Archive Talk: Bas van BeekArchive Talk: Bas van Beek

You could call Bas van Beek (1974) an 'antidesigner'. His work criticises market mechanisms, branding, empty conceptualism and the uncritical personality culture around designers. For the project Archiploitations, Van Beek uses found archive material as a basis for producing new work, sometimes realising historical designs that could not be executed with the techniques of the time, or translating an existing design into his own style.

In this _Archive Talk _Bas van Beek is in conversation with Job Meihuizen, co-compiler of the Speculative Design Archive. Job Meihuizen (1966) is a design historian, curator and tutor. He studied Art History at the University of Amsterdam and specialised in Applied Art during his studies. Meihuizen is Chairman of the Dutch Design Awards jury and teaches at the Design Academy Eindhoven. He regularly initiates projects on the intersection between heritage and design.

The _Archive Talks _series invites experts to go deeper into the stories behind various archival materials, many of which are shown in the _Speculative Design Archive _exhibition. What background knowledge or thoughts are hidden behind the archives in the Storage Area, the Study Depot and the Showroom? What alternative forms have been used to compile, examine, disclose and interpret them? How does this effect the way they are used and their meaning? What does this mean for the creation of future archives?

Against the backdrop of the _Speculative Design Archive _we talk to archivists, archive users and other experts about specific archival models. All these different perspectives are the reason for the continuous conversations about the possible forms that a design archive can take and the meanings that can be attributed to them. Informal, interactive and in an intimate setting, each conversation adds a new layer to the exhibition.