Designers Laura Spring and Elina Laitinen will present and discuss their work done in the frame of the 2018 HIAP design residency program in a panel discussion on Monday 10 September at the Helsinki Design Week’s festival center and in an exhibition on Saturday 15 – Sunday 16 September at the Design Museum. Both events are a part of the Helsinki Design Week‘s program.

Under the title “Arranging Practice: Proximity, Distance, Instance” this year’s HIAP design residency examines how mediated and immediate contact of designers with spaces, materials or cooperators impact the process of creation, the artifact produced and, in extension, the idea of what design, the designer, and the object (product) of design is today.

Laura Spring (UK) and Elina Laitinen (FI) have conducted processes based in physical proximity as a complementing arrangement to the distance-visual paradigm of digital work and communication. Their projects regard in different ways the issues of how the traditional industrial definition of design is being revised by such proximal work, and of what relations, roles and ambitions open up to, and define the possible location of, the contemporary designer.

15–16 September 2018 at 11 am – 6 pm
Design Museum, auditorium, Korkeavuorenkatu 23

Researching traditional textile techniques and testing for alternative positions for designers in clothing work, respectively, Laura Spring and Elina Laitinen have led processes that mark up against the visual instantaneousness of the digital realm and the object-focused distance set by design’s industrial tradition. Their projects revisit these paradigms to explore by way of proximal work what relations, roles and ambitions can open up to and define possible other locations for the contemporary designer.

Both events are open to all, welcome!

The HIAP design residency program is produced by the Helsinki International Artist Programme in cooperation with the British Council, Design Museum, Helsinki Design Week and Aalto University.