Klemens Grund, D7
Radical Craft
Glasobjekt von Philipp Weber
Direktorenhaus, with its exhibition rooms and workshops is a transit zone for artisans, designers and manufactories. “Craftmanship” is developed beyond the usual. The projects at Direktorenhaus oscillate between creative experiments, new materials, social future plans and design art.
The Direktorenhaus’ annual exhibition, “Radical Craft”, presents 73 designers and craftsmen who show the importance of handicrafts today and in the future. In the modernized world of goods, there are no static products, only improvements — no stable qualities, only overbidding. The exhibition “Radical Craft” shows how contemporary product design escapes this spiral by referring to its origins: to its experimental predecessors in conceptual art and radical craftsmanship. These critical approaches show how important the quality of the products we use every day is: it is a necessary condition for a comprehensive economic turn, which is ultimately a cultural turn. The way we produce and consume things at the same time is the key to technological, economic and societal change, driving the dynamics of change among designers, artisans and manufacturers. Many of them are already working sustainably today and anticipating the future.
In its annual exhibition, the Direktorenhaus shows that there is hardly any fundamental separation between designers and craftsmen: For Greek antiquity, the term techné encompassed both craftsmanship and technical ingenuity, i.e. problem-solving behaviour that we now understand as design. The difference between design and craftsmanship lies in the way of thinking, between the conservative and the innovative human type. Both designers and craftsmen intervene in the debate about consumption and the turnaround in prosperity — with the means of products that can be experienced sensually, whose value does not diminish over time, but which, from their own depth, increases with every year.
