Nieuwe Instituut presents Out of Joint, the Dutch Pavilion for the London Design Biennale
Alongside its role as the Artistic Director for the 2023 London Design Biennale, the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam presents Out of Joint for the Dutch Pavilion entry. Commissioned in collaboration with the Dutch Embassy in London. The London Design Biennale takes place from 1 to 25 June at Somerset House in London.
31 May 2023
Curated by spatial designer and editor Colin Keays, Out of Joint responds to the Biennale theme of The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations by reflecting on our current global uncertainty. Inspired by the architecture of bureaucratic spaces, the Dutch Pavilion features a dynamic installation of functional fragments that can be provided to other pavilions, thereby scattering the Dutch Pavilion throughout the Biennale venue of Somerset House, creating new moments of interaction and collaboration for participants and visitors alike.
At a time of rising nationalism and growing geopolitical instability, international cooperation has become more crucial than ever, but also, seemingly out of reach. By scattering and redistributing the Dutch Pavilion, the expected routing of the Biennale - a site of global representation - is reorientated towards new anchor points that can foster discussions around the common interests and overlapping sympathies necessary to overcoming our increasingly fragmented world.
During the medal ceremony on the opening day of the Biennale, the professional jury, which consists of leading experts, awarded the Dutch entry an honourable mention in the category 'most inspiring interpretation of the theme'.
“At a time of rising nationalism, hardening borders and growing geopolitical uncertainty, The Global Game aims to be both a reminder and facilitator of the international collaborations we’ll need to confront global challenges. Colin Keays’s curatorial concept reflects this by brilliantly embedding this notion within the Biennale, and its venue of Somerset House.”
Through a series of collaborative workshops, the design team of Fabulous Future, Studio Verter, Tim Teven Studio and Jeanine van Berkel have developed the Pavilion’s scenography. Evoking an ambiguous bureaucratic environment, a nod to Somerset House’s former life as a collection of administrative spaces including Inland Revenue and the administrative headquarters of the Royal Navy, this layered history is used as a starting point for new collaborations and ideas.
“Out of Joint puts a collaborative approach into practice at two different scales: on one hand through the assembly of a design team with different backgrounds to work on a brief together, rather than exhibiting individual works. In parallel, this approach translates to the scale of the whole biennale. Each time that a component from the Dutch pavilion is borrowed, there is potential for a new connection to be formed.”
The space occupied by the Dutch Pavilion will now facilitate the logistical processes necessary for other participants to borrow its component fragments. From a central desk, other pavilions can fill out the required paperwork to borrow the items for use in their own pavilions.
London Design Biennale 2023: The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations
The Biennale theme of The Global Game: Remapping Collaborations was set this year by Aric Chen, General and Artistic Director of the Nieuwe Instituut. Chen and Nieuwe Instituut, acting as the Artistic Director for the 2023 London Design Biennale, have used the theme to experiment and challenge the traditional Biennale format of national and territorial pavilions by asking participants to collaborate with each other, facilitated by a web-based game, specially developed by Amsterdam practice Play the City.
Founded in 2016 by Sir John Sorrell CBE and Ben Evans CBE, London Design Biennale is held at Somerset House and promotes international collaboration and the global role of design with exhibitions and installations that demonstrate the ambition to create universal solutions to problems which concern us all.
Over the course of the Biennale, the Nieuwe Instituut will also organise an (inter)national working group in collaboration with Creative Industries Fund NL to research the response to this year's collaborative theme and examine new ways of working for future events and exhibitions.
More information
The London Design Biennale and the Dutch Pavilion will be on display until 25 June 2023 at Somerset House in London. For more information, see https://nieuweinstituut.nl/en/projects/london-design-biennale-23
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Note for editors, not for publication
Images: The press package of the Dutch entry can be downloaded here.
For questions and requests, please contact press officer Robin van Essel
via r.vanessel@nieuweinstituut.nl or +31 (0)6 3803 9218
About the Nieuwe Instituut
Nieuwe Instituut is the Netherlands’ national museum and institute for architecture, design and digital culture. Based in Rotterdam, a global centre for design innovation, the institute’s mission is to embrace the power and potential of new thinking, exploring past, present and future ideas in order to imagine, test and enact a better tomorrow. Encouraging visitors of all ages to question, rethink and contribute, the institute’s exhibitions, public programmes, research, and wide-reaching national and international initiatives provide a testing ground for collaboration with leading designers, thinkers and diverse audiences, critically addressing the urgent questions of our times.
In addition to housing the National Collection for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, the institute manages the 1933 Sonneveld House, a leading example of Dutch Functionalist architecture, as part of its campus in Rotterdam’s Museumpark.
In 2022, the Nieuwe Instituut became the world’s first Zoöp, a ground-breaking model through which all areas of the museum’s operations and programming are informed by its impact and benefit to other forms of life. The institute also serves as commissioner of the Dutch pavilion at the International Architecture Exhibition by La Biennale di Venezia and, in 2023, will act as the Artistic Director of the London Design Biennale in Somerset House (June 1-25, 2023).