Between Ideas
Prem Krishnamurthy
Design and curating share related goals and means: the mediation and communication of complex and oftentimes challenging sets of content; the coordination of multiple actors and harnessing of networks of production; the creation of conditions of presentation and participation for other individuals. In these and other ways, both disciplines are often in between—between image and text, primary and secondary experiences, originals and reproductions, creative work and its multiple publics. How things are communicated—the qualities of the display itself—and their inflections are key concerns.
In the work of both P!, a critically-acclaimed multidisciplinary space in New York's Chinatown, as well as that of Project Projects, an award-winning graphic design studio, these questions of mediation and multiple publics become both method and content. Rather than assuming that presentation must be neutral, spaces and forums of discourse are activated to create ruptures and productive confusion between different forms of presentation and sets of expectations. Through this ongoing cross-pollination of participants, disciplines, and approaches, design itself becomes a space of intersection and overlap between different communities. Exhibitions-making in this context functions not only as the creation of forms, but rather as an ongoing process of exploration.
Prem Krishnamurthy, founder of P! and Project Projects, will speak about both institutions and their models of operation. Taking stock of the first half-year of the "Mom-and-Pop-Kunsthalle" that is P!, Krishnamurthy will connect this work with key graphic design projects by Project Projects from the past decade in order to suggest new avenues and ends for design and its methods.