Matadero Madrid center for contemporary creation
CONSCIENCE AGITATORS
Graphics with commitment
Start date
End date
Venue
Central de diseño
Institution
“Graphic design has the power to make us change our view of the world”.
Shigeo Fukuda After these many years of recession that have thrashed a good part of the middle class and conscious of the - ever greater - differences between rich and poor, there is a feeling that there are too many things that aren't going well. Are we - the citizens - sure that the world and our country in particular are more and more frequently being governed by "simiocrats" as the illustrator Aleix Saló would say? What have we all done? We thought we were the centre of the universe and we're barely the end of the line... and now what?
Have we any reasons? Is there any reason for us to be indignant? There are too many questions with no answers and a never-ending list of problems to be solved: the public deficit, the property bubble that burst, the lack of confidence in the markets, unemployment indices that keep increasing, cuts in the welfare state... and all of it added to the now more-than-congenital problems that sketch a pathetic caricature of our weaknesses on the world; wars that show no sign of ending and others that are just starting; Afghanistan, Syria, the Sahel in Africa and up to twenty countries with conflicts that remain active. A Global Village but with a continuous increase in differences between north and south, between rich and poor countries, which give rise to constant migration and, on numerous occasions, complex culture clashes. The incessant destruction of natural resources and the increase in what is being called our Ecological Footprint, deforestation in the Amazon, draining of water reserves, the impoverishment and desertification of land, the increase of debris that is difficult to eliminate, such as the Plastic Soup in the Pacific and, on the other hand, hardly any involvement from emerging or developed governments in stopping it. Hunger, child soldiers, female circumcision, homophobia, slums... have we enough reasons?
This exhibition on display at the moment is a sample of political and social activist design and its only aim is to make people understand that graphic design is a little more than a generator of products and an excuse for "making things prettier", but we also acknowledge that this reality is not easy to change at the same time, as for most of our post-modern society, that is its only purpose - or at least its main one. An idea that has traditionally been strengthened - above all from the 80s onwards - that every "designer" product is a luxury and, in good measure, elitist product, and less frequently associated with what contributes added value beyond a merely aesthetic purpose.
There is an aspect in all of the images on display in this exhibition that is very interesting to analyse and it is that each of them is shown in a way that makes it difficult to find it neutral or "apolitical", as its strength and graphic argument is exactly in that - in its capacity to evoke and make people think and, if possible, act.
“Conscientious Agitators. Graphics with Commitment” is an exhibition made up of almost 200 posters by sixty designers from over 30 countries, a little sample of the work collected for the protest graphics project that was run by the “Fernando Estévez” School of Art and Design in Tenerife in 2008 as part of the content developed for graphic designer training and which was subsequently included in the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Tenerife, the purpose of which was - from the outset - for future professionals to ask themselves about what should be the scope and the limits of the profession, or about what is our capacity for involvement with daily reality, that which surrounds us, influences us and determines us, searching for a delicate balance which must be maintained between seduction and alienation in the messages.
“… we’ll need a lot of people on our side and we’ll have to be able to convince them that a new and better world is possible... it’s going to be a difficult task”. Josh MacPhee
Opening day: Thursday 10th July, 8.30pm
Shigeo Fukuda After these many years of recession that have thrashed a good part of the middle class and conscious of the - ever greater - differences between rich and poor, there is a feeling that there are too many things that aren't going well. Are we - the citizens - sure that the world and our country in particular are more and more frequently being governed by "simiocrats" as the illustrator Aleix Saló would say? What have we all done? We thought we were the centre of the universe and we're barely the end of the line... and now what?
Have we any reasons? Is there any reason for us to be indignant? There are too many questions with no answers and a never-ending list of problems to be solved: the public deficit, the property bubble that burst, the lack of confidence in the markets, unemployment indices that keep increasing, cuts in the welfare state... and all of it added to the now more-than-congenital problems that sketch a pathetic caricature of our weaknesses on the world; wars that show no sign of ending and others that are just starting; Afghanistan, Syria, the Sahel in Africa and up to twenty countries with conflicts that remain active. A Global Village but with a continuous increase in differences between north and south, between rich and poor countries, which give rise to constant migration and, on numerous occasions, complex culture clashes. The incessant destruction of natural resources and the increase in what is being called our Ecological Footprint, deforestation in the Amazon, draining of water reserves, the impoverishment and desertification of land, the increase of debris that is difficult to eliminate, such as the Plastic Soup in the Pacific and, on the other hand, hardly any involvement from emerging or developed governments in stopping it. Hunger, child soldiers, female circumcision, homophobia, slums... have we enough reasons?
This exhibition on display at the moment is a sample of political and social activist design and its only aim is to make people understand that graphic design is a little more than a generator of products and an excuse for "making things prettier", but we also acknowledge that this reality is not easy to change at the same time, as for most of our post-modern society, that is its only purpose - or at least its main one. An idea that has traditionally been strengthened - above all from the 80s onwards - that every "designer" product is a luxury and, in good measure, elitist product, and less frequently associated with what contributes added value beyond a merely aesthetic purpose.
There is an aspect in all of the images on display in this exhibition that is very interesting to analyse and it is that each of them is shown in a way that makes it difficult to find it neutral or "apolitical", as its strength and graphic argument is exactly in that - in its capacity to evoke and make people think and, if possible, act.
“Conscientious Agitators. Graphics with Commitment” is an exhibition made up of almost 200 posters by sixty designers from over 30 countries, a little sample of the work collected for the protest graphics project that was run by the “Fernando Estévez” School of Art and Design in Tenerife in 2008 as part of the content developed for graphic designer training and which was subsequently included in the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Menéndez Pelayo International University in Tenerife, the purpose of which was - from the outset - for future professionals to ask themselves about what should be the scope and the limits of the profession, or about what is our capacity for involvement with daily reality, that which surrounds us, influences us and determines us, searching for a delicate balance which must be maintained between seduction and alienation in the messages.
“… we’ll need a lot of people on our side and we’ll have to be able to convince them that a new and better world is possible... it’s going to be a difficult task”. Josh MacPhee
Opening day: Thursday 10th July, 8.30pm
