DAMIEN WRIGHT - A CHAT WITH SIX DESIGNERS ON A WORLD THEY DON’T WANT

GREEN MAGAZINE, June 1, 2021

Sometimes to find out what we want, we look to the opposite to understand what we don’t want. A World We Don’t Want presents thirteen ideas on a world we don’t want by leading Australian creatives, to speculate on a future we do want.

 

Contributors include Alterfact, Andrew Carvolth, Andrew Simpson and James Walsh, Dale Hardiman and Stephen Royce, Damien Wright, Flack Studio, Foolscap Studio and Liam Fleming, Guy Keulemans and Kyoko Hashimoto, Marta Figueiredo and Jonathon Griggs, Nicole Lawrence and Thomas Coward, Sam Tomkins and Daniel Licastro, Seljak Brand and Tom Henty.

 

Green magazine is excited to announce a presentation with six creators from Friends & Associates’ Melbourne Design Week 2021 exhibition, A World We Don’t Want. Each speaker will talk for roughly five minutes about their work in the exhibition.

Speakers: Mark Robinson (Flack Studio), Karina and Samantha Seljak, Jonathon Griggs and Marta Figueiredo, Dale Hardiman, Stephen Royce, Damien Wright.

 

Where did the idea for A World We Don’t Want come from?

The 2021 Melbourne Design Week theme is ‘Design The World You Want’. Tom and I began discussing how this year’s theme is incredibly hopeful, and that in previous years we’ve explored themes for exhibitions that are based around the idea of hope. So to contrast, we thought it could be interesting to ask contributors to reflect on the theme by approaching the opposite and producing work that explores a world that they don’t want, hopefully making it more apparent the world they do want. t was also interesting to explore the science behind negative emotions having a stronger effect on humans than positive ones, as the information is processed more thoroughly, and we use stronger words to describe them.


What do you hope visitors/viewers take away from A World We Don’t Want?
As with all of the shows we produce, we hope visitors see the immense thought and reflection the contributors have shown through each of their works, and therefore reflect on their world view. All of our contributors have addressed environmental and/ or societal issues with their work, so we would hope the audience takes away another perspective of the world.

Lastly, how does imagining a world we don’t want teach us what we do want?
Positive thinking isn’t always critical thinking. To really critically think about something, we need to understand the complete and complex picture, which also includes negative elements of the world. For this year’s presentation, we’re reflecting on those negative elements to critically think about the world that we do want.
 

A World We Don’t Want
26 March-5 April
Opening Event
26 March
6pm-11pm
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