Fabrica. The Benetton Communications Research Center Lecture by Omar Vulpinari & Exhibition Opening “Fabrica. For the People, From the People”
MAK DESIGN SPACE Stubenring 5, 1010 Vienna Exhibition Term June 17 – August 16, 2009
Event by design> new strategies A cooperation project of MAK & departure
the exhibition “Fabrica. For the People, From the People” will be opened at the MAK DESIGN SPACE. The title of the exhibition underlines Fabrica’s unique two-way dialogue with its global audience. Featured in the show are three different areas of application that give an insight into the various fields of activity of Fabrica whose central concern is social commitment: a selection of posters from four campaigns for UNWHO and UNICEF, the participative “Colors Notebook” project, and short documentaries on “near-extinct” trades.
“Show the Truth”, for World No Tobacco Day 2009 is a recent poster campaign for UNWHO that focuses on the fact that reality-based pictorial health warnings are more effective than simple text-based ones. For the “Global Child Injury Prevention” campaign for UNWHO and UNICEF, 2008, the Austrian graphic designer Valerie Gudenus created colorful little Plasticine figures to symbolize children who are then shown in life-endangering situations. “Global Road Safety Campaign for Young Road Users” for UNWHO, 2007, consists of five posters, the target group being young people in traffic, who have the highest casualty rate in road accidents. “Global Violence Prevention Campaign” for UNWHO, 2003, takes a stance against any form of violence (child abuse, violence against women, suicide, etc.)
The “Colors Notebook” project is the result of a cooperation of Fabrica with the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and Reporter Without Borders. Blank-page special issues of “Colors” magazine are regularly sent out all over the world to give people an opportunity to express their opinions without filters or censorship. On view in the show are originals: a selection of “Colors Notebooks” filled out and sent back to Fabrica where they were collected.
New blank “Colors Notebooks” will be available for free at the MAK DESIGN SPACE. Visitors are incited to participate in the project by taking them home, filling them with text and designs, and sending them back to Fabrica.
Under the title “Unique Trades”, six documentaries portray occupations which presumably will soon have ceased to exist, such as the “Manna Man” in Sicily who produces bread, or two fishermen hunting for shrimps from the horse-drawn cart in the shallow coastline waters, a school for toreros in Madrid, the last glass-eye maker in Great Britain, etc.
Like Ron Arad before, Vulpinari will pick, as curator, young Austrian designers to be showcased in the second START_UP presentation which will be shown in September under the cooperation of MAK & departure.
Omar Vulpinari, born 1963 in the Republic of San Marino and raised in the USA, has been head of the Fabrica Visual Communication Department since 1998. Under his direction several projects have been developed, e.g., United Nations, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, United Colors of Benetton, Coca-Cola, Nikon, Alessi, Porsche, Vespa, The New Yorker Magazine, Domus, Mediaset, Fox International. Moreover, works were created for exhibitions at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (1998), at the ZeroOne Design Center, Seoul (2005), as well as for the traveling exhibition “Fabrica: Les Yeux Ouverts”, shown 2006 at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2007 at the Triennale di Milano and the Shanghai Art Museum, and 2008 at the Shiodome Italia Creative Center, Tokyo. Vulpinari is a designer, curator, creative director, and professor. He is vice-president of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA), consultant to the UNWHO, and a member of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA). Vulpinari studied communication at the Universtiy of Bologna and graphic design at the Albe Steiner Center, Ravenna, and today teaches “Fundamentals of Two-Dimensional Design” at the University of the Republic of San Marino and the Università di Venezia (IUAV).
About departure
departure, wirtschaft kunst und kultur gmbh is an agency that supports entrepreneurs and start-up founders in the Creative Industries, from fashion, music, audio-vision, multimedia to publishing, art market, and architecture, who are interested to get things going in an urban structure, people concerned to bring international cultural and economic impulses to the city and thus to strengthen the innovative potential of an entire region. departure was established in fall 2003 as Austria’s first independent business development and service agency and has meanwhile come to be recognized throughout Europe as a successful innovation promotion model on a competitive basis. Promotion by departure focuses on exceptional ideas and visionary projects that make high economic and contentual requirements.
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