DESIGN POESI

In the beginning of my summer holiday Salam from Betlehem Fair Trade Artisans, (BFTA) called me about an assignment, she needed a designer for. When I hear what it was about I immediately accepted because, this was about all I long to use my designerly skill for. A cooperation between BFTA, a Palestinian NGO I already was working with and then Sindyanna of Galilee, an Israeli non-profit organization led by a team of Arab and Jewish women working to create social change. My summer was set.

The project was to combine products from the two partners and my task was to develop a concept and giving shape to the products from the organisations. Also I was given that the concept had to be the about Peace. At our very first meeting I sugessted to build the concept up around food and having sharing a meal. This idea stayed with us and eventually became the Living Peace concept with a Living Peace Meal Box. The box contains a Table Tower with two small stacking dishes, one of olive wood and one made of ceramic. Along with the dishes Olive Oil and Za’atar to put in the dishes. In the centre of the box did we decide to put the Balancing Peace Bird and a Peace Conversations Menu.

The idea with the box is, that person receiving the box invites friend or even somebody they like to reconcile with to a meal. The small dishes and the oil and za’ater is to start the meal, break bread and start the Peace Conversation.

By Henriette Melchiorsen

Early on in my career I worked to learn the mechanisms of design. Today I use the power of this process to change the system from within. I am part of a necessary change. Working for a new paradigm that uses creativity, art and design to find the new paths for us humans to enter into the future more happy, healthy and in balance with our surroundings and the eco system we are a part of.

I am a pragmatic idealist. I use creativity as an approach and method to create new visions. More sustainable solutions. I do this by facilitating processes in cross disciplinary forums with collaborations between many different disciplines. Because I believe any one of us might run faster alone but will get much farther working together, and the enormous problems we’re facing collectively today cannot be solved by a single person or a single industry alone.

We need to work together. Dream together. Achieve this together.

I want to expose the faults in the current system using art and critical design. And then use the vacuum that occurs to argue for the needed change – both of design as a practice and of our lifestyle and society. I dream to initiate the transition from a society based on economic growth, to an emerging future with wider criterions of success.

Something as naive as a world for our common best.

– Is how I feel, because for now I’ll not be going to spend three month at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, CA. Due to illness in my closest family, here in DK it the right place to be – and the right thing to do. But I doesn’t change the fact, that I feel disappointed and annoyed, because I had looked so much forward, prepared and also waited throughout two years of pandemic for this. Now time must show …

Når vi undersøger noget, påvirker vi næsten altid det, vi undersøger. Når du stiller spørgmål kan svaret være interessant, og det kan den forandring som spørgsmålet sætter i gang, i den det får stillet spørgsmålet, også være.

I forbindelse med projekt The Time Is Now overvejer jeg om det ting, som deltagerne udvælger bliver til en interessant ‘samling’ af ting? Eller om det mest er selve spørgsmålet, der er interessant …

Når jeg interviewer kan jeg godt lide pauser, fordi de giver ro til at reflektere og finde de gode svar. Pauser kan være også pinefulde, og måske alligevel også der være en måde, at få lidt mere at vide.

I’m going to spend the fall in Denmark since my stay at 18th Streets Arts Center in Santa Monica, California has again been postponed. I was granted the art residency by the Danish Art Foundation #DAF / #statenskunstfond back in 2019. First the plan was to go to 18th SAC in the fall of 2020, but the pandemic changed this. Now again I was prepared and good to go, my calendar was cleared and I was super excited, but do to the COVID situation in the US the US government maintain the very strict entry rules for foreign visitors. That leaves me in Denmark alone with hopes for a better situation in the early spring of 2022.

Watch by #levimaestro

I teach at the Royal Danish Academy school of Design and normally campus looks like this … on a sunny day.

But do to the current Corona lockdown campus is empty and all activities are now online and teaching looks more like this at the moment. It is really a learning process – for the teachers too.

2020 har været et usædvanligt år. Pandemien har med al tydelighed vist os, hvor afhængige vi alle er af hinanden og samtidigt har vores fælles handlekraft og kollektive intelligens også vist, at vi kan langt meget mere end det vi udøver i dag, når vi arbejder sammen om fælles mål. Vaccinerne er et fantastisk eksempel på dette.

Lad os tage denne læring og bruge vores kollektiv superpower i 2021, så vi igen kan være samme, og nu endelig få sat seriøs turbo på arbejdet med de helt store fælles udfordringer som klimaforandringer og den hastige reduktion af biodiversitet. Så nu er det op med ærmerne. Det er tid til big-time forandring NU.