One Day Collection for a Future Project

Curator and creative director on cross-disciplinary (social) design projects Joanna van der Zanden (NL) is particularly interested in the exploration of cultural formats where the public at large gets involved in the curatorial process of research, questioning and making. Until January 2010 Van der Zanden was artistic director of Platform21, the incubator of a new design centre in Amsterdam. For 2011 and 2013 she was appointed artistic director of the Rotterdam Design Prize, a bi-annual Dutch design award that aims to stimulate debate on the role of design in a cultural and social context.

Open Set 2016
The sixth edition of Open Set will take place from 24.07 to 06.08.2016, a two-week long series of workshops, public interventions and lectures. The event aims to promote and enhance the social value of design by facilitating debates around the chosen theme from a rich diversity of cross-disciplinary perspectives and socially engaged cultural practices.

Open Set is being hosted by Kunstblock, a Rotterdam based foundation set up by five cultural institutions on the Witte de Withstraat. The various workshops and presentations of the Summer School will take place in different Kunstblock affiliated locations.

This year’s Open Set will draw attention to the theme Memories of the Future, a programme that explores how the notion and perception of memory can be used to stimulate alternative approaches towards the future. How are memory and the future connected? How do we activate memory? Is memory something set by our cultural frames of reference? Open Set is proud to feature new symposiums and intensive workshops by more than 16 different tutors and speakers both acclaimed and emerging, such as: Maki Suzuki (Åbäke) & Dr. Sebastian Groes (UK), Rick Poynor (UK) & Els Kuijpers (NL), Liza Enebeis (Studio Dumbar) (UK-NL) & Rejane Dal Bello (BR) & Bruno Setola (NL), Na Kim (KR), Olia Lialina (RU-DE), Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries (KR), Bik Van der Pol (NL), Mike Thompson & Susana Cámara Leret (Thought Collider) (NL), Caetano Carvalho (BR), and others.

Open Set 2016 is made possible by the generous support of Creative Industries Fund NL and the public symposium is organized in collaboration with the Institute of Network Cultures.