Held in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, Get It Louder (GIL) is curated by the designers themselves, with the aim of building a collection of cross-media creations, ranging from print graphics to web design, production, fashion, animation, video, architecture, multi-media installation and sound art: a noise made on purpose!
Get It Louder!
Aurelie Duval
"Design is what exists I inside a person?s mind. We can design anything: everybody can design," says Ou Ning, one of the four curators of the exhibition "Get It Louder," the first design exhibition of its kind to be organised in China.
Held in Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing, Get It Louder (GIL) is curated by the designers themselves, with the aim of building a collection of cross-media creations, ranging from print graphics to web design, production, fashion, animation, video, architecture, multi-media installation and sound art: a noise made on purpose!
As a visual noise made by 100 young designers and artists from all over the globe (average age: 25; percentage of Chinese among them: 80; number of works: 200), GIL is a platform for personal vision, and a way to explore their sources of inspirations in their daily lives. As design "should be involved in everyone?s daily life," the exhibition examinea graphic art and design as lifestyles, living attitudes, and as an integral part of urban culture. Which means examining design in its contemporary value, in an international and open-minded way. Which also means that Chinese design went through a ‘long march’ before reaching this 21st century vision!
After 1949 and the beginning of Mao?s era, design began to serve politics. Propaganda posters are retrospectively considered as reflecting primarily the will of the nation, building a collective aesthetic, like all totalitarian regimes. After 1979, under Deng Xiaoping, in a context of social and political reforms and an open-up policy, ?designer? emerged as an independent profession. Then begins an evolution lasting three generations. The first one received a traditional training and education from art schools. It was at the end of the 1980s, and the beginning of the 1990s. Due to the lack of access to computers, the design was hand-made. The second generation was luckier: it was brought up with Macintosh, and it had some basic English skills. So it came under the influence of international digital design trends.
Today?s generation, which grew up on the internet, now has the experience of studying and working abroad. This generation is called "New New Designer." And this one has been selected by the curators for its internet skills, multimedia creations, multi-cultural background and international vision.
Curated as a large living-room within several little rooms, GIL is built by taking the marketability and the productivity of design into account, working with the basic principle that design can only reflect its true values by being applied in real life? The visitor is welcomed in an impressive and interactive accumulation of all types of design, posters, illustrations, photography, books, toys, fashion, video, digital installations, architecture and sounds?not forgetting that design is also a product of mass consumption, mass media, science and technology. Reliance on science and technology may sometimes result in banal culture and art forms, but their development also facilitates greater personalization. In a Chinese context, with a western culture thirst, it becomes necessary to affirm one?s unique expression and talent. All the designers/artists in GIL belong to the generation of images and mass consumption, offering a new conception of living, in between art, daily life, and dreams of a better life. If this is the definition of contemporary design, then Get It Louder and its four curators have achieved their goal. When everybody can design?
