Escape from Privet drive: Design Indaba 08
by Carine Zaayman
The first clue, although I did not get it immediately, was the immaculate breakfast spread: tables creaking under croissants, scones and the like, muesli cocktails and a selection of fruit juices. In fact, throughout the three days of the eighth Design Indaba, plates of glorious food seemed to appear and disappear at my appetite's whim. There were praise singers, a Katana performance, trapeze artists and the obligatory appearance by Cape Town's favourite all-girl string quartet, Muse. By the end (which was signalled by four pretty Brazilian dancing girls in feathered headpieces), I was convinced that I had been transformed into Harry Potter, and I had just been given my first introduction to Hogwarts School of Magical Design.
Looking at the other attendees, I thought that most of us seemed to have escaped from our prosaic and difficult realities for three days of design magic. Though instead of wizards teaching potions and spells, superstar designers (including Ron Arad, Dieter Rams and the Campana brothers) gave presentations of their wonderful accomplishments, gravity defying architecture, technologically innovative products and even predicted the future for curtains, cloth and colours.
The one interruption in the simulacrum enchantment of this super cool event was Richard Rodriguez's paper, 'Brown Round World'. Rodriguez (not a designer, but a writer) was the only one of the speakers who was openly skeptical of the self-congratulatory 'design will save the world' mentality characterising the Indaba. Local boy Mike Schalit, from Net#work (the company that brings you Corsa Lite's Raj and Raj2 campaign), also penetrated the seamlessness of the conference by introducing highly eclectic and very South African ingredients into the mix.
Ultimately, perhaps, I am left with the happy satisfaction and uneasy vertigo one gets after having indulged, somewhat guiltily, in a rich meal. Though I could not always reconcile myself with the removed high finance world of the speakers, the Design Indaba did have some spectacular offerings, which at times left me breathless with wonder. On my list of highlights are Martin Lambie-Nairn's presentation on how his company rebranded the BBC, Anthon Beeke's deliciously vulgar account of his controversial theatre posters, Chip Kidd (who at one point imitated Margaret Hamilton as the wicked witch of the West) on his book cover designs, and Thomas Heatherwick's account of his astounding architectural and sculptural feats.
Sticking with the Harry Potter analogy, Richard Seymour deserves a special word: Seymour not only physically resembles Hagrid, but sports the same kind of seemingly brash but hearty and humane personality. I heard some fellow delegates describe his presentation, which was inspirational even for its lack of specificity, as a life-changing event. Every time I subsequently spotted Seymour, I half expected to see him flanked by a creature of magical design.
Curiously, the Indaba had a couple of events branded as 'New Media'. Curious, because I am always confounded by the easy association of design with new media that many people make. Not that I would deny that historically the two areas have intercepted and borrowed from one another, but I am reluctant to leave the identity of new media to be shaped and branded by Ravi Naidoo (Design Indaba director) and the boys, as though it were a division of design.
The 'new media workshop' was presented by two Brits: Daljit Singh (from Digit) and the wacky (make that wanky) Simon Waterfall (from Poke). The workshop focused on novel ways in which you could combine technology and objects, such as, say, a rubber duck. I left the workshop feeling somewhat short-changed. I reluctantly skipped Justin Nurse and Peet Pienaar's session in order to attend the 'new media' workshop, and now I am left with a Britpop hangover and I'm not much wiser on new media.
Singh and Waterfall were also involved in judging the Construction New Media Awards, which was won this year by Sub_UrbanMagazine, a zine in CD-ROM format produced by a couple of young designers and artists from Observatory in Cape Town.
This is where my contestation of new media under the auspices of the Design Indaba is most acute. While the aesthetics of the zine are fantastic, and impeccably produced in variety of formats (video, music, photography and so on), the text is dubious at best. They clearly deserve all the recognition they get for independently producing their beautiful CD, but by awarding them a new media prize, it suggests that new media is all about the 'look', or that it is basically graphic design that happens to be a computer, and be navigable.
In a very different mode, Marcus Neustetter and Stephen Hobbs made an appearance in the foyer with their Museum of Dead Media (MODM). The museum features the artists' collection of out-of-date cameras, cell phones and all manner of objects that were at one point considered state of the art. The MODM functioned as a kind of memento mori for all our new objects endowed with technological miracles and ultra modern casings. The audience was invited by the artists to give their ideas on dead media and the incessant flow of new products onto the markets and into our lives. Importantly, the MODM also asked viewers to reflect on the enormous debris the trajectory of high-tech consumables are leaving behind.
The Potter books are fantastic for escapism, but unlike the young wizard, for us, the real work is waiting at home, and for me, so is the romance. This remains within the realms of producing, writing, teaching and living in a country where poverty and social problems are severe. The kind of exposure that the Design Indaba gives South African audiences cannot be overestimated, and I definitely hope to attend next year's conference. I would, however, liked to have seen more interrogation of the notion of 'social responsibility' that so many of the speakers carelessly and superficially bandied about, especially in the way it relates to the South African context.
