

  • 17:45–18:45

    Talk:
    Noam Youngrak Son

    Grafill

  • 19:00–20:00

    Talk:
    Laurenz Brunner

    Grafill

Saturday 24 Sept

  • 10:00–14:00

    Workshop pt. 2:
    Noam Youngrak Son

    Podium

  • 15:00–15:50

    Registration
    —Bar is open

    Grafill

  • 15:50–16:00

    Opening remarks

    Grafill

  • 16:00–17:00

    Talk:
    Tenthaus

    Grafill

  • 17:15–18:15

    Talk:
    Nushin Yazdani

    Grafill

  • 18:30–19:30

    Talk:
    Sophie Douala

    Grafill

  • 19:30–19:40

    Closing remarks

    Grafill

  • 20:00–23:00

    Exhibition and party

    Podium

  • Programme

    Talk: Noam Youngrak Son

    Noam often physically inserts themselves in their work in a simultaneously personal and performative manner. Based in Ghent, praciticing communication design and deviant, queer publishing, they attempt to convey the stories of marginalized bodies which often include that of themselves into designed forms that do not conform to the cis-hetero-normative and colonial power structure. They inscribe myths for the underrepresented in various mediums, from books to public workshops to 3D printed sex toys. Noam’s talk at the tangle will be centered around domesticity as a method to resist the temptation for scale and spectacle and instead attempt to distribute the authority of a designer so that they’re no longer a singular and divine creator but a social being entangled in collective creative processes.

    Talk: Nushin Yazdani

    How designed interfaces and AI impacts us as individuals is entangled with our personal identities. Berlin based transformation designer, artist and AI design researcher Nushin Yazdani works at the intersection of machine learning, design justice and intersectional feminist practices, and writes about the systems of oppression of the present and the possibilities of just and free futures. Through experimental online spaces such as the AI research, advocacy and art platform Dreaming Beyond AI, Nushin critically promotes the collective reimagination of better futures.

    Talk: Tenthaus

    Artist Jacky Jaan-Yuan Kuo and artistic researcher Valentina Martinez will join us at the tangle to represent the Oslo based art collective Tenthaus. Itself a tangle of artistic outputs, Tenthaus currently encompasses both a project room and an exhibition space, a mobile studio, and a wide range of curatorial projects. They focus on local contexts exploring collectivity and inclusion through different forms of engagement. As a collective Tenthaus reimagines themselves and what it means to be artists working with the public, and what makes a relevant socially engaged practice today. How is the practice of the individual informed by participation in open co-creation, collective discussion and community lead environments?

    Talk: Sophie Douala

    Sophie is a Berlin based, France raised, Cameroon born artist and creative director specialised in storytelling and creative campaigns. In her practice and life, she seeks to explore the interplay between a formal visual language and its cognitive and emotional affect. Sophie's aesthetics are both very personal and immediately inviting to the audience, mixing the painful with the colorful, and politics with beauty. We are excited to learn more about how and why Sophie Douala inserts herself in her complex and immersive work when she takes the stage at the Post Design Tangle in Oslo.

    Talk: Laurenz Brunner

    Through his independent practice, exploring equilibriums between high and pop culture, concept and improvisation, art history and science fiction, the critically acclaimed Swiss designer Laurenz Brunner highlights the importance of self-initiated work and research. In 2022 Laurenz launched Source Type, an editorial platform and type foundry, where he collaborates with a diverse team exploring the effects of language, typography, and form on contemporary culture. He is the designer of contemporary classic typefaces like Akkurat, Circular and Bradford, and besides an international teaching career, he has worked with Schauspielhaus Zürich, Offprint Paris / London, documenta 14, Most Beautiful Swiss Books and many others.

    Workshop: Chimera Gastronomy

    In Noam Youngrak Son's workshop 'Chimera Gastronomy: Malleable flesh, amalgamated bodies, and plastic kinship', the group works individually and collectively on a large malleable body sculpture. During the creative process, identities, gender and notions surrounding ethics are discussed and reflected. The co-created sculpture is thus a translation of our collective and personal struggles, interspecies discoveries and political feelings around bodies in this society. The result of the workshop is a so-called Chimera: a living being that arises from cell mixing — a collective visual(ised) identity of sorts.​

    Info

    PARTNER
    Grafill is an interest organisation for those studying or working within the field of visual communication in Norway. Grafill’s members are students and professionals working in the areas of graphic design, illustration, animation, comics/cartooning and digital design. 
    grafill.no

    VENUES
    Grafill
    Møllergata 39,
    0179 Oslo, Norway
    Google Maps

    Podium
    Hausmannsgate 34,
    0182 Oslo, Norway
    Google Maps

    PARTICIPATION
    Buy a ticket to attend the symposium and workshop in Oslo or digitally via our online stream.
    Tickets

    COVID-19 CONSIDERATIONS
    We encourage all participants to wash hands regularly, test regularly if possible, and generally be mindful and respectful of one another’s circumstances and those that are vulnerable.