Course Schedule

Course Schedule

Veranstaltungen von Prof. Renata Stih

Lehrveranstaltungen

Industrial Design & the Public Sphere (FSL) (Seminar)

Dozent/in: Frieder Schnock, Renata Stih

Inhalt: This seminar explores how industrial design shapes our environment whenever “Mechanization Takes Command” (Sigfried Giedion), changing urban structures and our immediate surrounding. We will question machines as metaphors for longings and projections where dreams and nightmares fuse into each other and provide telling examples of social and political hierarchies. We will analyze how industrial design and civilization are closely linked to images of survival strategies and wars of conquest, exploring our relationship to sciences and social sciences by looking closely at design and objects relating to war and the representation of power throughout 19th and 20th century till today. We will explore the aesthetics of mobility by looking at trains, planes, boats, submarines and the changing role cars play in our society. Marketing and competition aspects lead to signature results in size, speed and high stakes in engineering, enforced by politics to get the first man in space and on the moon, whatever the cost. Those technological challenges and industrial developments have a deep impact on the public sphere, seen as a threat to a democratic government by President Eisenhower in 1961: "… we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist." The seminar will start with an excursion to Berlin on Fr & Sat, June 13 + 14 (unfortunately there are no travel funds available - please plan your individual voyage to Berlin, meeting point will be announced to all participants for Friday June 13 at 2 pm). During the second meetings at Leuphana on June 27 + 28 you'll do group & short solo presentations.