News – Page 18 – BeOpenFuture

Things Will Have to Change

5 May 201218 March 2019Ekaterina Vekova

Tim Abrahams

writer

Tim Abrahams is a former editor of Blueprint. He now writes for Icon, Architect’s Journal and RIBA Journal. He is also the owner of a digital publishing company and an advisor to major cultural institutions on their online strategy.

Everyone operating in the worlds of architecture, design and technology knows that the world has changed since 2008, but the job of identifying and describing exactly how is only just beginning to happen. It was the contention of the convener of the first BE OPEN conference, Francesco Morace, that three new relationships in the world of design had undergone a huge and important shift. Morace suggests that a fundamental realignment in thinking has occurred in over the issue of sustainability, the idea of happiness and perhaps most fundamentally the relationship between the local and the universal. These theories were tested by the inquiring minds of some of the leading figures in the design world.

Sitting Uncomfortably

5 May 201218 March 2019Ekaterina Vekova

Tim Abrahams

writer

The most important object in the Freud Museum in London, where the great psychoanalyst lived for just one year before he died, is clearly his couch. Draped in Persian rugs and scattered with cushions, it is on the bohemian side of mid-20th century tastes. Although insignificant in size it is impossible not to look at the piece of furniture and not think of all the dreams that have been relayed there and the neuroses diagnosed. Given that Freudian analysis prioritises relations between the subject and their parents, the familial and domestic becomes the site of the fundamental debates of existence. The couch is not just important because of his historical significance but also because of its symbolism. Anne Leibovitz has photographed it and Louise Bourgeois has exhibited alongside it.

Exhibition Verge

29 April 201212 March 2019Ekaterina Vekova

Valentine Dyakonov

Art critic and expert

Russian art critic and expert on the 20^th – 21^st century art.

Russian design became widely acknowledged at the same period as Russian art, i.e., in the 1910-1920s. At that time the self-identifications of progressively minded Western and Russian artists had much in common: here and there the artists demonstrated a huge interest in new technologies, targeted the most unspecific audience and consequently aspired to achieve universal artistic solutions considering both economy and aesthetics. Yet, the imminent differences of the addressed audiences could not but draw a line between the Avant-garde practices in the West and in Russia.

Сonference. Daily & Happy

18 April 201212 March 2019Ekaterina Vekova

Happiness is many things to many different people. To Julian Schnabel it is clearly the idea of ceaseless creativity that leads – sometimes inadvertently – to happiness. If Schnabel’s philosophy is that there is no past or future, but an endless present, then his art becomes a means of simultaneously existing in as many places as possible. Happiness for him is the bi-product of multiple acts of creativity. Separating where creativity ends and happiness begins is difficult to describe, as chef Carlo Cracco found. Alberto Alessi meanwhile used the history of his company to challenge our notions of what is serious and what makes us happy.

$100m to Be Invested in Intellectual Development by Russian Entrepreneur Elena Baturina

15 April 201218 May 2022Ekaterina Vekova

International Design Week of Milan: the launchpad for BE OPEN The Director of the BE OPEN Foundation today announced the intentions behind a new cultural and philanthropic initiative that aims to harness the brainpower of the global creative elite – the great minds in the arts, education, design, business and the media – and asks them to imagine and then build solutions for the future.