Swiss Participation at Dhaka Arts Summit

‘Dhaka Art Summit 2020 – Seismic Movements’ will bring together artists and thinkers in an effort to provoke us to reconsider (art) histories, movement, borders and fault lines. Swiss experts will engage in the theme through a panel on sustainable exhibition displays, and artist Raphael Hefti will present his performance entitled “Quick Fix Remix”.

Design in an Era of Climate-Catastrophe is a panel around initiatives in South Asia – including the Dhaka Art Summit design initiative, ‘Srijan Abartan,’ a workshop for exhibition making and unmaking – that are innovating inspiring ways to allow us to adapt to palpable impact of climate change.

Srijan-Abartan (Srijan in Bangla means to create, creation) is an international, cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary research project aimed at developing new tools and methodologies for creating culturally rooted, ecologically sustainable, and socially responsible exhibition displays.

From artificial glaciers in Ladakh that provide needed water in areas impacted by desertification, to amphibious bamboo schools that float during floods, to the ways that women are innovating new forms of entrepreneurship within the spatial constraints of Bangladesh, to the design of a major art festival like DAS, this panel discussion primes us to think about the impact of what we build, and how to construct new realities for our climactically troubling times. This panel features leaders of the Ice Stupa project, Aga Khan Award winning architect Saiful Haque, architecture theorist Hurarea Jabeen, curator of architecture Sean Anderson (MoMA), and designer Nina Paim (Common Interest), moderated by curator and designer Prem Krisnamurthy (wkshps). Click here for more information on Srijan-Abartan.

In ‘Quick Fix Remix’, Raphael Hefti uses the language of material to communicate a fascination with the behaviour of liquid metals, a material history which is part of the epic story of human civilization. He misappropriates thermite welding processes typically used to repair train tracks, transforming liquid steel through a blazing landscape of incisions that leaves behind a bed of solidified metal debris. Just as volcanic eruptions make visible the hidden energy properties from deep within the earth, Hefti’s “artistic alchemy” makes visible industrial practices and processes forming our machine-made landscapes.

Working across sculpture, installation, painting, photography, and performance, Raphael Hefti explores how humans transform materials in the everyday urban landscape by pushing and testing material limits, while removing these materials from utilitarian obligations. He often works with teams of industry technicians to modify and misapply routine procedures and construction methods to open up new possibilities and unexpected beauty through guided accidents that he documents in his work.

Click here for full DAS programme.

(cover image: Quick Fix Remix by Raphael Hefti)

Postscript:
See the panel discussion “Design in an Era of Climate-Catastrophe” below